Rock music in Russia
Russian rock music originated in the Soviet Union in the 1960s based on the influence of Western rock music and bard songs, and was developed by both amateur bands and official VIA.
The "golden age" of Russian rock was during the 1980s, when the Soviet underground rock bands became able to release their records officially. During this period, "rock clubs" were created, bands like "Kino", "Alisa", "DDT", "Bravo", "Nautilus Pompilius", "Aria", "Chaif", and "Grazhdanskaya Oborona" appeared and gained popularity, and already known groups, such as "Mashina Vremeni" and "Aquarium", began to publish albums officially.
Russian rock's characteristic feature was the emphasis on the lyrics. Due to its lyrical emphasis, it became a symbol of the youth of the Perestroika era. Russian rock of the 20th century is often considered a united cultural movement that has some common musical, aesthetic and ideological features.
In the 21st century, almost all genres of rock music exist in Russia, which is why "Russian rock" has become a more vague concept. The majority of the Russian bands perform in the Russian language.
According to various polls, the most popular Russian rock bands include Kino, Aquarium, Aria, Alisa, DDT and Agatha Christie.
History
The early 1960s: Local bard music and first western influences
By the mid-1960s, beat groups had formed in Moscow and Leningrad, at first performing cover versions of foreign hits on home-made equipment. Among these groups were "Sokol", "Scythians", "Buffoons" and "Slavs", and "Forest Brothers". In 1965, the band Sokol released the first rock song in Russian, "Gde tot krai?". The beat quartet "Integral" performed jazz music and compositions in the style of The Shadows and The Swinging Blue Jeans, and also composed their own twists and rock 'n' rolls. With the spread of Beatlemania, almost every school had its own rock band. The movement was partly influenced by the ideology of the Western hippies.At the same time, Russian rock was partly influenced by bard music, a style referred to as avtorskaya pesnya, mostly played on unaccompanied acoustic guitar. It was characterized by a strong emphasis on lyrics that sometimes carried a subversive meaning, as well as a lively and informal approach to the theme - romance, everyday life, military songs, patriotic songs, satire, irony etc. The most famous performers of the bard song were Alexander Galich, Vladimir Vysotsky, Bulat Okudzhava.
Meanwhile, Western music was either being smuggled across the border or released by Melodiya as part of what was essentially state-run media piracy, with The Beatles taking a firm place in Soviet popular culture, and artists such as The Rolling Stones and Deep Purple completing a somewhat distorted picture of Western music.
The late 1960s and 1970s: Formation of the movement
In the late 1960s, the most advanced Russian rockers began experimenting with folk sound.The beat music movement developed in the provinces. The first Russian rock and roll magazine "Beat-Echo" was released in 1965. On December 18, 1966, the first rock festival in the USSR was held in Kamensk-Uralsky, Sverdlovsk region. In May 1969, the festival later known as "Woodstock-na-Donu" was held in Rostov-na-Donu.
However, the musicians of independent bands faced two problems that limited their activities. The first was the unavailability of recording studios. The second problem was that after completing higher education, musicians had to make a choice: to leave to work in their specialty or join a professional band - VIA.
Guitar-driven bands evolved during this time, including Leningrad-based Pojuschie Gitary and Belarusian Pesnyary. These bands started the VIA movement, and were followed by others, such as Tsvety, Ariel,, and Sinyaya Ptitsa. Some Soviet composers — David Tukhmanov, Yury Antonov — tried to combine the traditions of Soviet estrada with modern musical ideas, including those introduced by Western rock music. At the same time, Mashina Vremeni in Moscow and Aquarium in Leningrad started as nominally amateur bands and soon became popular, performing underground concerts.
In the early 1970s, Yuri Morozov invented a kind of Russian psychedelic rock, using elements of progressive rock and ethnic Russian music. His sound influenced DDT, Aquarium, Chizh & Co, and many others, while he worked with them as a sound engineer. Morozov, as well as "Scythians", "Sadko" and "Tin Soldiers", released the earliest Russian rock recordings through samizdat.
Another notable artist who started his activity at the same time is Alexander Gradsky, who fused bard music with Western rock. As successful composer and singer, he was able to release some of his recordings through Melodiya since 1973.
In 1970 and 1971, the first All-Soviet rock festival "Silver Strings" was held. In 1971 and 1972, the "Pop Federation" organization was engaged in underground rock concerts. Moscow Power Engineering Institute was the most famous venue for rock bands of the 1970s in Moscow. In March 1976, Tallinn hosted the "Tallinn Youth Songs" Rock Festival, which brought together bands from different republics of the Soviet Union. During this period, concert recordings, rather than studio recordings, were mainly distributed, which were rewritten as self-published from one owner of the tape recorder to another. Since 1979, new underground recording studios have emerged.
