Rock Music? Subculture? Life-style?

Editorial Roundtable Discussion, Rock Music? Subculture? Life-style? June 1987

Original Source: Sotsiologicheskie Issledovaniia (June 1987)

In the years before glasnost, the press featured vitriolic attacks against the Western influence presented in rock music. Few attempted to analyze seriously the reasons for rock music's appeal to Soviet youth. This roundtable discussion published in the country's leading sociological research journal displayed a higher level of debate .

While attitudes toward rock music continue to change in the Soviet Union, in some respects the debate is reminiscent of the controversy this music catalyzed in America two to three decades ago. V. S. Ovchinsky, for example, rejects prohibitions against rock music. He advocates this, however, out of fear that bans have promoted criminal and uncivilized behavior in the rock "underground." The rock underground that developed in the 1970s includes few criminal elements, but consists primarily of informal groups who enjoy the Beatles, punk and heavy metal fans, and musicians who wish to remain independent of official control.

M. A. Manuilsky takes a more positive approach to rock than does Ovchinsky. Manuilsky dismisses simplistic perceptions of rock music as a harmful influence and asserts that official restrictions and repressive cultural policies are more harmful to youth and to the rest of society. He expresses strong support for rock as an outlet for the individual aspirations of Soviet youth.

Rock music is thirty-five years old. For quite a long time it was held back by all sorts of official cultural prohibitions , but can one really establish any reliable obstacles against something that stirs the interest of millions? Regardless of all bans, rock music increasingly defines the music scene in our country. In the 1970s in the pages of newspapers and magazines the following words began to appear: "rock ensemble," "rock group," "rock star," and "rock opera." Among the musical preferences of the young, this movement became dominant. It continues to remain so to this day. For example, according to the data of the Estonian sociologist N. Meinert, of nine genres of music the Most popular with young people is rock music: 79 percent of those polled liked it (statistics are from 1984).

Experts state that the attraction to rock is declining. However, for a dozen years it was a mass phenomenon, and so it deserves the serious attention of sociologists. By the way, the music community has repeatedly addressed such bothersome questions to sociologists. For example, in a conversation with an Izvestiia correspondent, A. Rybnikov, author of the famous operas Iunona and Avos, proposed to investigate such questions as "Do we need rock or not?" and "Do we need classical music or not?" The lack of sociological interpretations for the process of the formation of the musical tastes of the young is obvious. This is a professional "debt" that sociologists owe to the readers of this magazine and to the society as a whole. We have decided to present the theme of rock culture as a social phenomenon at this "round table" discussion.

N. D. Sarkitov: Rock music exists in the USSR in two forms, foreign and indigenous. The audience that accepts this music is also heterogeneous. The fans of indigenous amateur rock music are, as a rule, highly educated connoisseurs. In sharp contrast to them are the fans of foreign "metal" music. Among the latter one doesn't find intellectuals. Many of the functions of Western and Soviet rock music do not correspond.

It is necessary to elaborate one point: Rock music has experienced three stages of development and is now beginning a fourth. The first stage lasted from the mid1960s to the mid-1970s. In the beginning, the majority of ensembles followed the best Western rock groups and performers, more often than not faithfully reproducing their best compositions. That was natural. At the beginning of the last century a very similar period was experienced in the development of Russian classical music.

At the end of this period, for many of the indigenous ensembles, very popular British "hard rock" groups became the examples to be followed here, as they were in the West. (For example, Stas Namin's group, Flowers, followed Uriah Heep.) These ensembles were representative of indigenous "heavy" rock music during this period.

The completion of the first stage coincided in time with and was closely linked to the appearance of different kinds of prohibition which, in the long run, brought rock groups (Time Machine, Leap Summer, Ruby Attack, and Tin Soldiers) into a bitter struggle for survival and brought about the second stage of the development of our rock music. The struggle was prolonged; most of the rock groups did not survive it and disappeared. Only those who fought their way to the professional scene could survive (Alexander Gradsky's Time Machine and Stas Namin's group, Leap Summer, which eventually became Autograph). Survive they did, but meanwhile they lost much of their "rockness."

The second stage was also characterized by the formation of a new kind of rock within the youth music culture. By the beginning of the 1980s so-called amateur rock music had been born, in contrast to the "commercial" professional rock.

