In shortAccording to singer and composer Arsen Petrosov, “Kaifuem” is based on a Tumanyan parable about a caliph and a potter, and it went onto the album “Stop Kolyosa” as the tenth track, a spare. While it played in markets and gas stations across the former Soviet Union, its authors waited 18 years for papers and couldn’t leave the US; they first traveled abroad only in 2010 or 2011. His main advice to artists comes down to one thing: keep your own style and never copy anyone else’s.
“Kaifuem” (sometimes spelled Kayfuem) is sung by Arsen Petrosov. He wrote it with his father, Leon Petrosov; it came out in 2007 on the album “Stop Kolyosa,” and for more than seventeen years it has been a dance-floor staple. But the most surprising part of its story isn’t the music. While “Kaifuem” blared from the markets of Tashkent and bootleg CDs of it sold at gas stations, the men who wrote it couldn’t leave America.
Arsen told me about it in his studio, Leon Records. I’m an immigrant myself, and I know how a move turns your life upside down, so I didn’t start with the hit. I started with 1993: what that move was like, and how you keep your inspiration. Arsen’s answer: if anything, it was their music that helped them survive, not the other way around. The episode is in Russian; on YouTube you can turn on auto-translated English subtitles.
Who sings “Kaifuem,” and how did the song come about?
Arsen Petrosov, a singer and composer from Tashkent, sings it, and father and son wrote it together. They had worked as a creative duo since Arsen was a boy. In Tashkent, Leon Petrosov ran his own show, “Leon Petrosov’s Express Revue,” for twenty years, and the family owned the biggest recording studio in the city. They came to America to trade experience with colleagues and buy equipment, with no plans to stay. Then they were invited to play Los Angeles, three nights in a row sold out, and the city wouldn’t let them go.
After the shows, people kept coming up with the same request: write something of your own in the Eastern-Caucasian style, “six-eight, but in Russian.” Until then the Petrosovs had mostly written European-style pop. They took it on, as Arsen puts it, on a dare. By 2005 the songs for a new album were ready; in 2006 they recorded them. Neither father nor son knew that “Kaifuem” would be the song to bring this style to a mass audience.
Shot by ProStudio1What is “Kaifuem” about? The meaning, and a parable about a caliph and a potter
The song is built on an Armenian parable by Tumanyan, “The one who knows how to enjoy always finds his kaif.” A caliph forbade his subjects to enjoy life: luxury was for him alone. One cheerful potter managed to find joy even in poverty, and it drove the ruler mad. He banned wine and declared prohibition. So the potter set out a glass of water and a piece of bread, called his friends over, and they sang and celebrated anyway. The caliph had to admit it: the one who knows how to enjoy will always find his kaif.
If a person creates his own mood, then we have to create that kaif for ourselves.Watch this moment · 14:01
The word “kaif,” Arsen reminds me, comes from Arabic and means pleasure. As for the story that the song was born after a festive dinner at a restaurant, he calls it complete nonsense. He and his father were simply in a good mood that day and wanted to write something light.
Why did “Kaifuem” end up as the tenth track on the album?
The album already had its hits: “Stop Kolyosa”, “Moy Synok”, “Yerevan”, “Vostochnaya Noch”, “Ne Postareli My.” They hadn’t even tried “Kaifuem” out at concerts and had no plans to include it. One song was missing, the tenth. They wanted a slow one, but his father stopped them: why weigh people down with pessimism when the album is turning out so upbeat?
He asked what they had in reserve. Arsen named “Kaifuem.” His father hesitated (it’s an unusual word, after all) and then waved it through: let’s try it. That’s how a finished, already recorded spare became track ten. The album came out on January 1, 2007, and a year later Arsen, his father and his younger sister Sandra sold out the Millennium Theatre in New York.
How did “Kaifuem” spread around the world while its authors couldn’t leave the US?
This is where the story reveals its other side. The song was everywhere, and Arsen and his father couldn’t leave America.
