Rock Goes Red: Rock Music Comes to Soviet Russia{5}
Rock&Roll takes off in Soviet Russia among the youth in the early 1970’s
Rock Goes Red
It did not take long for rock and roll culture to begin to permeate the Iron Curtain. The 1960’s spawned the era of rock with the advent of some of the most influential bands, such as The Beatles and The Rolling Stones, producing some of the most famous music in modern history. The west was producing great bands and great music, exporting yet another form of cultural imperialism around the world, but the west was not the only place where rock and roll gained momentum and popularity. Behind the Iron Curtain the youth of Soviet Russia began to party, and not in the communist way, pioneering yet another underground movement that put rock in full swing by the 1970’s in Russia.
Rock music was very similar to other forms of western influence in the Soviet Union. The Soviet party did not allow for the distribution of records, airing of songs, or performance of any of the music that was becoming so popular in the west. Rock and roll became popular and proliferated through the country the same way that most other illegal things did, such as American blue jeans, secretly, and underground. Although the state controlled record label and largest controller of music, Melodiya, did eventually allow some hits to air and be sold on record, the hunger for more music was already set in motion and Russian bands began forming across the country.
Beatles album distributed by Melodiya. The record label is still alive today.
http://melody.su/en/
Early music emulated the sound of their western originators and found success in the underground scene by primarily performing rock and roll covers of popular western music, undoubtedly the performers were blue jean Levi clad and away from the prying eyes of officials. The first band to eventually popularize and champion true Russian rock would be a Moscow based group named “Mashina Vremeni“, or Time Machine, in the 1970’s. Rock was not allowed to be performed publicly, and bands did not receive permission from the state to participate in festivals or concert series for quite sometime. Not until the 1973 did Russian rock make it’s first actual appearance by official channels. The song “My Address is the Soviet Union” was a break through, overly patriotic song, that made Soviet approval while maintaining the rhythm and sound of early western rock. Shortly after, rock bands were allowed to perform under the state approved category of VIA (Vocal-Instrumental Assembles), a title less offensive and less western than Rock and Roll.
So what is the big deal? Why should anyone care about rock and roll invading Soviet Russia? The issue was never necessarily the music itself, but rather the message that rock and roll carried. Rock wasn’t an all age phenomenon in the west either, largely championed by the younger generation, but Soviet’s saw rock as yet another conduit towards the rebellion and materialism that they categorized as their capitalist western counterparts. However, Russian rock was actually unique and should be considered a source of national pride. Elsewhere in Europe, rock was considered an English language phenomenon and was reproduced, written, and created primarily in English. Russian rock took the lead in producing the genre in their own language, with a message for their own people.
Russian rock breaks out and hits the west later on in the 1980’s, carrying with it an organic sound that is unique and completely their own.
Early Russian Rocker sporting a Fender Stratocaster prototype guitar featuring three pickups, 6 strings, but with no whammy bar installed, or electricity invented yet for the amplifier
*** Side note, Time Machine actually sounds pretty good. Kind of like a Russian version of The Beatles…kind of. Here’s a Youtube link to one of my new favorite songs.
Works Cited
http://soviethistory.macalester.edu/index.php?page=subject&show=music&SubjectID=1973rock&Year=1973&navi=byYear
http://soviethistory.macalester.edu/index.php?page=subject&SubjectID=1973rock&Year=1973
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_rock#The_late_1960s_and_1970s:_First_signs
http://www.russia-ic.com/culture_art/music/380/#.VGlKMvkc60E
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_rock#mediaviewer/File:Beer,_Russian_boy_with_balalaika.jpg
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_rock
November 17, 2014 @ 7:52 pm
Considering I knew net to nothing about Soviet Rock, I learned a lot from this article. For example, even early Russian rockers knew that long hair was a necessity. It does make sense however, that the USSR would originally ban rock as it was such a western thing and anti soviet messages could easily be put into the songs.
November 17, 2014 @ 9:42 pm
Holding true to the rebellious attitudes of rock and roll, the lead singer of Time Machine, Andrei Makarevich, was accused of anti-patriotism and faced hostility after performing in Ukraine last August- conveying that the state is still concerned with the messages and political undertones of rock music.
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-28855690
November 18, 2014 @ 3:00 am
Great post! I love the pictures and sources you used. I really like the “So what is the big deal?” section, as it puts the whole issue into perspective. It was much more than just the rock music; with it came the lifestyle and potentially, capitalist/Western ideals. I also found it interesting how you noted that Russian rock music was written and performed in Russian, whereas many other European countries wrote/performed in English. Well done!
November 19, 2014 @ 4:29 pm
Great job with this post! I like how you related rock and roll back to other aspects of the USSR at the time such as Jean Culture. You do a good job pointing out the government’s problems with rock and roll in the USSR: it didn’t have a government friendly message and it was too western. This post shows how rock and roll fits into the black market at the time on a large scale. The ability for people to buy and sell rock music in Russia just goes to show how powerful the black market was.
December 8, 2014 @ 11:46 pm
Really interesting post. I also wrote about Rock and Roll in the Soviet Union and its crazy to see how many fans came out to see rock bands in 1991, as if they had been secretly hiding there love for the music until the one day they could actually get to hear it live.