What would a Soviet teenager head bang to?

by legend_noob

So, I recently looked up a Russian music playlist on spotify, and one thing led to another, and now I want to know more about the different music being produced in Russia, especially during different times in the Soviet union.

What would the radio be playing during the revolution? Who was the most famous artist during this time period, what was the most famous genre and what were some notable works?
I'm a Russian teenager, and I recently heard that Stalin is being replaced. What sort of music is playing in the background? Who are some prominent artists, popular genres and what are some notable works?
Given the censorship which took place, were their dissident musicians? Did anybody get away with making music critical of the USSR, and is that music still available?
News just came that the Berlin wall has been felled- I'm an old man now. I change the radio channel. What music would be playing? Was rock, punk, synth, etc. popular? Was this music affected by the west, how much?

I understand that music is very subjective, and that reddit isn't a place where I could expect to learn all the nuances involved in learning about such a complex topic, but I'd love if someone could shed light on this.

Also, please drop some recommendations- what is your favorite composition that Soviet Russia produced?

fixingthehole

I think I am qualified to answer part 4 of the question– not in Russia, but in what was at the time Soviet Republic of Georgia. Soviet Union was quite large and tastes in, say my hometown of Tbilisi might not exactly correspond with tastes in Moscow or Tashkent or Kiev. As far as I know there is no academic literature about the headbanging Georgians (There probably is some about the Russian scene, but I leave it to someone more knowledgeable), so I am drawing heavily from primary sources – memoirs and recollections and interviews, all of them in Georgian. I will also rely on the interviews I have conducted for the book I am writing on the rock scene of Georgia about late 80-ies and early 90-ies – I hope it doesn’t break any rules.

So it’s November 9 1989 and I am a resident of Tbilisi in Soviet Republic of Georgia. I do not change a channel on the radio because there are no radio channels. There are no FM stations – those only appeared after the breakup of the USSR. Some people have AM radio receivers, which might be able get Radio Free Europe or Voice of America or maybe some stations from nearby countries, but there are no local channels. There is only one state radio channel, and it is broadcast in Tbilisi homes through a physical wire, which goes into an apartment and is connected to a small box with a loudspeaker. There are no knobs to change channels, as there are no channels. There is only a dial to regulate loudness.

The programming of the channel is more akin to TV than to modern FM stations. There are news, concerts of classical music, theater plays. There are also programs where they play, what in USSR was knows as Estrada – which meant popular music in general, (ABBA and Black Sabbath would both be referred to as Western Estrada) but was mostly used to denote a specific strain of sanctioned popular bands and performers – a sort of Soviet equivalent of pop music. An example of Georgian song that would be played in such a program would be this. They would also play foreign music, but it would mostly be Italian, like this, or French, like this. Something like Bee Gees or Smokie would not be out of place. The music played on such a program would not be current hits - meaning that ost of those songs would be released well before 1989.

But radio programming does not reflect at all what is popular among hip youth, or even older listeners. This is 1989, Perestroika has been going on for more than a year and most of the restrictions about what people are allowed to listen to are lifted.

A month before the Berlin Wall fell, Tbilisi hosted an international Jazz Festival, where, besides Georgian, Russian and Armenian bands played European and American Jazz bands. Sun Ra, Art Blake, Freddie Hubbard were there and, by all accounts, it was one of the biggest musical events of the decade.

Television (once again, in 1989 there were no channels to choose from. There was The TV – Georgian state broadcaster and Georgians could also receive Russian state channels) started showing some of the music videos. The most scandalous were Boys by Sabrina and Lambada by Kaoma – both of which came out that year and both of which showed unprecedented amount of skin. You could even see Sabrina’s nipple!

In 1989 it was already possible to buy rock music on vinyl officially, in stores. A year before Paul McCartney issued an album exclusively in USSR called, unsurprisingly - CHOBA B CCCP (Back Again in The USSR). There were Soviet issued compilations of some of the bigger rock bands (not always bothering with copyright) - Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple, The Beatles for example, but the choice limited.

