Tsoev ark, or garbage wind - 2

Musical journalist and Meloman Andrei Bukharin (Rolling Stone) continues to diagnose Russian music.

Last time, I said that our musical scene naturally divided into two points of contact of the camp: roughly speaking, Russian rockers (the depressing state of affairs was dedicated to the first text) and those who are accepted to be called new Russian music (if more skeptical, then a hipster scene). Now the turn of the second has come.

It seems that these guys are good for everyone, you look at them - you don’t get enough: beautiful, fashionable, educated, real citizens of the world. The most common compliment to them sounds something like this: "It is impossible to believe that it is recorded by a Russian group." O'Kay, you sing in good English, sound no worse than any other conditional European group, get into radio charts somewhere in Argentina or the Czech Republic, perform at the festival in Berlin, release the album in Italy or France-very well. So what's next? If in your country you perform in several fashionable metropolitan clubs and do not earn money with your music for life, which is why you have to work as a designer in some dull office. Can you expect to win competition with British groups at their home? Or are you enough recognition in your circle?

I understand, of course, that all this is a kind of escapism, the flight from the hated reality. But there is still a question of ambitions, without which they cannot be knocked, as you know, into the generals. It is clear to everyone that it is impossible to become a large group in Russia if you do not sing in Russian. Like the fact that it is impossible to write a real, not average, the text is not in your native language, unless, of course, you are nabokov. All this was already: in the 1970s, our first rock groups did not even realize that it was possible to sing in English, in the 1990s there were also cities who wanted to become British Pope Pope-only experts remember them today.

O'Kay, you sing in good English, get into the radio charts somewhere in Argentina, release an album in Italy-very good. So what's next?

Recently, the musicians themselves, it seems, began to understand this. Several years ago, the Rostov group of Motorama started a Russian -speaking project called “Morning”, which immediately sounded more interesting and more significant than their English -language products. In the same year, Manicure's metropolitan fashionistas, like Nadia Gritsevich from Moremoney (“Naada”), switched to Russian. There are groups from the circle in question, which initially work with the Russian language.

Yes, God with him, language, is niche genres, where, probably, it is possible to take place in English. After all, the question is different: how to become a truly original artist with charisma, energy, a messenger, and not be content with the role of a toy stylizer.

The whole horror is that our “relevant” groups, being the opposite of dense Russian rockers, by and large, are no better than them. I see in them neither strength, nor energy, nor meaning - sluggish, anemic, snobbish, they stand, swing, on a light breeze, and he grows stronger, which is beating with the power of a polar night.

What will these escapists do in a new historical era, the formidable tread of which we hear - will they run away even further? Although, maybe just new conditions will bring them closer to the same underground situation in which our rock was in the 80s, with further-from the opposite-by creative flowering? In any case, there are some vague signs, for example, in the form of the “Trud” group, which took very correct guidelines in the past of Russian music in the form of a maximum meaning and message.

And there is another unpleasant and extremely annoying moment: they are all desperately praised all of them, almost monthly declaring someone with the hope and salvation of Russian music, almost with a new chief, as it was, for example, with a good, smart Mujuice electrician. The last joke is “Naada”, whose at first the debut EP , and now the whole album is declared fashionable editions “Records of the Year”. So far, as I see, people chuckle in their mustache in their social networks, but it would be time to send an official request: are you mocking us?

I see in them neither strength, nor energy, nor meaning.

Of course, I understand that each self -respecting publication associated with music should open and promote new names, form and articulate a new scene. And what they have to work with the material that is at hand during the times of total shallowing. Here, as you guess, you can not ignore such a successful media as the "poster", completely and completely responsible for the existence of the scene that we are talking about now. Without a “poster” she would not be or she would be completely different. All the people who today make up our new stage come out of her readers.

With all due respect to the influence and indisputable professionalism of the “Afisha”, which managed to transfer its success to the neutrals into a long -term business and keep their positions for many years, I must say a sharp thing that not everyone will understand. Now it is customary to be indignant at the shameless Volodinskaya propaganda, but wasn’t the “posters” of the “collective voice” of the first Putin term? “As will say, it will be so,” they said their famous early slogan. So it became. While the poster built its imaginary London from Moscow, the country slowly but logically became the one we have today.

All this I directly told the good Yura Saprykin back in those years when the creative class did not think about protest, and the Putin regime was the most indulgent for him. You can even understand the dad, who was very offended when his children rebelled against him and, waving the white flag, demanded: leave, nasty.

And then, in joy, they so rumbled the brains of the young middle class that he still thinks, listens, looks and reads what he was told. Young readers of the Afisha walked into further adult life with stamped, as if under a carbon copy.

It’s not that they instilled in some wrong taste of their flock there-on the contrary, very good. The problem is that it turned out to be, like any good taste, averaged (as expected, however, Midl class-in this coincidence with the audience and was the secret of success). And also in the sectarian totalitarianism with which this was done. Variability was cut off, everything that went beyond the hunting flags of the traditions of the Moscow intelligentsia, who had perished in spirit (in the face of their children) after the end of the “Gulyaipol” of the 90s. Of course, I exaggerate and summarize, many contributions have made, you just have to recall the then Bird-speaker of the Grishkovtsy, this nightingale of the office plankton, who eagerly preached in a restaurant of bread until you were brought an order-and everyone's mood improved correctly. However, the Golden grove was dissuaded, all this is now in the past.

Was it a “poster” was a “collective voice” of the first Putin term?

It was always amusing me that these new hipster groups in their youth sincerely believe that they were the first such smart people in this wild country, and deny all connection with the Russian music of the past. It was as if many years ago we had such stylish, fashionable children as “cinema”, or brilliant aesthetic Russian New Wiwa (“Obermaneken”, “Nikolai Copernicus”, “Valery Chkalov’s detachment”, etc.), a gloomy lady post-punk (“bad influence”), electronic pioneers (“brothers by the right”, “fish species”). This is despite the fact that all of them took place in such a deaf, devoid of information, wretched Soviet reality that the current youth cannot even imagine themselves. They were exclusive loners, amazing exceptions from the rules, and not placed on one fashionable patterns of woods of Urfin Jus.

Although, judging by the fact that it is worth, say, Mujuice or Manicure to sing in Russian, as typical lapidar Tsoevsky lines immediately begin to fly from their lips, they still have a “movie”. And thus, they find themselves here in the same chief ark with the audience of “our radio”, for whom Victor is alive, as you know, to this day. Also, it seems, they respect Lagutenko, but this is limited.

After all, why is the Western musical industry, suffering from all the same industrial problems described last time, is in a much healthier state today? Yes, simply because the guidelines are not blurred, there are still a system of values, the concept of what is good and what is bad, and most importantly, traditions are preserved, and the most fashionable young artist is connected by an invisible thread with the great past. While we managed to forget even such a person as Mike Naumenko .

It seems to me that the young Russian artist can achieve creative success in the Hamburg account only with the synthesis of knowledge of Western music and relevant tendencies, on the one hand, and national identity on the other. As this was once shown to us by such heroes of the “Russian field of experiments” as “sounds of mu”, which was running Brian Ino, or “Civil Defense” , which gave his great answer to the American Grange and the Scandinavian Black Metal (if you think about it, all three phenomena happened simultaneously in different parts of the world). And after all, it is significant that it was the “civil defense”, and not to anyone else that suddenly played Massive Attack .