Kaida Rakodi
Kaida Rakodi | |
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 Kaida Rakodi in 1969 | |
| Background information | |
| Also known as |
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| Born | 10 September 1938 Releş, Xevden |
| Genres | |
| Instruments | Vocals |
| Years active | 1957–2008 |
Kaida Rakodi (born 10 September 1938) is a retired Gylian coloratura soprano. She achieved wide renown for her voice, which had an extraordinarily wide range that reached 5 octaves at the height of her career, and an acclaimed bright timbre.
She performed and recorded prolifically, driven by a preoccupation with preserving and documenting her vocal talent as much as possible. She was a regular presence on the GNBS and a popular media personality.
She retired from singing in 2008, giving her last public performance on her 70th birthday. She is considered a cultural icon in her native Gylias, where she was dubbed the "Gylian Songbird" and the "People's Songbird".
Early life
Kaida Rakodi was born in Releş on 10 September 1938. Her parents were of mostly Gylic and some Hayeren descent. The family was poor, and her parents' marriage was tense.
She had a difficult upbringing. Her mother gave her an education reminiscent of a charm school. She was a rebellious child and found both of her parents overbearing at times. Their relationship improved after her musical career began.
She was educated in volunteer classes in the Free Territories. She began singing at a young age, and her vocal talent was discovered when she was 12. She was personally taught by Lisa Paglin and Marianna Brilla, the founders of the Brilla-Paglin vocal school, who adopted her as their "star pupil". She adopted a lifestyle of total immersion in her musical education.
The experience of the Liberation War in childhood caused Kaida some trauma. As an adult, this manifested in an obsession with working as much as possible, and a resigned awareness that her talent was not permanent. "My voice is a national treasure," she declared in 1967, "so it belongs to the people. The people must have all of it."
Career
Kaida's first public performance was during a radio broadcast in 1957. The same year, she married Niciné Rarþys, a pianist and composer who became her lifelong collaborator and arranger. She made her operatic debut aged 21.
From there, her fame quickly spread. She developed a schedule of 3–4 concerts per week with some time off, satisfying her desire to work while preserving her voice. She performed throughout Gylias, with various instrumental backings from symphonic orchestras to small combos or merely her husband's piano, and in a variety of settings.
Kaida became a regular presence on GNBS, and enjoyed the support of its director Eija Nylund. She performed concerts of classical and modern music on Gylian Radio and Gylian Television, modeled after the Young People's Concerts, and was known to generations as "the Golden Voice of Gynbris".
Recordings
Kaida was just as prolific in the studio, and appreciated the simpler recording process. She numerous studio recordings throughout her career. She worked with orchestras, string sections, small ensembles, conventional pop and rock bands, experimental groups, and by herself.
She was finely attuned to the possibilities of the recording studio as an instrument, and made full use of them. She would record multiple takes and edit them together to achieve the perfect performance, and overdub her own harmonies, sometimes to the point of being a one-woman mass singing ensemble.
One of her most celebrated recordings was made in 1962: a striking, all-vocal rendition of the national anthem. Praised by music journalists for capturing both the desolate melancholy of the anthem's origins and the celebratory optimism of the Golden Revolution, it became a commonly-used theme on GNBS, and was closely associated with her.
Kaida often gave the impression of being "bewildered and a little intimidated" by her voice, treating herself as merely its "vessel". She agreed to several "scientific experiment" sessions, which she sang while having her vocal cords photographed or measured through a spectrometer and similar instruments.
Between 1963 and 1973, she recorded a series of yearly sessions for Gylmuse, singing all the notes of her range for a fixed period of time. She wished to allow people in the future to play her voice on a keyboard — a far-sighted goal when the Chamberlin and Mellotron were only coming into use. These recordings were later used and looped to create patches for digital synthesiser-samplers, including the Fairlight CMI and Synclavier. She called this one of her proudest achievements.
Collaborations
Kaida worked with numerous Gylian musicians throughout her career. She joked in an interview, "I want to be the first person people call when they want a bit of opera or class on a track, and also the last."
One of her most successful and longest-lasting collaborations was with Susan Shelley, famed as Gylias' greatest record producer and composer of art music. They got along excellently due to their shared perfectionist tendencies, playful senses of humour, well-organised lifestyles, and what she jokingly called "our mutual belief in dress codes as desirable in the studio".
One of her best-known collaborations was with The Beaties: she sang the massed backing vocals of the "White Album"'s closing track, "Good Night". One of her vocal performances was also sampled in the preceding track, "Revolution 9".
She was close friends with Sofia Demes, the two being Gylias' most celebrated classical vocalists, and they made numerous collaborative recordings and joint tours.
Repertoire
Possessed of a good memory and a quick study with a song, Kaida sang a wide variety of music throughout her career. She performed art music and light music, folk music and various genres of popular music and experimental music. Her openness and eclecticism endeared her to the Gylian public.
Her art music repertoire was shaped by her vocal training. She preferred performing music of the 18th and 19th centuries, and some romantic music. She firmly refused to sing any religious music.
She preferred to sing soprano leggero roles as her usual.
Vocal style
Kaida was classified as a coloratura soprano or soprano sfogato. She had a bright and sweet vocal timbre, capable of great clarity and excellent diction when singing. She credited her vocal teachers for her longevity, particularly their emphasis on proper breathing technique and avoiding vocal over-exertion.