The third stage began in the late 1970s and early 1980s and has continued to this day. It is differentiated from the first two stages first, by rock's sharp divergence by 1983 into two ideologically distinct entities (professional and amateur) and, second, by the unusually successful blossoming of "heavy metal" on both the amateur and the professional stage. (Amateur groups worked during this period in rock clubs and rock laboratories.) The second half of this stage has been marked by the formation of a third center of Soviet rock music, in the Urals (Yuri Shevchuk and DDT, Urfin Juice, Nautilus). These groups have defined the philosophical and aesthetic positions of Soviet rock music.

Now, the third period is finished (by 1986). A new time has arrived, and it is too early to discern its characteristic features. Nonetheless, certain peculiarities can be noted even today. The first noticeable aspect is the ongoing diversification of style within rock. For example, in the Moscow rock laboratory the following trends have taken shape: "Heavy metal," "mainstream," avant garde, and "electronic romanticism." The second aspect is the formation within amateur rock of an extremely radical wing, which is in opposition to the rock laboratories and rock clubs, and in which one can discern vivid elements of counterculture (for example, the Moscow group Pig). The third aspect is the absolute domination of the professional scene by "heavy metal," which has supplanted the vocaland-instrumental ensembles.

I cannot agree with Yuri Davydov that rock music is undergoing a conflict between center and periphery. Conflict is apparent, but it is of a different nature; it is a conflict inside the centers of culture. This arises when a city becomes a megalopolis in which conflicts form between strata and age groups, when new relations develop between youth and older people. Out of this conflict between generations living in a large city, between the young and the "older society," rock music arises. When it becomes a sufficiently powerful entity, it then comes into conflict with other cultural or social phenomena. Rock music starts out as an event of social life, not aesthetic life.

V. Ovchinsky: Along with the creation of genuine musical masterpieces, a "rock underground" was formed. One cannot hide from the facts. Even in the 1950s, in the very beginning of the victorious march of rock music. In both the United States and Europe, fanatics or "rockers" appeared (in other parlance, "teddy boys," "pizhons," "stilyagas" ["beatniks"]). Frenzy at the concerts of Elvis Presley and other youth idols often turned to violence, group violations of social order, and vandalism. The 1960s and 1970s "enriched" rock music with overt drug use. The mass media hurried to vividly paint rock stars' addictions to various drugs. In those years, because of this type of "advertisement," marijuana became one of the characteristics of Western youth subculture. In other words, along with the development of rock music as a new musical movement, along with the creation of genuine masterpieces of popular music (the works of the Beatles, Deep Purple, the rock operas of Andrew Lloyd Weber and others), the so-called rock underground was being formed. It included not only the fanatical adoration of rock groups, but also various forms of social pathology. With the passage of time, this formation of the underground gathered momentum. Its apogee was reached in 1977-78 with the creation of the punk movement around the rock group Sex Pistols and others. In this situation the underground ceased to be "under" and openly advocated violence, aggression, sex, sexual perversity, and drug abuse as well as crime, occultism, fascism, anticommunism, and antiSovietism.

Soviet youth does not live in an isolated world. The broadening of contacts with foreigners has intensified the exchange of information. Rock rather quickly entered our lives through unofficial channels. The makers of Soviet music policy simply ignored the real situation. Four generations of youth (1950s, 1960s, 1970s, and the 1980s) confronted the mass media's angry condemnation of any variety of rock music. The fear of the further spread of "rock mania" as a source of antisocial phenomena brought forth a "forbid-o-mania." Even now you can occasionally hear authoritative statements such as: "Today you listen to rock, tomorrow you will betray your motherland." As a result, our youth has had to decide alone (or with the aid of Western radio broadcasts) whom to select as a musical idol. Thus the homemade "rock underground" was brought to life with all its negative aspects: fashionable violence, sexual promiscuity, drunkenness, and drug abuse.

Sweet is the forbidden fruit, and prohibition removes the situation from any kind of social control. This happened with "heavy metal." Barriers placed in front of this rock movement brought about a "natural" market for "metallists" where speculation in albums and video and tape recordings flourishes, and "samizdat" hand-typed rock magazines such as Urlait and Ukho [Earl are disseminated. All sorts of "bunkers" (attics and basements so named by teenagers) have appeared, where they listen to it metal rock." Often this listening is accompanied by the use of toxic substances and misdemeanors. Outside of the professional stage several rock groups, devotees of "heavy metal," strut their semi-legal condition, actively promoting the worst examples of punk rock. The media have reported the hooliganism and pornographic escapades of the group Chudo-iudo [Miracle] at the festival of the Moscow rock laboratory in the spring of 1987.

