Classic

These are artists playing in older styles. The bards, for instance, are singer-songwriters originally heavily associated with Soviet-era counter-culture. Shanson is best known as a sort of soundtrack to prison culture and the darkest parts of life. Estrada, is genre of classic performative popular music developed under the USSR and still in use today. Jazz, imported from the US, has long held a special place in the hearts of many from the former USSR and has had wide creative influence there. Blues, also from the US, came much later to the former USSR but has had a sizeable influence on local rock. Of all these styles, however, folk influences retain the deepest roots and produce the most wide-ranging effects in contemporary music.

Languages: Search for classic or classic-influenced music performed in Uzbek, Kyrgyz, or Tatar, or in Russian, Ukrainian, Polish, or Belarusian, or in Baltic, Caucasian, or Other languages.

Poets with Guitars: The Semi-Underground World of Soviet Bards

The Soviet-era bards were singer-songwriters who combined poetic lyricism with simple, guitar-accompanied melodies. The artform emerged in the 1950s shortly after the death of Stalin. Although it remained underground for nearly all of the Soviet period, it became a soundtrack for the lives of many Soviet citizens throughout the 1960s and 70s and beyond. Bardic […]

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