She had one of the widest vocal ranges of a singer, measuring 5 octaves and possibly a few notes above. Her lowest sung note was a C1; her highest was a D8. At the extreme high end of her range, she was noted for her ability to imitate the trill of birds. She was distinguished for her agile runs, leaps and trills while singing.
Her voice was widely acclaimed. The writer Anaïs Nin wrote in her Diary:
"The voice has all the richness, beauty, and range of a mythical woman. It does not seem humanly credible. She sings like a siren, a bird, a spirit, some seductive chant never heard before, high and low, fragile and strong. With all that, she has the exotic beauty of a legendary figure."
Performance
Kaida considered herself a singer, not an actor. Following the more casual Gylian approach to art music, she performed on stage as if at a standard concert, facing the audience directly.
She had a minimalistic and relaxed stage presence. She smiled while singing, kept her hands clasped behind or in front of her, and never showed any obvious signs of effort, which impressed audiences.
She famously began her shows by waiting for applause to end, approaching the microphone, raising her finger to her lips, and saying, "Shhh. Quiet please, this is an opera."
Reputation
Kaida maintained a down-to-earth image. She wore Levystile suits while perfoming and recording. Her restricted wardrobe defined her public image, and earned her the nickname "the georgette of the stage". She used cosmetics to enhance her exotic looks, and often used gauchic portraits of herself for album covers.
Kaida led a modest and regimented lifestyle. She awoke every morning at 6:00, ate at exact hours, and went to bed at 23:00. She lived in a small but comfortable apartment with her family. She performed vocal exercises for two hours every day, and would practice both vocal warm ups and "warm downs" before and after a concert or recording session. She abstained from alcohol, tobacco, or drugs, and followed a mostly vegetarian diet.
Most of those who encountered her recalled they were most impressed that, despite leading what sounded like a severe and ascetic lifestyle, she was "supremely relaxed in everything she did", and had a friendly and playful personality, fond of silly humour and jokes.
She was affectionate and protecting towards her younger collaborators, friends, and fans, and would fondly address them as "children".
She was depicted in Lia Fyresi's 1974 documentary Our Songbird, which captured her "grace under pressure" on film. Its most famous scene depicts Kaida in close-up, in a dark room, under hot studio lights, wearing slightly too tight clothing and heavy makeup, and calmly performing some of the most challenging arias of her repertoire.
Kaida had fun collaborating with comedians, usually appearing in sketches that portrayed her wasting her talents in highly prosaic contexts. She appeared in one of Annemarie Beaulieu's art hystérique short films, being filmed singing an operatic passage while being brought to orgasm by a vibrator.
Political involvement
Kaida developed a close relationship with Reda Kazan, the first President of Gylias. Reda invited her to perform in honour of her inauguration, and the two became friends. Kaida appreciated Reda's strong commitment to promoting Gylian culture and the arts, and would give several private performances at her request, including to celebrate her presidential election victories.
She had similarly good relationships with several members of the Darnan Cyras government, including education ministers Rin Tōsaka and Sakura Tōsaka, Arts Council chair Tomoko Tōsaka, and culture minister Eoni Nalion.
She was a high-profile supporter of the Progressive Alliance, campaigning for them during the 1962 and 1969 federal elections. She performed at The New World's Fête d'Nouvelle Monde festival for many years.
Kaida and her mentors supported an initiative to set orchestras' pitch standards by law, in order to reduce pitch and thus strain on singers' voices. The initiative was approved in a 1967 referendum.
Later career and retirement
Kaida maintained an active recording and performance schedule into her late career, but began slowing down her pace in the 1990s.
As she aged, she feared that she had lost her beauty and grown "fat and ugly". She used heavy makeup to try to conceal her aging, and strictly forbade her concerts from being filmed and photographed. She insisted that any interviews be done without photographs or filming.
The development of the internet in Gylias represented an opportunity for her to secure her legacy: she oversaw the remastering of her audio and video recordings for Proton and NetStream.
Choosing to retire, she gave her last public performance on 10 September 2008, her 70th birthday. Afterwards, she decided to live quietly in retirement with her family.
Legacy
Kaida is one of Gylias' most acclaimed vocalists, and successful performers of opera and classical music. Her openness towards popular and modern music made her a pioneer of operatic pop, while her profuse generosity and dedication to her craft made her a cultural icon.
Her all-vocal recordings have been influential on numerous artists, for her massed harmonies and use of vocals and processing to emulate instruments.
Based on the precedent set by the Fairlight and Synclavier, the majority of Gylian-made synthesizers since the 1980s have patches for female voice and female ensemble using her voice.
Her static stage presence was jokingly cited as an inspiration by shoegazing musicians.
Our Songbird was an unexpected influence on Gylian pornography, inspiring pornographic directors to explore the sexual potential of the kind of unflappable, buttoned-up characters similar to Kaida's stage presence.
Private life
Kaida married Niciné Raþys in 1957. She once stated, "In our case, it turned out for the best that we married young. We were amazingly lucky." The couple have a child, Kumy, born in 1964.
She is a practitioner of Concordianism and Hellenic polytheism, and is a vocal opponent of organised religion.