For Leningrad, the concept of acoustic kvartirnik was spread; Moscow bands performed mainly in electricity. "Ruby Attack", "Argonauts", "Mify", "Successful Acquisition", "Mashina Vremeni", "Sankt-Peterburg", "Rossiyane", "Vysokosnoe leto", "Autograph", and "Voskreseniye" were among the main groups of the 1970s underground scene. Most of them were influenced by the styles of art rock, hard rock and progressive rock.
Some of the first officially published full-length rock albums were "Russian pictures" VIA "Ariel" and "Guslar" VIA "Pesnyary". Some Soviet composers of the turn of the 70s - 80s worked in the rock opera format; the most famous works are "Orpheus and Eurydice", "The Star and the Death of Joaquin Murieta", and "Juno and Avos".
The 1980s: Golden era
In the 1980s, an underground scene of rock artists emerged who based their style on a mix of Western rock music and the Russian bard traditions. Bands such as Voskreseniye, Alisa, Autograph, Kino, Mashina Vremeni, Nautilus Pompilius, Aquarium, Secret, Piknik, DDT, Krematorij, Grazhdanskaya Oborona, and Agatha Christie became influential in the development of the genre, with subsequent artists influenced by their style. At the same time, many bands of the 1980s were, in a sense, a group accompanying a songwriter. Often bands were formed around such an author of lyrics, who was usually considered a "leader" and, just like the band, became widely known.In 1980, Spring Rhythms: Tbilisi-80 took place in Tbilisi in the Georgian SSR. It was the first official rock festival in the Soviet Union. Many of the prize-winners at the festival were rock groups from the Russian SFSR, as well as Georgia and the Baltics. The "Fiztech—1982" festival actually launched the popularity of new wave.
In the late 1970s and early 1980s, a lot of amateur bands who signed labor agreements and contracts with various philharmonic societies of the USSR, such as "Mashina Vremeni", "Zemlyane", "Autograph", "Cruise", and "Dialog", among others, were able to break into professional scene.
Since the mid-80s Russian rock was also influenced by the Russian art group Mitki.
The lyrics of the Soviet rock bands often dealt with the darkest sides of 1980s Soviet life, such as domestic violence, alcoholism and crime, and often carried a hidden political message.
In consequence, the mainstream Soviet radio and television ignored Soviet rock bands, which often reached audiences only through word of mouth. The monopoly for music publishing in the USSR belonged to Melodiya, the Soviet record label owned and operated by the Council of Ministers through the Ministry of Culture. Melodiya had a strict policy against publishing rock music or underground musicians, while promoting VIAs, whose members were members of the Union of Composers. Some rock musicians had problems with the KGB due to their public activities. During the early 1980s, Soviet authorities started to exert heavy pressure on amateur bands, banning underground concerts as a sort of illegal commercial activity and imprisoning some music promoters and sound engineers for earning money from underground concerts.
Many of the bands from the 1980s remain active and popular among Russian youth. The term Russian rock is often used to refer to the particular sound of these bands.
Various music scenes
In the early- to mid-1980s, rock clubs were founded in Moscow, Leningrad and Sverdlovsk. These three cities had their own rock scenes and friendly collaborations between artists were commonplace.The Leningrad Rock Club, founded in 1981 and supported by the CPSU, Komsomol, and the city and federal governments, was probably the biggest venue, featuring "classic Russian rock" by Aquarium, Kino, Zoopark, Piknik, Alisa, DDT, Televizor, N.E.P., etc. It also included the nascent Russian art-rock movement, typified by bands such as Auktyon. An important figure in the Leningrad Rock scene was Sergey Kuryokhin, a well-known piano/keyboard player of different music genres including rock and free-jazz, and leader of his ambitious multimedia project Pop Mekhanika, was one of the first Soviet underground musicians to release albums in Europe and the United States.
Bands from Sverdlovsk, such as Nautilus Pompilius, Chaif, and Agatha Christie, produced more melodic music, making heavy use of keyboards and synthesizers.
Moscow rock bands, such as Aria, Mashina Vremeni, Voskreseniye, Center, Krematorij and Zvuki Mu, were rather different from the others, and sometimes more discreet.
The Siberian rock scene began in the 1980s, with songwriters such as Yegor Letov, Kalinov most, Alexander Bashlachev and Yanka Dyagileva. Their music varied from simple lo-fi punk to indie rock, and the core of their songs were the lyrics. Many albums were first self-released and distributed among fans via trading, then officially re-released years later. Lyrics were often obscene, and showed that the writers had major problems with the Soviet administration and KGB. A notable act that was not a member of any of the three Rock-Clubs, but nonetheless highly popular, is rock and roll band Secret.
At that time, the Russian heavy-metal scene originated thanks to bands like Aria, Chorny Kofe and Master.
The glam-metal band Gorky Park achieved high popularity in the west, and was even aired on MTV.
Russian punk's unique style is generally accepted to be most idealized by Grazhdanskaya Oborona and by Yegor Letov's other projects. The music mixes equal parts Western punk and traditional Russian influences, with gritty production and extremely charged and political lyrics.