To dive further into the era, we’ve created a special playlist featuring a selection of early Russian rap samples. Ilya Voronin, music reporter and HiFi streaming expert at Zvuk, talks about the history of this music in Russia.
One day in 1986, the audience of the Soviet central television watched another concert. One of the performances was the performance of the jazz-rock band Arsenal, led by saxophonist Alexei Kozlov. There was no jazz smell on stage, but the people on the stage somehow strangely moved under the dreamy electronics – as if they were not human, but some kind of mechanical dummies. Almost none of the audience understood what it was, and many even thought it was some kind of acrobatic move. But this is how the mass Soviet audience got acquainted with breakdancing, the most fashionable dance of the decade.
By then, hip-hop had been in the United States for almost a decade—it had already moved beyond the urban ghettos, the infrastructure was beginning to take shape, and the first American researchers of the new urban culture were quickly identifying the pillars that supported it. : dance (break dance), music (DJs), with a certain selection of music), art (graffiti) and semantic content (rap). The first hits have already taken place, the first stars have appeared, festivals have appeared, and even various schools have begun to form. For more information on the history of the genre, see HiFi streaming project Audio. Although the USSR faced off against the USA, Soviet citizens looked to America and embraced the fashion that could pass through the Iron Curtain. For this reason, the first of the elements of hip-hop culture was breakdancing in Birlik.
“Disco” youth tried to express themselves in various ways in Soviet conditions, but no one set super-tasks to change the situation around them. Not only boredom and futility, as well as the lack of fashion in the generally accepted sense, were somehow compensated by learning about the achievements of modern mass culture, ”Mila Maksimova recalled in the book, one of the first adherents of the new dance. “Hooligans 80”. In the mid-1980s, he was already doing pantomime in the student theater of Moscow State University, so he quickly appreciated the attractiveness of the new dance, which several Soviet teenagers could see in the clips of Michael Jackson, which reached the Union on videotapes. . Then the first Soviet breakers saw recordings of the performances of the world breakdancing stars Rock Steady Crew. The tapes were so valuable that literally a few hours were given to watch the movements and try to adopt them.
“At first they put a song in discos and made a “shake” under it. Afterwards, the people whose platforms were cleared came out with their arms and legs flying out, and one or two learned movements were performed. It was especially funny when people tried to squirm around depicting the athletic elements on the floor. Even then, divisions and specifications began: lower and upper breaks, ”Maksimova recalled.
By then, the country’s most music-loving disco club leaders were already familiar with the word “rap.” Disc jockeys of Soviet dance evenings (or presenters of disco clubs) had to “steer” a disco – not only put music, but also say something into the microphone between songs and play the role of some kind of mass entertainer. But because of this, rap in the usual sense of the word has not yet appeared.
It is believed that the first such composition in Russian was the work of the Kuibyshev (today this city is called Samara) group “Overtime”, which was called “Rap”. The most interesting thing is that this song was not supposed to see the light of day officially – it was recorded as the soundtrack for a local disco competition. Even more surprisingly, the band’s vocalist, Alexander Astrov, decided to rap on the famous Chic bass line and their song “Good TImes”, minus the authors of their first original rap composition, the Sugarhill Gang. Among other things, in the lyrics of the song there are these lines: “And everything with the text is extremely difficult / they say that for years / it is impossible / impossible to rap in Russian.” But it is still difficult to consider the work “Rush Hour” as a real example of rap in Russian – the first original compositions will appear a few years later, when much more popular artists such as “Bachelor Party”, Bogdan Titomir and Bad Balance introduce the new one. a form of creativity to the masses.
But by the mid-1980s, the idea of rap was already firmly ingrained among Soviet disc jockeys. Then discos – an extremely fashionable and popular way of entertainment and the opportunity to listen to new and interesting music. They were only evening days and rarely lasted longer than 11 pm. The music program was based on a simple formula: three fast songs, one slow song. DJs mostly played from magnetic reels and only started to switch to audio cassettes in the late eighties. Usually discos were run by two people: one knew how to work with a microphone, the other was looking for suitable music on tape recorders at that time.
In 1986 there was even such a thing as a “disco show”, that is, a selection of songs and vocal accompaniment by the host. Such programs can be purchased from recording studios, and a disco can be arranged at home. One of the first to introduce such a format was Sergey Minaev, a popular entertainer, himself a native of the disco scene. Its popularity has only just begun with its own disco shows, which include satirical re-mixes of then-popular Western hits such as Modern Talking, Bad Boys Blue, or singer Sandra. But Minaev was not alone – soon the practice of creating his own disco shows spread throughout the country.
“We didn’t know anything about black rap back then,” says Sergey Osenev, who, with his partner Viktor Savyuk, created Light Boom, one of the most technically advanced discos in the country in the second half of the 1980s. they were very popular and became examples of how to get things done. “When we started we were based on European rap, because at that time no one danced to American rap except a handful of breakers.” They called their style of performance “white rap”, and today the recitations of that time are more like weird words than rap in the classical sense. “None of us had ever written poetry before,” recalls Viktor Savyuk. – But I played in a group before, so I waved my hand, okay, we can handle it. Write down what comes to mind – everything will fall. At first it was – they carried all kinds of nonsense. ”
Then they began to prepare much more carefully for the recording of their program. The fact that they reached a professional studio where they could work more comfortably with the film also played a role. At his disposal were not only two reel-to-reel recorders, but also drum machines, effects processors, and even a mixing console. “But the main technical problem for us was that we couldn’t read the entire program right away,” Savyuk said of the recording process. – We read piecemeal – you start with “minus” and start reading at the right time. If you get lost, you rewind and do another stunt. We calculated the tempo of the songs, how many beats per minute, and we calculated this with our stopwatch. On a piece of paper they drew the structure of each song, how many measures and choruses there were, how much space there was to cram our rap in.
“Light Boom” did not last long – in two years they released 13 of their own disco shows, in which many stars who appeared in the late 1980s, like the Mirage group, went to the public. Thanks to the success of disco programs, they even appeared on television – they took part in the very popular comedy program “Oba-Na”, where they commented on the current political situation in the world with their rap. But Easy Boom wasn’t the only one working in this genre. They performed their rap and disco programs in different cities: Kanon in Kuibyshev, Disco 7 in Krasnogorsk, 3 × 23 in Khimki, Disco Lux in Yaroslavl – these and many other clubs are omen of the late 1980s – 1990s and the very beginning- It served as a business. They disappeared at the same time as the 1990s and country and were replaced by a new and more relevant country.
Rap music as we know it today began around this time and lasted for over twenty years, and the effort, faith, and enthusiasm of many people grew into one big company!