Garbage wind

In his column, a music journalist and a musician with great experience, Andrei Bukharin (Rolling Stone) is reviewing the established opinions about famous musicians and musical cults. This time he touched the fundamental (on two columns) question - what is wrong with Russian music?

Recently, more than once you have to hear questions: why, they say, we do not have new stars, why we do not hear real large Russian hits. At the philistine level, this is formulated as follows: "They do not write good songs today." I would leave the last statement without comment, because yes, they will never write and never write, but the question is so global, so to speak, a civilizational scale that I will not dare to raise it. But on the first two you can try to find answers of a quite practical nature.

It so happened that for the past six years I have been engaged in domestic music a lot, leading my copyright programs “Russian Lessons” and “Native Speech” on “Radio Maximum” and “Our Radio”, respectively. All the current Russian music was one way or another through my hands. Moreover, I should admit: I began to be interested in our music relatively late, somewhere in the mid-90s, when I ended up in the very thick of the changes in it, associated with the breakthrough of the “mummy of the troll” and the wave followed after them. And, I must say, he made his modest contribution to the fate of almost all major groups that were implemented during this period. Then I re-appreciated the Golden Age of Russian rock music of the 1980s, in many ways missing because of youthful snobbery and Westernic aesthesia, suspiciously similar to the diseases of the current young generation living in million-and-cities. In the 80s, I really loved Mike Naumenko and the “TV”, the rest seemed to me too amateur and provincial, which was still a huge mistake.

Returning to the topic: to begin with, before the hits sounded not only on the radio, but also everywhere in the city, as they said then, “from every iron”, and without even listening to such music, one could keep abreast that at this particular moment in the favorite of the people. Now everyone has their own “iron”, in a smartphone, car or laptop, and others do not hear it, so the general musical background is not formed. The only thing that catches his ear except our immortal zombies and Russian country, which is actually a chanson, is a hip-hop that instructively muttering his capital truths from each wheelbarrow, near which boys are crowded “in the area”. But both of them and the third I will leave aside - each of these wonderful phenomena requires a separate conversation.

Of course, a lot depends on the songs themselves: they can be good, but the hit becomes not immediately, it must increase meat from multiple listening. And the listener, who is now falling on a giant information stream, a clear syndrome of scattered attention, he pokes his finger all the time, jumping from one to another. It is not surprising that on the radio to the new one wave their hand and give preference to the "evergreen" junction. In addition, today the radio stations themselves, the influence of which fell a lot, can no longer promote a new performer - alone, without the same cooperation with federal television, where music now exists only in the format of the show “Voice”. By the way, this blockbuster of the first channel launched successful concert careers of some of its participants like Anton Belyaev and Nargiz Zakirova. But the scale is still not the same.

Starting with enthusiasm to work on the radio, I gradually discovered that I find less and fewer, in my opinion, artists - recently not more than one year at all.

If my memory does not change me, the last musical hero in Russia, so to speak, was a federal scale-just somewhere from that moment and the widespread distribution of the Internet, at once freed artists from both the dictatorship of producers, program directors and record labels, and from those potential money that they would like to earn in the addition of creative freedom that has fallen on them. The first who came to the public via the Internet, whether Peter Haro, or, say, Vasya Oblomov, gained wide fame not at the expense of his music, but at the expense of one successful joke (or, as it is customary to express it, a meme), which was scattered over the network, whether it be “guitars, guitars” or “Magadan”. Yes, they managed to become in demand, touring artists on this wave, but, as time shows, it does not work for a long time. The followed by them failed and this - millions of views of the video in YouTube , as, say, the Russian English -language group Biting Elbows , well, do not want to monetize.

Well, if you are completely on the fingers: thanks to the MP3 and free file exchange, the music was bequeathed by the classics of Marxism-Leninism, it began to belong to the people, that is, it became free, the musical industry, and so we initially have a curve-kosai, collapsed. There was simply no money in it, and accordingly there were no stars, because this phenomenon always demanded some kind of financing.

