Music in Russia

Hello!

This month, my weekly posts will be revolving around Russia because of the Olympic games that will be held in Sochi later this month!

So for this week, I am going to talk about music in Russia. I have written an academic paper on this topic before and there is so much to talk about especially the battle musicians and composers had with the government during the Communist Regime. I will try to touch on as much as I can without making this post to ridiculously long and without taking away too much of my studying time.

Now to start off with, there are many different ethnic groups in Russia, so like in many other countries, the music differs depending on where in the country you are.

Music in Russia, like in many countries, can be traced back to the beginning of the people living in that area of the world. And, like in most cases, the original consisted of folk music. By the 18^th and 19^th century Classical music began to come to Russia with composers like Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Anton and Nikolai Rubenstein, and Sergei Rachmaninov. By the 20^th century and the Russian Revolution, a group called the Association for Contemporary Music emerged. This organization was supported by the government and sort of acted as the police officers of music. They wanted to prevent any western influence from entering Russian produced music. They wanted to exterminate any signs of genres such as jazz. They supported the usage of classical sounds and sounds that the masses would be able to interpret. Therefore, experimentation was not allowed. Composers like Dmitri Shostakovich tried to push the boundaries with their compositions and many faced the wrath of the government for it, losing their careers and in some cases being criminally punished. After Stalin’s reign ended, however, there was a shift to a slightly less strict system and western music began to enter the Soviet Union.

While much of the Top 40 in Russia are songs that do not come from Russia, one popular Russian folk rock musician is Melnitsa from Moscow. This group combines Russian, Irish, and Northern European folk music. They began as a cult/ teenage sub-culture band, but when their song “Nochnaya Kobyla” was released in 2005 it went to number one becoming the best song of the year and bring the group up with it.

Well, that’s all I have time to write today. I have a load of homework to still get done for tomorrow. But I hope you enjoyed this post. I will be putting a link to “Nochnaya Kobyla” up following this post if you were interested in listening to it. Let me know what you think and if you know any other Russian artists! Have fun watching the Super Bowl tonight!