russiandatingclub

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Rock and roll became known in the Soviet Union in the 1960s and quickly broke free from its western roots. Soviet underground rock bands could release their records officially. The 2010s – Decline of rock music? Prior to the late sixties, music in the Soviet Union was divided into two groups: music published by state record company Melodiya, and everything else. The first rock bands in the Soviet Union appeared on the scene in the early sixties in Moscow, and they were heavily influenced by The Beatles. The live bands grew popular in spite of governmental restrictions.

This continued into the 1980s, when native bands gained some success, but were still hampered by state regulators who would not allow them to be officially recorded, and placed restrictions on lyrical content. In the early 1970s Yuri Morozov invented a kind of Russian psychedelic rock, using elements of progressive rock and ethnic Russian music as well. Another notable artist who started his activity at the same time is Alexander Gradsky, who fused bard music with rock. There was no protest against the Soviet government in the lyrics he sang, so he was able to release records through Melodiya and millions of them were sold all over the country. Post-punk band Kino was one of the most popular in the 1980s Soviet Union. Russian rock was also influenced by the Russian art group Mitki and by the Western hippies.

In 1980 a big Rock festival took place in Tbilisi in the Georgian SSR: Spring Rhythms. In consequence, the mainstream Soviet radio and television ignored Soviet rock bands, which often reached audiences only through word of mouth. The monopoly for the music publishing in the USSR belonged to Melodiya, the one and only Soviet record label, and Melodiya had a strict policy against publishing straightforward rock music or underground musicians. Many of the 1980s bands remain active and popular among Russian youth. The term Russian rock is often used to refer to the particular sound of these bands. Russian punk’s unique style is generally accepted to be most idealized by Grazhdanskaya Oborona and by Egor Letov’s other projects. The music mixes equal parts Western punk and traditional Russian influences, with gritty production and extremely charged and political lyrics.

In the Soviet Union the punk-rock culture started in the 1980, mostly as a protest movement against the corruption of the regime and the sense there was “no future”. Yegor Letov is considered the godfather of Russian punk with his band Grazhdanskaya Oborona, which started performing in the early 1980s. In the late 1980s another band started operating in Russia, reaching a cult status: Sektor Gaza. They proclaimed themselves as “kolkhoz punk rockers”, mixing elements from Russian village life with punk music.