Wait for us to bury us

Why Russian culture did not die - on the example of music. The answer to Nikolai Ovchinnikova to Jan Shenkman

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Last week, the Novaya Gazeta observer Jan Schenkman published a column that the war in Ukraine has become a reflection of a deep cultural crisis, in which we have long been. It was quite tough - even cruel - a text that provoked a discussion. In fact, Shenkman did not put forward peremptory theses, but asked important questions. And what really happened to Russian (and not only) culture in recent years? Did she really give rise to any meanings? Is it true that we died culturally long before February 24?

I will speak on the example of music close to me, which has become a rich and developed industry consumed by the entire population of the country in one form or another.

Regarding the Russian pop music at some point, such a consensus has developed: it is an absolutely soulless machine for the production of money, which has no ideological basis and involves exceptionally base entertainment. This is a toxic industry, poisoning consciousness and dulling people. She is secondary. She is boring. She is deprived of large meanings. She became the “apology of the insignificance”, like TV shows and books in the soft covers mentioned by Mr. Shenkman.

In reality, everything is a little different. For the past 30 years, Russian pop music, on the one hand, was a mirror of the era, on the other hand, a symbol of real freedom and a big dream of a Russian about happiness.

What was the pop nineties about? About wealth ( “accountant” “combinations”), about unobtrusive love ( “look into the eyes” of Vetlitskaya), about distant countries and exotic beauties ( Agutin and Meladze ). They were to match the video: bright, colorful, full of foreign and foreign images. And it was a very Russian pop music: yes, she could grow, say, from the work of the Johnny Hates Jazz group (the influence of which needs to be devoted to a separate study), but in the end she turned out to be both in the syllable and the motive very “its own”. What was her big idea? The pop music of the nineties realized the Russian dream of a great future and affordable exotic, which was able to be a reality thanks to the circulation of the Soviet system. It was a triumph of true liberalism. And pop culture was at its top.

The victory of real freedom was the pop music of the border of millennia. A wave of Androgyn singers who raised questions about gender affiliation - Nikita , Oscar , Shura - and the Tatu group first brought real sexuality to the Russian pop. Together with the industry, both the listener and the political elite, who at that moment did not feel such a strong hostility towards LGBT, as later, later. On the other hand, it was the pop border of millennia that the best of the best of the best Western samples. Micah and Jamiroquai, “Guests from the Future” and Trip-Hop, Hi-Fi and Western Pop from Boyz Bends-all these people made our pop music more cosmopolitan and open to the world.

Pop the turn of the millennia demonstrated the readiness of the Russian for real personal freedom, and showed how this freedom can be realized. Dreams of distant countries and affordable exotic, beautiful life and sexuality, have become reality.

Pop of the 2000s is still customary to scold his glamorous pomp and factory fake. However, a very important idea hid in it. “Band'eros” and Timati, “Factory” and “City 312” formed the idea of ​​the desire for rich stability and tranquility with their songs - that which was very lacking in the Russian resident of the last 70 years. A zero man in these songs is a formed whole person who now wants to live for himself. There was also great inner freedom in this - to abandon the fight for further and become a simple city layman. This desire can be criticized, but it can be understood. About the same now, the Russian pop is trying to create a zone of calm for the tired of Dumskroling and a confused citizen, where he can again touch the wealth and stability in the style of zero (see all the last rap releases-from Kizar to Morgenstern ).

The mid-2010s and the economic crisis who came with her created a new request for local heroes (partly because foreign ones became expensive). It was then that Russian-speaking music found its best face. The second half of the 2010s is an amazing flowering of culture, which, contrary to possible prohibitions and restrictions, showed its fans new opportunities and new meanings.

Tenth music is total cosmopolitanism.

The Russian -speaking pop was created by the hands of Kazakhstani, Ukrainian and Belarusian producers, singers and bitmakers. People from Ufa and St. Petersburg, Rostov and Yekaterinburg. They came up with a new dream: about an endless party at which your political views will no longer have values; About the dance that wins any disagreement; About love, which is more important than any crises; The fact that we achieved a lot and escaped from terrible poverty - and should not let her drag us back. Yes, Dorn’s utopism with the “workshop”, Monatika and the Moon, Skeptonite and 104, Korzh and LSP now seem a little naive (which, for example, is aware of the same Dorn in an interview with the New York Times). Yes, dance as a solution to all problems - see any songs Cream Soda and Laud - turned out to be so -so. But it was an extremely successful attempt, from a creative point of view.

The music of the tenths is the time of searching and gaining your own basis, its own roots. If the musicians are zero-especially in the indie sphere-tried to focus on foreign samples by sound and syllable, now the study of their own past has become more important. And it is not only about updating the Siberianpost-punk or folk music , but also about the mainstream. The Russian, Russian -speaking pop tenths were guided by the music of the turn of the millennia, on the era of maximum openness and freedom. From Feduk to Artik & Asti , from Elja to Sergey Lazarev , from coin to buckwheat - they all returned to the stage the feeling of a holiday accessible to everyone, regardless of the gender and nationality.

This pop music laid an extremely important idea: with the help of a carnival, dance, entertainment to make fun , or simply ignore the restrictions that exist around. Pop music again, like twenty years ago, became the refuge of real freedom. One can evaluate the creative value of current heroes in different ways-I insist that this must be done at a distance, after 20-30 years-but they formed a completely different, new context in which their audience existed.

The logical question: how, with such an excellent culture, dear Nikolai, her audience in any case was in the war, took the weapon in her hands or pretended that nothing was happening? One does not contradict the other. The culture of the tenth has become a refuge from the horrors that the authorities created. With the help of her, these most horrors were easy to ignore. What she did not teach us is the opposition: both physical and ethical. She just didn't have time. She just did not have enough time. It's a pity. Let the opponents of the war and are the most among the consumers of this culture.

Well, the last. It is difficult for me to argue with the thesis that there were no “great works” over 30 years. Greatness is a terribly subjective assessment. In my world of great works, at least 169 pieces . We will survive with them.