The Moscow Times, Russia
July 29 2005
Golden Oldies
No longer a giant in recorded music, Melodiya is trying to make a
comeback by unearthing gems in its archive, such as forgotten Soviet
rock songs from the 1960s.
By Anna Malpas
Published: July 29, 2005
Janos Koos sounds a bit uncertain as he sings the words of Chuck
Berry: “My baby does the hanky panky, yeah.” The Hungarian vocalist
recorded the song at Melodiya in 1970, a year when the authorities
were cracking down on music that didn’t fit the official format.
After all, the country was about to celebrate Lenin’s 100th birthday.
Nevertheless, the song, recently re-released by Melodiya, is
definitive proof that rock ‘n’ roll existed in the Soviet Union. To
get this message across, Andrei Troshin, the record label’s chief
editor, has issued a series of compilation discs called “The True
History of Russian Light Music.”
Packaged in brightly colored sleeves, the albums are aimed at a young
audience. “We don’t want to do retro,” Troshin said during a recent
interview. He defined his ideal listener as someone who wouldn’t be
seen dead buying an album by current Russian pop acts, but who wants
to discover something to be proud of in the country’s musical past.
“It’s light music for intellectually developed people,” the editor
said. “That segment of the market is free at the moment.”
The albums are a chance to branch out for Melodiya, a label that is
world-famous for its classical output, but which also preserves a
unique archive of light, or estrada music. After losing almost all of
its premises and staff after the breakup of the Soviet Union, the
state-owned enterprise has experienced something of a renaissance
under new management.
Troshin gave the interview in the columned hall of Melodiya’s
headquarters on Tverskoi Bulvar, a building whose oldest part dates
back to before Napoleon’s invasion of Russia. The label’s most
valuable possession is housed elsewhere: an archive of around 60,000
items — no one knows the exact figure — including the master tapes
of popular music that was taken off the airwaves for ideological
reasons.
The golden age of Russian rock ‘n’ roll began in 1957, the editor
said. That was the year of the Moscow International Festival of Youth
and Students, when American bands arrived and played real rock ‘n’
roll — although for decency’s sake, it was called jazz. When they
left, it was usually without their instruments, which were snapped up
by Russian musicians.
“The professional level [of Russian bands] went up very rapidly,
because they had professional equipment for the first time,” Troshin
said. When compiling the latest disc in the Real History series,
titled “Love by Post,” he chose songs from the 1960s that were
“clearly pro-Western.” Along with the Chuck Berry track, there are
songs in Italian and French, and a Russian translation of The
Coasters’ 1959 hit “Charlie Brown.”
Only one of the songs on the album would be familiar to most Russian
listeners: “Black Cat” by Tamara Miansarova, a 1964 hit that still
gets a lot of airplay. In other cases, the artists might be famous,
but the material is not. On one track, the smooth-voiced crooner
Muslim Magomayev sings an Italian dance tune with Elektron — a band
that played electric instruments, which has been called Russia’s
answer to Britain’s Shadows.
“Magomayev used to do things that had nothing to do with his image,”
Troshin said. “He once sang [the Animals’ 1964 chart-topper] ‘House
of the Rising Sun’ with a rock group.”
Many of the tracks date back to the late 1960s. At the time, Melodiya
was in a rush to release material, as its staff sensed a change in
the political climate, with clubs being shut down and jazz bands
being evicted from restaurants. Sure enough, a 1969 resolution by the
Council of Ministers called for certain estrada groups to be broken
up and for some of Melodiya’s master tapes to be erased.
One of the victims of the freeze was an album called “From Palanga to
Gurzuf,” which was recently re-released by Melodiya in association
with the hip record label Lyogkiye. The feel-good, largely
instrumental numbers include tracks by Elektron and Rokoko, a band
founded by the composer Anatoly Bykanov, who now teaches at the
Moscow Conservatory.
Named after beach resorts in Lithuania and the Crimea, the album was
recorded in two versions: a lower-quality mono version for Russian
audiences and a high-quality stereo version for export, meant to be
released abroad in association with Intourist. But the summery tracks
were out of step with preparations for the 100th anniversary of
Lenin’s birth in April 1970, and the order went out to destroy the
master tape.
The album survived, however, thanks to quick-witted Melodiya staff
members. It was hidden in a box labeled “A concert by the
participants of the All-Russian Show of Rural Amateur Talents,” where
it lay undisturbed until last winter, when restorers transferring the
label’s archive onto digital tape listened to the album and realized
they had found something unique.
In a bid to increase awareness of the album, Melodiya teamed up with
Snegiri Muzyka, a small independent record company, to release the
album on Lyogkiye, a label that specializes in lounge and
electronica. The reason was simple: Melodiya is seen as “sovok,” or
Soviet in all the worst senses of the word, Troshin admitted.
The CD markets at a higher price than those in the “Real History”
series, and it has more sophisticated packaging and liner notes. It
was presented last month with a party at the Moscow club Keks.
“Of course we are trying to hook young people and, in a sense, those
with patriotic views,” Troshin said. “Because you can put this on,
listen to it and realize that there’s nothing embarrassing about it.
You don’t have to feel ashamed by these musicians.”
The media reaction to the releases has been largely favorable. “I
just can’t believe that in the mid-1960s people played and recorded
this kind of music in our country,” a critic wrote in Izvestia
earlier this month, referring to the “Real History” series. A music
journalist in Vremya Novostei was more circumspect about “From
Palanga.” It made him feel “childlike pleasure” the first time he
listened to it, but “maybe a single injection of nostalgia is
enough,” he wrote.
Founded in 1964, Melodiya held a monopoly on recorded music in the
Soviet Union, employing tens of thousands. It even had a
representative office in Samoa, Troshin commented, although “that was
connected with spying.” Now the factories and shops are gone, and the
label only has about 60 employees.
Yet Melodiya has undergone something of a revival in recent years,
the chief editor said, describing it as a “former corpse.” Still
owned by the state, the enterprise makes a small “kopek profit,” he
said, and last year it won an award in Belgium for a recording of
symphonic and vocal music by the 20th-century composer Boris Arapov.
Its main tasks now are to digitize the archive, which badly needs new
premises — it is currently housed in an apartment building — and to
find a replacement for the label’s recording studio, a church
building on Voznesensky Pereulok, which has been handed back to the
Anglican community, although Melodiya still intermittently records
there.
Troshin joined Melodiya two years ago. Previously, he edited a
magazine on Orthodox art and worked in the art business. He joined
the company along with a new general director, Kirill Bashirov. As a
non-classical music specialist, he is in charge of the estrada
releases, and it’s a job that fits his own tastes.
Among his personal favorites are the Armenian singer Lola Khomyants
and the Georgian Gyuli Chokheli. “I like women with low, sultry
voices,” he said. Khomyants died last December, just a week before
the first “Real History” album came out with one of her songs as the
first track.
“It was very sad and frustrating,” he recalled.
From: Baghdasarian