While breakdance was hugely influential in the early 80s, it wasn't until the mid to late 80s, when breakdance groups began incorporating rapping into their lexicon of hip-hop expression, that Russia's legacy of rap truly began. Although there are examples of funk and disco-based rap from the earl-mid 80s, inspired by Grandmaster Flash and The Furious Five and the fun-spirited antics of disco-funk groups of America, some of the first groups that could be called 'rap groups' were none other than breakdancing groups who saw the opportunities that this so called 'rapping style' provided. It reads as almost entirely the same development as in the American world, so it's fascinating to see just how similar the rise of Russian hip-hop and American hip-hop are, not just aesthetically but culturally too. In this blog post, I want to look at the event 'Papuga-89,' an annual breakdancing festival that was held each year since 1986, first held in Lithuania and continuously after, as this event would lead to the creation of 'Bachelor Party,' one of the first highly popular rap groups of the 90s, still operating today and releasing remasters of their early musical works!
Breakdancing got its start in Russia around the mid-1980s following Perestroika, although even before then with the 1980s Moscow Summer Olympics, the first signs of hip-hop culture were beginning to enter the country through illegally-smuggled clothing, movies, and other items of American hip-hop culture. With the advent of Perestroika, however, the influx of hip-hop culture came like a storm, and along with skateboarding, graffiti, clothing, and disco, there was breakdancing, arguably one of the first elements of hip-hop culture to take root in Russia. Like so many have already noted, movies like Breakin, Dancing on the Roof, and Courier were some of the first representations of hip-hop culture available to Soviet youth at the time, with public spaces and venues like Moloko, the Olympic Park in Moscow, and others hosting breakdancing tusovki [collectives/parties] where groups could strengthen their bonds, and information could be exchanged. However, once 1987 came the breakdancing trend exploded and became regional, one of the most important factors for the development of Russian hip-hop, as places likes Krasnodar Krai, Rostov-on-Don, Moscow, St. Petersburg, Novosibirsk, Riga, all had their own independent scenes, yet all participated in the same larger network of hip-hop within Russia. Yet, at the same time 'rap' was beginning to be formed, the first "rap" track dating to 1984 although disco culture was very strong by the early 1980s, having started in the early 1970s alongside the rock scene.
By 1989, the date of the festival in question, there were quite a few movements towards rap already in the works at the time. Without naming them all, outside of the normal examples given by Scholars like Rush Hour (Rap, 1984), Brother in Mind (Scratch Rap, 1984), and Alisa (Totalitarian Rap, 1989), other far clearer examples of early rap can be heard in the track "Pioneer Dawn" (1988) by the Russian rock musician Alexander Laertsky, the track "First Hand News" (1988) by the group Stalker, the track "Coca Mix" (1989) by the group Easy Boom, and finally the disco-dance song "Mr. Break" from the 1989 rock opera "Street". Although only a sampling of what was a very rich environment of progress and innovation at the time, examples these show that Russian hip-hop didn't just magically start in the 1990s, nor did it start with groups like Bachelor Party and Bad Balance. In fact, there are two groups that are routinely glossed over that formed in the late 1980s that are, in fact, the first Russian rap groups, those being 'Black and White' and 'DMJ', topics for another post. The point here is that Papuga-89 and its role in fostering the growth of dedicated rap groups was the icing on a large cake that started years ago, reaching its first apex in the late-80s. But why does Papuga-89 matter though? As I'll explain, this festival was the birthplace of the group Bachelor Party, one of the most significant groups in Russian hip-hop's history.
As Ivan Demidov explains, Papuga-89 was the birthplace of not only Bachelor Party [or in Russian Мальчишник] but like the group 'Thermonuclear Jam,' the actual winners of the Rap-91 hip-hop festival [1991] with the other group coming in second and yet becoming much more popular than the others. The group 'Thermonuclear Jam' has an interesting history. Briefly, the group is probably better known by the name "Drunken Boys," and was formed by Merab "Khotab" Sadykov and Denis "Tengiz" Chernyshov, in 1991 being joined by the seminal 'Mister Maloy' [another eminent name in Russian rap], and their only album together "Foilers" (1992) would instigate a new era in the group' history, as Maloy would go solo and the group would act together until around the mid-2000s, although subsequent activities would see the group's members continuously engage with each other. In 2016, a reissue of 'Foilers' was released. But back to Papuga-89, as Ivan mentions Sergey "Kefir" Lazarev, Vladislav "DJ Wolf" Vaitekhovich and Dmitry "DJ D" Ilyin formed the group "Name Protected" (yet another very interesting group), along with the notable Bachelor Party by Vlad Valov (“Sheff”) and Gleb Matveev (DJ LA), formed from the breakdancing group named "Alliance", an not uncommon occurence in the late 80s. As another blogger notes, the group was modeled after the American group New Kids on the Block, an American boy-band group in the style of pop and R'n'B who got their start with rapping before moving into commerical-friendly music. This is all to say that Bachelor Party, although nothing new in the grand scheme of popular music, marked the beginning of Russia's post-Soviet pop culture.
Enjoy some authentic archival pictures from Papuga-89, and thank you for reading my post.
Photo credits: https://namedni-60e-90e.livejournal.com/357217.html
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