Outlaw music in Russia : the rise of an unlikely genre / Anastasia Gordienko.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Gordienko, Anastasia, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Popular music--Social aspects--Russia (Federation).

Popular music.

Popular music--Political aspects--Russia (Federation).

Popular music--Russia (Federation)--History and criticism.

Outlaws in music.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (334 pages)

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

Madison, Wisconsin : The University of Wisconsin Press, [2023]

Summary:

The Russian shanson can be heard across the country today, on radio and television shows, at mass events like political rallies, and even at the Kremlin. Yet despite its ubiquity, it has attracted almost no scholarly attention. Anastasia Gordienko provides the first full history of the shanson, from its tenuous ties to early modern criminals' and robbers' folk songs, through its immediate generic predecessors in the Soviet Union, to its current incarnation as the soundtrack for daily life in Russia. It is difficult to firmly define theshansonor its family of song genres, but they all have some connection, whether explicit or implicit, to the criminal underworld or to groups or activities otherwise considered subversive. Traditionally produced by and popular among criminals and other marginalized groups, and often marked by characters and themes valorizing illegal activities, the songs have undergone censorship since the early nineteenth century. Technically legal only since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the shanson is today not only broadly popular but also legitimized by Vladimir Putin's open endorsement of the genre. With careful research and incisive analysis, Gordienko deftly details the shanson 's history, development, and social meanings.Attempts by imperial rulers, and later by Soviet leaders, to repress the songs and the lifestyles they romanticized not only did little to discourage their popularity but occasionally helped the genre flourish. Criminals and liberal intelligentsia mingled in the Gulag system, for instance, and this contact introduced censored songs to an educated, disaffected populace that inscribed its own interpretations and became a major point of wider dissemination after the Gulag camps were closed. Gordienko also investigates the shanson as it exists in popular culture today: not divorced from its criminal undertones (or overtones) but celebrated for them. She argues that the shanson expresses fundamental themes of Russian culture, allowing for the articulation of anxieties, hopes, and dissatisfactions that are discouraged or explicitly forbidden otherwise.

Contents:

Contextualizing the shanson phenomenon

Criminals' music from its origins to the early Soviet period: a glorified archetype

Soviet underworld music: from the Bolshevik revolution through the end of the Stalin era

From post-Stalinist censorship to the contemporary mainstream: the birth of the shanson

The shanson: main features and tropes

The shanson in Russia: from the slums to the Kremlin

Turning Russia's immediate reality into song

Epilogue: Soundtrack to Russian life.

Notes:

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

Description based upon print version of record.

Description based on print version record.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780299340131

OCLC:

1356005863