Ribs (recordings)
Ribs (Russian: «рёбра», translit. ryobra), also being called Music on ribs (Russian: «Музыка на рёбрах»), Jazz on bones (Russian: «Джаз на костях»), Bones or Roentgenizdat are slang names for x-ray shots, mostly a fluorography ones, turned into improvised gramophone recordings. Mostly used through the 50s and into the 60s,[1][2] Ribs were a black market method of smuggling in and distributing forbidden music by foreign and emigre musicians who were banned from broadcasting in the USSR, mostly, popular American artists of the day such as Elvis, The Beatles, Bill Haley, The Rolling Stones the Beach Boys, and Chubby Checker.[3][4] Actual medical X-Rays, purchased or picked up from the trash from hospitals and clinics were used to create these Ribs. The X-Rays were cut into 7-inch discs[5] and the center hole was made by burning it with a cigarette.[6] According to Russian musicologist Artemy Troitsky, "grooves were cut [at 78rpm][7] with the help of special machines (made, they say, from old phonographs by skilled conspiratorial hands)"; he added that the "quality was awful, but the price was low, a ruble or a ruble and a half."[8] The disks could really only be played five to ten times.[9]
This clandestine approach to circulating banned popular foreign music eventually led to a law being passed in 1958 that forbade the home-production of recordings of "a criminally hooligan trend".[10] The "hooligan trend" is referring to the stilyagi (from the word stil' meaning style in Russian), a subculture within the Soviet youth who were known to embrace Western styles of dress and dance.[11]
In 2013, the English musician Stephen Coates of the band The Real Tuesday Weld launched the The X-Ray Audio Project an initiative to provide a resource of information about the X-Ray recordings with visual images, audio recordings, and interviews as the basis for a book 'X-Ray Audio" The Strange Story of Soviet Music on the Bone' published by Strange Attractor on the subject in November. 2015. Coates and sound artist and researcher Aleks Kolkowski tour giving performances on the story of the Soviet x-ray bootleggers and cut new X-Ray records from performance by various musicians as a demonstration of the process. The touring exhibition Coates created with photographer Paul Heartfield has been the subject of much media attention including pieces in UK newspaper The Guardian and on the BBC Today program. The pair released a short form documentary including interviews with original bootleggers and archive footage in February 2016.
See also
References
- ↑ Raleigh, Donald j. Russia's Sputnik Generation: Soviet Baby Boomers Talk about Their Lives. N.p.: Indiana University Press, 2006. Web. 13 Feb. 2016.
- ↑ Minor, William. Unzipped Souls: A Jazz Journey Through the Soviet Union. N.p.: Temple University Press, 1995. Web. 13 Feb. 2016.
- ↑ Starr, S. Frederick. “The Rock Inundation”. The Wilson Quarterly (1976-) 7.4 (1983): 58–67. Web. 10. Feb. 2016
- ↑ West, Richard. "REDS LIKE ROCK AND ROLL---BUT NEED INTERPRETATION." Los Angeles Times (1923-Current File): 1. Jun 25 1965. ProQuest. Web. 13 Feb. 2016 ..
- ↑ Ganley, Gladys D. Unglued Empire: The Soviet Experience with Communications Technologies. N.p.: Greenwood Publishing Group, 1996. Web. 13 Feb. 2016
- ↑ "Bone Collectors." New Scientist 228.3051 (2015): 24-25. Academic Search Complete. Web. 13 Feb. 2016.
- ↑ Ganley, Gladys D. Unglued Empire: The Soviet Experience with Communications Technologies. N.p.: Greenwood Publishing Group, 1996. Web. 13 Feb. 2016
- ↑ Easton, Paul (1989). "The Rock Music Community". In Riordan, James. Soviet youth culture 2. Basingstoke: Macmillan. p. 47. ISBN 0-333-46231-9. OCLC 246807650Available at University of Indiana
- ↑ Logan, Wendell, Satrina Yrina, and Victor Lebedev. “The Development of Jazz in the Former Soviet Union: An Interview with Victor Lebedev”. Black Music Research Journal12.2 (1992): 227–232. Web. 11. Feb. 2016.
- ↑ Ganley, Gladys D. Unglued Empire: The Soviet Experience with Communications Technologies. N.p.: Greenwood Publishing Group, 1996. Web. 13 Feb. 2016
- ↑ Edele, Mark. “Strange Young Men in Stalin's Moscow: The Birth and Life of the Stiliagi, 1945-1953”.Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas 50.1 (2002): 37–61. Web. 11. Feb. 2016.
External links
Further reading
- Coates, Stephen (Ed.) (2015). The strange story of Soviet music on the bone. London: Strange Attractor Press, ISBN 978-1-907222-38-2
- Yurchak, Alexei (1999). "Gagarin and the Rave Kids". In Barker, Adele Marie. Consuming Russia: popular culture, sex, and society since Gorbachev. Durham, N. C.: Duke University Press. p. 82. ISBN 978-0-82-232313-6. OCLC 185952345.
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