MSGID: 2:221/1.59 64057709
TZUTC: -0500
CHRS: CP437
Bone Music: Soviet X-Ray Audio | Paperback
Stephen Coates
MIT Press | Strange Attractor Press
Music / History & Criticism / History / Russia / Art / Russian & Soviet
Published Jan 10, 2023

During the Cold War era, the songs that Soviet citizens could listen to were
ruthlessly controlled by the state. But a secret underground subculture of
music lovers and bootleggers defied the censors, building recording machines
and making their own records of forbidden jazz, rock 'n' roll, and Russian
music, cut onto used hospital x-ray film. Bone Music is the follow up the
acclaimed X-Ray Audio: The Strange History of Soviet Music on the Bone,
delving deeper into a forgotten era when being a music fan could mean a
lengthy prison sentence, or worse.
 
Who made these records? Why did they do it and how was it even possible?
Foregrounding interviews and oral testimonies gathered over five years, Bone
Music presents the stories of the original bone bootleggers, their customers,
musicians, record collectors, and commentators, evoking a spirited resistance
to a repressive culture of prohibition and punishment. It reveals that
although Western jazz and rock?n?roll were important to the Stilyagi youth
culture, the true rebel music was that of forbidden Russian emigres, gypsy
romances, and criminal tunes: the soul songs of a society brutally cut off
from its culture.
 
Richly illustrated with dozens of new images of Soviet x-ray discs and sound
letters, Bone Music details how the bootleggers worked, outlining the
technical precedents of their techniques, situating their discs in a revised
history of recorded media, and bringing a wealth of compelling new detail.
 

--- AfterShock/Android 1.7.1
 * Origin: Mobile Pixel 3aXL (2:221/1.59)
SEEN-BY: 106/201 123/120 124/5016 134/100 153/143 149 757 7715 203/0
SEEN-BY: 218/840 220/70 221/1 6 242 360 226/17 30 227/114 229/111
SEEN-BY: 229/112 113 275 307 317 426 428 470 700 240/1120 250/5 8
SEEN-BY: 267/800 280/464 5003 301/1 305/3 317/3 341/66 234 396/45
SEEN-BY: 423/81 460/58 633/280 712/848 770/1 3634/24
PATH: 221/1 280/464 153/757 770/1 317/3 229/426