Such are the results of the "forbid-o-mania" of new varieties of rock. It is perfectly understandable that the organs of justice have to react appropriately to excesses and violations of law. As a result, an impression is created that rock is the source of antisocial behavior. But this is a great mistake. Not rock by itself, but its incorrect cultivation creates an explosive situation. A situation has developed in which young people have come to identify all rock art with the "rock underground." Meanwhile, as has been noted, not all modern rock is punk rock.

Now it is important to decide how to help the young to separate the wheat from the chaff. What needs to be done is to prevent rock from becoming a symbol of deviant behavior, from turning into a countercultural means of destroying aesthetic and moral values. The answer, in my opinion, is the following: We must decisively reject bans, by all means popularize the best examples of rock music, and draw the youth out of the "underground." In other words, we must remove the tension in the situation-I state it directly-which is crime-fostering and antihuman.

M. Manuilsky: If we wish to have a serious discussion about rock music, then it is essential to abandon the longcultivated "syndrome of unanimity." For many years only one evaluation of any new phenomenon was acceptable, based on whether the phenomenon was in accordance with certain principles or not. Even the thought that a phenomenon could be heterogeneous or controversial was considered heretical, considered a revision of the dominant views, or a yielding to foreign ideology. Echoes of this approach are still heard. The majority of mass media reports describe the achievements and drawbacks of rock music in general. That the traditional (wholly negative) evaluation is counterbalanced with a positive opinion does not change the nature of the situation. Nor do the attempts to draw out the positive and negative aspects of rock.

Of course, one must know what constitutes the essence of rock music, what is its social content. This is the most important problem. Its resolution begins simply with a detailed analysis of its nuances, facets, and directions. It is time once and for all to make clear that the multiplicity of social manifestations is inseparable from its diverseness and uniqueness. The initial tendency toward oversimplification contrasts with any objective analysis, particularly regarding modern rock music.

It is thought that the young have become obsessed with rock. The results of sociological investigations have refuted this popular view. As has already been noted, according to the statistics of N. Meinert, rock music is popular in Estonia with 79 percent of those polled. And almost as many express interest in other popular modern music. The latter, according to indications of preference, falls behind rock by .12 (on a scale of 5.0). This agrees with the results of polls conducted by the laboratory of youth problems of Sotsiologicheskie Issledovaniia and Literaturnaia Gazeta, which show that rock music is popular with 47 to 73 percent of teenagers.

What do these facts tell us? Rock music is not the only passion of the young. Many young men and women, following fashion, consider themselves fans of "heavy metal" without fearing ostracism, especially since the official ban has been lifted. In reality, a considerable part of the youth (exactly what part remains to be determined) associates rock with any composition that is performed with a heavy beat on ultramodern instruments.

Rock music is quite heterogeneous and controversial. It encompasses commercial music, shliager [coarse popular tunes], and razvlekashki [empty entertainment]. There are musicians and music oriented toward "getting high" and being shocking. Distorted faces, wild whistling and screaming, torn clothing, shattered furniture, and doses of drugs-all of this has happened and still occurs right here in the performance hall. This is not somewhere in California, but in Moscow or in Ufa. But this is foam, whipped up first of all by the prolonged objection to rock culture by the official system of values. This is "official" in the worst meaning of the word, implying bureaucratic, "over-rationalized," lacking any emotional attraction, and not allowing the slightest deviation from the principles supposedly canonized in the name of history and the people. No, it is not that the young have found an area for the expression of their dissent which, lacking any kind of meaningful idea, turns into a disgusting orgy. Blind guidance and cultural dicta, by completely shutting the doors of philosophical and moral search, are themselves guilty of bringing to life this monster of counterculture. But nowadays we drop our jaws in bewilderment and ask, where did this come from?

To a great extent, the situation described above explains the unusualness, the "differentness" of rock music. With a relative sparseness of musical means of expression, its works are distinguished by complex emotional images and the broad use of symbols and metaphors. It is not simply a search for "one's own values," but rather an attempt to uncover the diversity and polyphony of humanitarian ideals and bring them to everyday life. Polysemy is the fundamental feature of rock music. In contrast to the cheap stylized rock tunes, rock refutes standards. The world is diverse. Every young person is bothered by the eternal problems (love, friendship, obligation) in his own way. Rock music provides an opportunity to grapple with the depth and breadth of life, to develop a unique perception. This is the attraction of rock.

Rock music is a position. To enter the world and affirm yourself, to discover one's "self" and present it to other people-this is the highest goal of rock culture.

Source: Isaac Tarasulo, ed., Gorbachev and Glasnost: Viewpoints from the Soviet Press. Wilmington: SR Books, 1989.