Some Thoughts: Artyom Rondarev, 2018 (440 Hertz: Conversations about Russian Music)

Although having only recently found out about the (relatively) recent monograph by Russian Hip-Hop journalist and expert critic Artyom Rondarev, I quickly realized how important of a book this is, ESPECIALLY for someone interested in Russian Hip-Hop scholarship such as I am and its connection to the grosser development of Russian classical music. In this two-part work, he first looks at some of the seminal composers of the 19th and 20th centuries before moving into the popular side, although I have not yet reached that section in my reading. Regardless, now that I have finished reading his chapter on Balakirev some very seminal elements should go noticed, as they directly relate to the desired outcome of my Masters dissertation. That being a reconstructed notion of how to more effectively 'hear' and investigate Russian Hip-Hop in a way that puts the genre into a direct relationship with its classical variant. How you might ask? By appealing to the characteristics and what could be called anti-characteristics of what is ineffectively known as "the Russian style." In this blog post I'll briefly reiterate some of the most impactful points in Rondarev's first chapter which is dedicated to the popularizer of "musical Russianness," that being Mily A. Balakirev.

Geographical Differences

What I hadn't come across, at least not until this book, was the recognition of the different outlooks associated with Balakirev, and not simply from a composer-to-composer perspective but instead a grosser, worldview-based perspective. Ronderev notes that opinions on Balakirev differentiate between the "Western" and the "Domestic Soviet/post-Soviet," the main difference being the ways in which the connotations of Nationalism are interpreted. Generally, from the non-Russian perspective the "New Russian School" (one alternate name for The Mighty Five) was seen to be the progenitor of an compositional ideology centered around a reflexivity of cultural identity-creation. By borrowing and reinterpreting the aesthetics laid out by Mikhail Glinka, the first Russian composer to find extraordinary recognition outside Russia, an artificial notion of Russianness was born. Regardless of its musical effectiveness in creating a working idea of what Russia sounded like, scholars like Richard Tarushkin and Marina Frolova-Walker pointing out the composite nature of the constructed aesthetic and its subjective mythos, the "Russian style" helped give Russia a reason to hold its head up high. By placing Russian music into a "localized geographically, ethnically and historically”-minded framework, composers were open to creating the version of their country from their perspective, not Europe's. They cast Glinka as a Russian, and refused to allow his legacy to be whitewashed by the West.

Russianness as Protest

Aesthetic Intention

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I certainly have more reading to go with this book, and I look forward to learning more about the relationship between Russian classical music and its popular music corollaries as I go. If you are interested in reading the book with me, I have a PDF that I can share if you'd like!

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