We waited 18 years for our documents.Watch this moment · 15:01
In Uzbekistan, where the family comes from, bootleg copies of the album sold at gas stations, and the song, as Arsen puts it, was coming out of every radio and TV. They couldn’t travel until 2010 or 2011. The promoter who brought them to perform at Barvikha confessed: you have no idea how many people have sung your “Kaifuem” here. Every invited artist was asked to sing it. “And you weren’t here.”
Before his father passed away, they managed to take the show halfway around the world: Yerevan, Moscow, Austria, Monaco. I listened and couldn’t help telling Arsen that this story moved me deeply.
Shot by ProStudio1Unlike many artists, Arsen saves his signature hit for the end of the concert: let people wait and go home in that mood.
Why has “Kaifuem” lasted more than 17 years, and could anyone write a hit like it today?
The secret, in Arsen’s view, is simple: people always need something positive. Wherever “Kaifuem” plays, it “tears up the dance floor,” and the comments under it all say the same thing: the original stays the original. Arsen is proud that no one has ever successfully covered it. He even hears from people who don’t speak a word of Russian: I don’t understand a word, but it gets me.
Repeating that today, he says, is harder. Songs take off on TikTok and Reels and disappear just as fast; people remember a snippet, not the whole song. His advice to newcomers is not to be afraid to experiment and to keep up with the times, but not to turn themselves into something contrived just for fame. His father taught him and his sister one rule: never imitate anyone.
He’s Sting because he’s Sting.Watch this moment · 23:09
Sting needs one note to be recognized. Many of today’s artists, Arsen says, copy one another “like clones.”
I asked whether you can become a star without a voice. In the studio, Arsen answered, anything is possible; Auto-Tune doesn’t surprise anyone anymore. But it isn’t about the voice. He remembered Mark Bernes: he didn’t have a big voice, and yet people cried at his very first line. Style and soul decide everything.
What does success mean to Arsen Petrosov?
I ask every guest this question. Arsen didn’t start with numbers.
Success, for me personally, means calm and being at peace with myself inside.Watch this moment · 41:11
Then he told me about the studio. After his father died, the studio sat idle, and Arsen and his son rebuilt it with their own hands: desks, racks, equipment, acoustics. His sister Sandra and his daughter pitched in. They named it Leon Records, after his father. Success is also the messages from listeners who drive along the ocean with his songs on repeat, and a concert in Miami where there wasn’t a single empty seat.
Shot by ProStudio1Even mistakes are a kind of experience that leads you to further success.Watch this moment · 47:30
What do parents need if they want to raise an artist?
In the Petrosov family, music is handed down from one generation to the next. Arsen’s son Leon writes waltzes in the spirit of Chopin and works on arrangements with his father; his daughter Arnella asked for violin lessons herself. Arsen dreams of opening an academy named after his father, the Petrosov Performing Arts Academy. I told him I’d love to see my own child in a school like that.
About promoting children in America, Arsen has no illusions. A parent has to give it all their time, energy and money. Either go all the way or don’t start: quitting halfway means it was all for nothing. But, he says, whoever becomes famous in America becomes famous around the world.
Consistency is determination, following your goal. Constantly, continuously, step by step, doing your thing.Watch this moment · 1:05:41
How do you stay yourself between two cultures?
For those of us who live abroad, this may be the main question. Arsen has lived in America for thirty years; at home they speak Russian, and he feels completely at home here. He doesn’t advise crossing out your past: keep everything good that you brought with you, and take the best from your new country.
The grass is always greener where we aren’t. But America has plenty of good, plenty of right, plenty of positive.Watch this moment · 1:08:10
Put the two together and keep your balance. I don’t know a more practical piece of advice for an immigrant.
What I’m taking away from this conversation
I can’t get that promoter’s line out of my head: “And you weren’t here.” For eighteen years the song lived without its authors and never lost its power. Arsen remembers those years without bitterness. What matters more to him is peace inside, family, and work done step by step. Sometimes a hit waits years in the reserve pile, and its authors have to wait even longer.
Shot by ProStudio1The full conversation is in the video at the top of this article. Subscribe to Without Borders so you don’t miss the next episode.
Kristina Samofal
Photo & Video Production