But in full accordance with the witty, but, in general, fake theory of the “long tail”, an unprecedented previous number of performers who have a very limited, niche audience appeared. The meaning of the theory, in short, is that if you collect all these poor fellows together, then a penny to a penny is no less than that of the “head”, that is, the cohort of top performers. But this is in theory, and in practice, only those artists who took place in the last century, including those who managed to jump into the last car at the turn of the 90s and 2000s, from Zemfira and Bi-2 to Leningrad, commercially feel good (and relatively). Today, a real commercial abyss with a complete absence has opened between them and the rest, if we switch to political terminology, of the middle class.

One cannot but pay attention to the fact that the unprecedented swelling of creative biomass also contributed to the fact that making music became much easier - thanks to digital technologies again. Started, neither expensive studios, nor some special skill of owning musical instruments.

Now from the theoretical part I will move directly to my own field research of Russian music. Starting with enthusiasm to work on the radio, I gradually discovered that I find less and fewer, in my opinion, artists - recently not more than one year at all. This is despite the fact that the number of music groups compared to past years is growing exponentially. A real garbage wind fell upon me, all the growing muddy stream of mediocrity, among which there were very amazing characters, obsessed not only by a clear thirst for money and glory, but also by real creative itching, the desire to introduce the world to our creativity in the complete absence and shadow of self -criticism. In the literature, this type has long been known by the name "graphomaniacs." I tried to filter these, while others, I must say, showed a completely decent level of professional quality, relatively rare in the same 90s, but the absolute absence of any individuality. Moreover, this equally concerned all the stylistic niches, which over the past ten years have formed a great many.

It became clear: rare gifted people are now completely lost among endless weeds, which is also facilitated by the complete loss of landmarks and priorities not only among the public, but also among industry professionals - musical critics, program directors, producers and so on. This is one of the reasons why the recent decisive attempt of the Seagull seed to update the broadcast of our radio - it turned out that imitative, and sometimes simply mediocre youth is not able to compete with established names, and individual interesting personalities are drowning in this gray mass and cannot make weather. As a result, “Our Radio” returned to its own circles, and Enthusiast Chaika did not stop, and with his characteristic perseverance and energy, he just launched “ours”, but “his radio”, leading broadcasting on the network.

Another observation. In recent years, in full accordance with the socio-political processes that split the citizens of Russia into two uneven parts, Russian music (I remind you, here I do not analyze the state of affairs in the gopotex-in traditional Russian poppies, chansonne and hip hopes), two separate, completely non-intersecting branches with each other, which existed in parallel realities. The first, large, is teams that are one way or another related to what is commonly called Russian rock, in whatever stylistic modifications it is presented, and traditionally focusing on “our radio”, which, however, does not see them at point -blank. The second, much smaller, gathered in their voluntary reservation “relevant” Russian groups that catch all Western trends and in every possible way pretending that they were mistaken in the “this” country (they are still customary to call the “hipster” scene). The same few (and often the most interesting) who cannot be taken with certainty there or there, they hang in a vacuum, an airless space between these universes.

The former, as a rule, exist in isolation from the current trends, which, if they reach them, are too late and in a fragmentary state, focus on the word, and not on the sound and emit suffering mental anguish instead of rock and roll sexuality. Many of them are so in some dense timelessness that they resemble the “button accordions” from the Sorokinsky “Oprichnik Day”, which, it should be noted, has been confidently implemented for ten years. At the same time, some of them will not refuse sincerity, energy and resonance with the surrounding reality, such as the group “Animation” from the city of Chistopol (Republic of Tatarstan), which caused the sacred horror of the owners of the so-called good taste. Their unpretentious, but cunning song “Homeland” with the sacramental text “I love my homeland, e-mine, / and who else, if not her” headed the “Chart Dyuzhin” “ours”, after which the group received a contract with a large label, where she released a successfully sold album (here I should confess that it was my own hands in a radio hit parade).

About their opposites, about the so -called new Russian music, in the next column in the near future.