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Rap Peak-91: Russia's First Rap Festival

John Vandevert
Jan 13, 2022
1 min read

As part of my ongoing research into the development of Hip-Hop in Russia and how its contemporary manifestation is a natural outcome of numerous, cyclical processes of nationalist expressionism and culture creation-qua-"Acculturation," I want to look at one of the more notable events in the early post-Soviet era of Russian Hip-Hop. In particular, the rap festival called "Рэп Пик-91," the name derived from the event's year and Peak most likely alluding to the monumentality of the event, serving as the genre's apex of popularity at the time. This miniature article will feature some important information and conclude with a fascinating interview recorded by Ugw.ru with ШЕff from Bad Balance from 2021.

Background Information

Before the imminent fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, and after having her first blush with rapping back in 1984 which amounted to very little, all the while the 80s seeing an upsurge of interest into breakdancing, the phenomenon of a Russian rap genre was beginning to take shape as a musical artform. Even prior to the first "concerts," known as "gay parties," (Frolova, 2014: 34) supposedly beginning in 1984 at The Variety Theatre in Moscow, (in Russia the term эстрада meaning a multi-genre talent show), the music culture of Russian Hip-Hop was growing in strength. Due to the now uncontrolled access to Western lifestyles and market goods first brought about by Perestroika and then heightened by the Soviet Union's dissolution, emerging from the booming DJ and electro-dance scene imported from Western Europe and the Baltics beginning in the late-70s was the new style of Hip-Hop. What's fascinating to note here is that while in America, Hip-Hop culture [rap-graffitti-breakdance] went hand-in-hand almost from the beginning, in Russia it took the form of successive stages, the "rapping" part only becoming infused into the culture as a result of Perestroika, and only rendered ubiquitous following 1991.

In this beginning period of Russian Hip-Hop, what one could call the "Old School," although the term is usually in referencing to the 2000s "School," groups like Bad Balance and Bachelor Party, along with Dolphin, Big Black Boots, Mister Maloy, and Bogdan Titmoir, among many others, began shaping the trajectory of the genre and the aesthetic centered around the 90s American rap style, that's to say Gangster and what I call "urban realism." Frolova notes the rise of "street hero" culture, again pointing to the pre-commercialist era of Hip-Hop (34). What's important to also note to is the changing technological infrastructure, as the CD had been introduced into Russia in 1990, and the rise of the music-video industry was steadily growing ever thanks to the creation of the WWW in 1989, along with the birth of the MTV channel in 1981.

This was the exciting environment that "Rap Peak-91" would find itself coming into, a world that was, at least aesthetically, neither wholly Russian nor wholly Western but situated right in the liminal place between. The festival was held on April 19th to the 21st of 1991, however only 15 days earlier another blow to the stability of the Soviet Union had occurred, this time in the form of unpaid taxes amounting to 36 million rubles, leaving the dilapidating Union in dire, financial straits (Izvestia, 1991: No. 82). Further, only ten priors on April 9th, Georgia had declared its sovereignty (Hrono.ru), while on April 1st the infamous "Warsaw Pact" had been nullified with Giulio Andreotti reforming the Italian government into a multi-party governmental body as a result (Consonni, 1993). From amidst this international flux, seven rap groups from seven regions across Russia coalesced at The Leningrad Palace of Youth in St. Petersburg to display their rapping chops and present themselves as the best group in Russia.

Check out this historic, 1933 footage of The Palace, courtesy of British Pathe.

The Rap Festival

The festival was organized by two prominent DJs at the time, DJs Andrey "Repa" Repnikov and Alexander Chibis. The former a composer and DJ whose notoriety came from his foray into rave and then pop in the mid-90s (24CМИ) while the latter was a student at the time who became quickly enamored by the disco scene and started participating as a Disc Jockey to gain more access to this new medium. According to his remembrances, Their partnership birthed the idea of a Rap festival, where artists across Russia could come and show their stuff. In partnership with the Russian-American DJ Denis "Tengiz" Chernyshov, then part of the group called "Thermonuclear Jam," and through a series of miscommunications the event finally got off the ground. Among the group's attendants were some well-known groups such as Bad Balance and D.M.J, along with some more underground groups like Academy-2, Factory of House, Terra Mobile, among others. This post from "Хип-хоп в Википедии" documents the various actors within each group, as I'm sure each one has a fascinating tale to tell about the early movements of Russian Hip-Hop.

The structure of the festival operated as a competition, ruled by audience vote on whose performance and songs were best. Through the process of elimination, the groups Thermonuclear Jam, Academy-2, and Bad Balance were the last three, of which the winner came out to be Bad Balance, with Thermonuclear Jam following, and Academy-2 coming in third. This seems to be refuted by "Хип-хоп в Википедии" who note that T-Jam came in first, with Academy-2 coming in second, although a minor technicality. There were non-traditional awards given, although no documentation notes what they actually were. It stands to note that in much of the available scholarship on Russian Hip-Hop, the last two groups are not mentioned at all. Take from that what you will, but the dynamics of 90s Russian Hip-Hop from the Academic perspective leaves much to be admired, as many notable groups are glossed over for sake of abstraction and historical ease.

There are some incredible photographs available from the festival provided

by Chernishov, of which I've included below. You can sense the fragrant excitement!