Russia

Russia's musical roots are buried in the distant past, but the few glimmers that emerge from the historical record paint an intriguing picture: a fresco of a dancing minstrel in one of Kiev's oldest churches, and 6th century Greek reports from of Slavic musicians strumming psalteries. Uniting Slavic tradition with influences from Byzantium, Scandinavia, the multiethnic Eurasian steppes, and the staggeringly diverse Caucasus, Russia's music has expanded from zithers, epics, and ritual songs to embrace the large number of instruments and genres still loved and played in the country today.

In European Russia, secular music and musicians were often under fire from the Orthodox Church and the Tsar before the advent of Peter the Great's reforms and Russia's turn to the West in the 18th century. Despite the prohibitions against music, traveling minstrels (skomorokhi) played an growing number of folk instruments such as the gusli (psaltery), hurdy-gurdy, domra (3- or 4-stringed lute), and the famous balalaika at fairs and festivals, and regaled listeners with comic, lyrical, and epic songs of mythical warriors. In villages, music and complicated polyphonic songs were intimately connected to a quasi-pagan cycle of agricultural rituals that beckoned spring, protected crops, or celebrated Midsummer. These ritual or calendar songs varied widely in their performance style and structure between Russia's verdant south and harsh north. As Russian cities grew in the 18th and 19th centuries, new song forms emerged such as romansy, romantic songs still wildly popular today that were modeled on Roma (gypsy) ballads and sang of unlucky love and fiery passion.

Much of what we know about Russia's traditional music was recorded by ethnographers and folklorists who began searching for Russian songs and folk tales in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. The liberal children of noble families, these early ethnomusicologists sought expressions of the "Russian soul" and wrote down age-old lyrics and melodies. Their work inspired their contemporaries to incorporate traditional musical elements into their compositions, and composers like Rimsky-Korsakov, Mussorgsky, and Tchaikovsky brought pieces of Russia's musical traditions to the word.

Soviet-era musicians took Russia's traditional music from the fields and streets into the conservatory, creating large orchestras of modified folk instruments designed to parallel Western classical ensembles. Wild new forms, such as a balalaika the size of a contrabass, were born, and Soviet arrangers and performers carefully excised religious and other politically taboo material from the repertoire. A canon of Russian politically correct folk songs emerged, performed by everyone from the Red Army Chorus to guitar-playing students hanging out in university dorms. Many of these songs live on today, around campfires and on the airwaves. In reaction to this conservatory style, several innovative post-Soviet folk ensembles have attempted to return to the complex sonic textures, striking dissonances, and unusual instrumentation culled from the Soviet vision of Russian ethnic music.

Russia's music is more than Russians' music, however. Encompassing dozens of ethnic groups and terrain from the balmy Crimea to the arctic tundra, the music of Russia reflects centuries of interaction between a plethora of peoples and environments. As the Russian Empire expanded from the European heartland, Russian soldiers and colonists encountered people with musical traditions radically different from their own. Russian settlers in turn influenced their non-Russian neighbors, spreading new instruments such as the button accordion across the tsar's realm.

Non-Russian ethnic traditions were also cultivated, codified, and modified during the Soviet era and are now enjoying a roots renaissance as musicians try to rediscover pre-Soviet performance styles and repertoire, though Soviet-style ensembles continue to thrive, especially as part of official commemorations and festivities. A new interest in local language pop music has also struck Russia's ethnic minorities since 1990.

The athletic dances and lively melodies of the Caucasus that captured the imagination of 19th- and 20th-century Russian composers continue to inspire contemporary artists from Chechnya to Agydea. The songs of the Turkic Tatars and the Ugric Mordva still echo in the fertile region along the wide Volga, "Russia's Mississippi," and have sparked pop and folk revival groups. The broad reaches and boreal forests of Siberia, stretching from the Ural Mountains to the Pacific, are home to Tuva and Khakass throatsinging, the sweeping melodies of Buryat historical songs and rhythmic round dances, and the epic and song traditions of the Sakha (Yakuts) and the Evenkis, all of which found new vigor after the fall of the Soviet Union. Remote regions of Russia have their own small but sometimes very active rock, hip hop, or electronica scenes.

The main pop arena, however, is Russia's two cultural capitals, Moscow and St. Petersburg, where clubs feature everything from avant-garde jazz to glossy pop to heavy metal. During Gorbachev's attempts to reform the Soviet system, these cities were incubators for innovative new groups drawing on everything from Asian mysticism to Soviet kitsch, Russian folk music, and Symbolist poetry, to the Beatles, Led Zeppelin, and Deep Purple. Bohemian rock bands played concerts in cramped private apartments or small school auditoriums and criticized Russia's leaders and culture with a sly, lyrical wink. Passed informally from fan to fan on dubbed samizdat cassettes, these bands' songs became anthems for creative urban youth longing for new possibilities and social change.

When the change finally came, however, much of the rock scene's energy faded in the ensuing economic collapse of the early 1990s, though innovative music continues to spring from Russia's bohemian underground and diverse hinterlands. Russia's post-Soviet music industry has taken off as well, producing a number of high-quality commercial acts that have gained regional and international notoriety.—Tristra Newyear