Ru
EnA. Markov
Reflections of the 1920s–1980s popular musical culture in V. Tarik’s documentary film “The One with a Song”
V. Tarik’s film “The One with the Song” (1988) is one of the brightest examples in the Soviet film journalism that appeared during the perestroika era. The narration of “corporative hymn-making” as a very popular type of “music for workers” in the named period is traditionally interpreted today from the standpoint of documentary comedy or a satirical denunciation of the bureaucratization observed in the late Soviet production management system. However, a targeted examination of the “musical component” of this film allows us to identify some specific problems associated with the formation and development of the Soviet popular culture of the 1920s–1980s. The first, social-cultural aspect of the study is characterized by the consideration of the successive connections of the mentioned “hymn-making” with the popular culture industry, which has established itself in Russian society over the past decades. The second aspect, musicalstylistic, allows us to establish self-evident parallels between “corporative hymns” and Soviet “agitation” songs of the 1920s (“New Economic Policy era”). The particular interest in this context is the well-known song “Bricks” by V. Kruchinin – P. German, which tells about the happy fate of a simple working guy Senka: before the revolution, he was fired by his capitalist owner and was in poverty, and under Soviet power he proved himself to be a brilliant organizer of industrial production, who revived the native plant to new life. In this article, “Bricks” are positioned as a remarkable example of an “early Soviet remake” (the musical basis of the song was the “adapted” waltz “Two Little Dogs” by S. Beilinson), as well as the object of numerous figurative and semantic interpretations in various fields of art (including the brightly “avant-garde” interpretation proposed by V. Meyerhold in the innovatory production of “The Forest” by A. Ostrovsky). Based on this, the specific “adaptation” of the musical material of this song, carried out in “corporate hymn-making” as a fundamentally secondary area of the Soviet popular culture of the late 1980s, seems significant.
Key words
Soviet film journalism of the perestroika era, documentary film “The One with a Song” by V. Tarik, “corporative hymn-making” of the 1980s, “agitation” song of the early Soviet period, “Bricks” by V. Kruchinin – P. German.
For citation
Markov A. Reflections of the 1920s–1980s popular musical culture in V. Tarik’s documentary film “The One with a Song” // South-Russian Musical Anthology. 2024. No. 1. Pp. 23-31.