Information was also was limited. Newspaper “Georgian Youth” might occasionally print articles about Western groups, but most of those would be confined to what is now called Classical Rock and Progressive Rock (Jethro Tull and ELP).

Sometimes music would find a way in through funny channels. A member of one Georgian rock group recalls that he asked a friend to bring back an album of AC/DC from a trip to Europe. A friend brought back Siouxie and the Banshees instead. It must have made an impression – here is that band performing 4 years later.

textandtrowel

Given the censorship which took place, were their dissident musicians? Did anybody get away with making music critical of the USSR, and is that music still available?

I can cite an example that fits this question: Kino's Gruppa Krovi from 1988. The title song, which was first written and performed in 1986, offers a veiled critique of the Soviet-Afghan War (1979-1989). The artists got away with this for a few different reasons. First, the band and especially its lead singer Viktor Tsoi were wildly popular, while the Soviet-Afghan War was not. Second, the Soviet government had adopted policies of glasnost or openness in 1986, theoretically allowing criticism of Soviet policies and leaders although most Soviet citizens approached this new openness cautiously. Third, the USSR withdrew its troops from Afghanistan shortly after the album was released, making the Soviet-Afghan War a relatively safe target for critique, although the band and their label wouldn't necessarily have anticipated this as they were finalizing production. Fourth, the album is ambiguous in its wording. Kino was contributing to a genre of music known as russkii rok, which is sometimes considered more rock poetry than the punk music it pretended to be.

Since I'm not a Russian-speaking scholar, I've needed to rely on translations and the interpretations of others. Rebecca Diane Anderson has written an MA on the subject, and she offers the most authoritative account I've seen. She notes a few things about the song. First, it's focused on the heroic Soviet soldier, not the Soviet leaders. This blurs the critique somewhat, since the heroic soldier seems to be performing his tragic part and potentially dying in Afghanistan, albeit reluctantly. Second, the word "star" had many connotations in the USSR, since it was used as a symbol for the state itself. The early lyric about "star dust", for example, might be seen as a euphemism suggesting that the Soviet state was falling apart. And finally, Anderson notes that the fuller context of the album would also have shaped understandings of the song. Other tracks, such as "Vojna" take a more general anti-war stance akin to Pink Floyd's The Wall (1979), while the final track "Legenda" seems to focus on images of mythic heroes out of the Slavic peoples' deep past.

At least some listeners could hear "Gruppa krovi" as being part of a pro-Soviet album, meditating on the heroic self-sacrifice of Soviet and especially Russian soldiers. For older Soviets who remembered WWII, this might be a familiar kind of tune. Others, however, hooked their ears on Kino's other lyrics that demanded change, and while Marxists theoretically support revolution, Kino got into some trouble especially for the song "Spokojnaya noch'" which urged audiences that "now the time had come." In one performance in Moscow in 1988, some excited audience members apparently started tipping over chairs, and the band was held responsible and the concert cut short.

But these general rumblings for an upheaval seem generally to lie beneath the lyrics of the album (at least in translation), and they would generally have been heard only by audiences already primed for thinking about change. In my mind, the title track "Gruppa krovi" strikes most directly at critiquing specific unpopular Soviet policies, and to the best of my knowledge, it's the only Soviet anti-war song to have survived censorship. The lyrics, as translated by Anderson, follow:

It's warm here but there on the street where our footprints are awaited

Star dust on our boots sparkles and shines

There's a cozy armchair with a checkered blanket,

The trigger hasn't been pulled in time

Sunny days in dazzling dreams.

My blood type is marked on my sleeve,

My ordinal number is marked on my sleeve,

Wish me luck in the fight,

Wish for me

Not to remain in this grass,

Not to remain in this grass.

Wish me luck.

I can pay, but I don't want a victory at any cost.

I don’t want to put my foot on someone's chest.

I would rather stay here with you,

Just to stay here with you.

But the star high in the sky is calling me on my way...