Babushka blues: Video of Belarus granny playing guitar with a light bulb goes viral

A video of a Belarusian granny in the street playing blues on the guitar with a light bulb has so far received over six million views.

Most of the people commenting on the viral YouTube video were touched by the performance, and wondered about the woman’s fate.

“So many people just walk past. I couldn’t walk past a sight like that without at least a listen and a dollar in her cup. I’d love to hear her story. I hope she’s alright. It’s hard to tell if she’s homeless or poor or what,” one of the users said in a comment.

Many came up with unusual advice for her on how to raise some money. One of the users said that her guitar reminded him of a 1930s vintage instrument that could be worth a lot of money, while others suggested she should be earning money for the more than six million views on YouTube that the video has received.

RT’s Ruptly spoke exclusively to the innovative guitarist, who is 85-year-old Lydia Drobyshevskaya from the Belarusian town of Gomel.

“My fingers don’t allow me to play domra, but I used to be naughty while playing domra! I could actually play words on domra, a poem. And if a person wasn’t looking, he could have thought that it was a person speaking,” the woman said.

“When I’m in the street, people call me Guitar,” she added.

The domra is a traditional Russian string instrument of the lute family.

People wished the extraordinary musician a long life and said they were “in awe” of the video, thanking her in Russian, “Spasibo babushka.”

The video was posted several years ago, but went viral only recently, scoring over six million views on YouTube.

A couple of days ago, Ukrainian media reported that MTV had asked to air a video of the babushka blues, though it is not clear in which country exactly.