Rap Peak-91: Russia's First Rap Festival

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

There are some incredible photographs available from the festival provided

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