Soviet Disco Music

Aha! I thought at first that a thread about "Soviet Disco Music" might be some new appearance of the 'dreaded forum lurgey' reported by Mr Dundonnell!

But in fact it's true! Speaking as someone who passed the occasional evening in soviet discos of the 1980s, my somewhat blurred memories recall that the music policy was bizarrely eclectic, and composed mostly of whatever foreign vinyl the DJ had got hold of - I don't remember any native "soviet" music being played (although I'd doubt the performers would have enjoyed it being called 'soviet' music!).

The soviet authorities couldn't really decide about disco, or discos. In principle they saw what they charmingly called 'dance-hall' (танц-пол) as a socially desirable medium that would unite the barrel-chested working classes under the avuncular aegis of the Party. (Rather like dance-mad Scandinavia, social dancing in restaurants was a much-loved and unstoppable trend in Russia which pre-dated the Revolution, and which even the most mustard-faced politico did not dare to halt). Their primary objection to what was played in discos was that it had mostly come "from there" (ie "not here"). Even so, the sentiments behind hits like 'Streets of London' (amazingly popular as a 'disco' song, played as a slow romantic dance, despite the wildly inappropriate text about bag-ladies) couldn't stop its success.

I seem to remember the BeeGees were very popular, as was "Lady In Red" (a dance-floor staple of the era), and "You're a woman, I'm a man". I think a lot of the popularity of these songs arose from their simple, nay even simplistic titles - semi-understandable to almost anyone who had fountain-penned (biros were a black-market item) their way through Soviet School English. "Streets of London"? Well, that was obviously about the streets of the British capital, and everyone got misty-eyed over that :) The words "lady" and "red" had featured in English Vocabulary books too.

On a musicianly note, most rock and jazz performers - two forms of which the Soviet Elders were greatly wary - registered themselves as "light music" or "variety" performers (ie disco, in practice) because it attracted much less unwanted officialdom. At one time in my misspelled youth I spent periods hanging out in Leningrad with performers on the Aquarium/Kino circuit (they began as one band, but rapidly split - Sasha Titov was the best bassist in St P, so he was found playing both for a long while - on an unfretted bass, his preferred instrument) - I think nearly all the players had 'official' jobs in disco bands. There was an extraordinary cross-fertilisation going on - the same players might be doing disco one night ("a great way to meet girls, Neil!") and then experimental avantgarde stuff the next (like Sergey Kuriokhin's unofficial group "Industrial Department").

The surprise hit of the Soviet disco era was the French song by Desireless, "Voyages, voyages" - which remains insanely popular at Russian social gatherings to this day. Of course, since the word "voyage" had been imported into Russian even in the C19th, my theory of 'text popularity' holds for this one too - although it is, indeed, a good disco number :) I have happy memories of dancing to this with the string section of the Vremena Goda Chamber Orchestra while on tour in Sochi a few years ago 8) The following evening we were doing Shostakovich-14 in the Sochi Festival :)

The sad thing is that while the disco stuff survives (because Melodiya saw the value in releasing it), very little of the serious music these musicians performed ever made it to vinyl, and the samizdat cassettes of performances by Industrial Department have mostly been lost or disintegrated :( Kuriokhin died very young, and left little of his stuff behind.