Hostname: page-component-76fb5796d-dfsvx Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-25T12:26:44.637Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

‘The most Martian of Martianesses’: Zhanna Aguzarova, (post-)Soviet rock ‘n’ roll, and the musico-linguistic creation of the ‘outside’

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 April 2014

Stephen Amico
Stephen Amico*
Affiliation:
Departments of Media Studies and Musicology, University of Amsterdam, Turfdraagsterpad 9, 1012XT Amsterdam, The Netherlands E-mail: s.r.amico@uva.nl
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article focuses on the Soviet/post-Soviet singer Zhanna Aguzarova, as both frontwoman for the seminal Russian rock ‘n’ roll band Bravo and as a solo artist. Contextualising her musical output within the singer's frequent allusions to and performances of extraterrestrialism, and drawing upon works of Kristeva and Vygotskii, I contend that Aguzarova's voice and frequent use of vocables contributed to a creation of a performative space ‘outside’ of and in contradistinction to the linguistically over-determined ‘official’ Soviet space. In conclusion, however, I problematise the creation of a simple binary, showing how Aguzarova's musical Russianness, as well as her emigration from and return to Russia, constitute a type of ‘rooted Otherness’.

Type
Articles
Information
Popular Music , Volume 33 , Issue 2 , May 2014 , pp. 243 - 267
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2014 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Anderson, B. 1983. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London, Verso)Google Scholar
Attali, J. (trans. Massumi, B.) 1985. Noise: The Political Economy of Music (Minneapolis, MN, University of Minnesota Press)Google Scholar
Bakhtin, M. (trans. McGee, V.W.) 1986. ‘The problem of speech genres’, in Speech Genres and Other Late Essays, ed. McGee, V.W.(Austin, TX, University of Texas Press), pp. 60–102Google Scholar
Barker, A.M. 1999. ‘The culture factory: theorizing the popular in the old and new Russia’, in Consuming Russia: Popular Culture, Sex and Society Since Gorbachev, ed. Barker, A.M. (Durham, NC and London, Duke University Press), pp. 12–45Google Scholar
Barthes, R. 1990 [1977]. ‘The grain of the voice’, in On Record: Rock, Pop, and the Written Word, ed. Frith, S. and Goodwin, A. (London and New York, Routledge)Google Scholar
Bennetts, M. 2010. ‘Faith healer Anatoly Karhpirovsky: Russia's new Rasputin’, The Guardian online, 6 June. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/jun/06/marc-bennetts-anatoly-kashpirovsky-russia-rasputin (accessed 1 December 2013)Google Scholar
Beumers, B. 2005. Pop Culture Russia!: Media, Arts, and Lifestyle (Santa Barbara, CA, ABC-CLIO)Google Scholar
Billington, J. 2004. Russia In Search of Itself (Baltimore, MD, Johns Hopkins University Press)Google Scholar
Blacking, J. 1979. ‘Some problems of theory and method in the study of musical change’, Yearbook of the International Folk Music Council, 9, pp. 1–26Google Scholar
Bogdanov, A. (trans. Rougle, C.). 1984 (1908; 1913; 1924). Red Star: The First Bolshevik Utopia (ed. Graham, L. and Stites, R.). Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Brett, P. 1994. ‘Musicality, essentialism, and the closet’, Queering the Pitch: The New Gay and Lesbian Musicology, ed. Brett, P., Wood, E., and Thomas, G.C. (New York, Routledge), 9–26Google Scholar
Brooks, J. 2000. Thank You, Comrade Stalin!: Soviet Public Culture from Revolution to Cold War (Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press)Google Scholar
Chernin, A. 2007. Drugaia istoriia: 16 kul'tovykh al'bomov russkogo roka [A Different History: 16 Cult Albums of Russian Rock] (St Petersburg, RF, Amfora)Google Scholar
Cushman, T. 1995. Notes from Underground: Rock Music Counterculture in Russia (Albany, NY, State University of New York Press)Google Scholar
Doyle, P. 2005. Echo and Reverb: Fabricating Space in Popular Music Recording, 1900–1960 (Middletown, CT, Wesleyan University Press)Google Scholar
Duncan, P.J.S. 2005. ‘Contemporary Russian Identity Between East and West’, The Historical Journal, 48/1, pp. 277–294Google Scholar
Easton, P. 1989. ‘The rock music community’, in Soviet Youth Culture, ed. Riordan, J. (Bloomington, IN, Indiana University Press), pp. 45–82Google Scholar
Edmunds, N. 2004. Soviet Music and Society Under Lenin and Stalin: The Baton and the Sickle (New York, Routledge Curzon)Google Scholar
Feld, S., and Fox, A. 1994. ‘Music and language’, Annual Review of Anthropology, 23, pp. 25–53Google Scholar
Gasparian, A. 1993. ‘Svershilos'! Zhanna Aguzarova vypustila novyi al'bom’ [It's accomplished! Zhanna Aguzarova has put out a new album’], Moskovskii komsomolets, mk.ru, 22 December. http://www.nneformat.ru/archive/?id=3184 (accessed 1 December 2013)Google Scholar
Gorham, M. 2003. Speaking in Soviet Tongues: Language Culture and the Politics of Voice in Revolutionary Russia (DeKalb, IL, Northern Illinois University Press)Google Scholar
Grenoble, L. 2003. Language Policy in the Soviet Union (Dordrecht, Kluwer Academic Publishers)Google Scholar
Gudkov, L. 2004. Negativnaia Identichnost': Stat'i 1997–2002 [Negative Identity: Essays, 1997–2002] (Moscow, Novoe Literaturnoe Obozrenie)Google Scholar
James, W. (ed. Kuklick, B.) 1987 [1902]. ‘The varieties of religious experience: a study in human nature’, William James: Writings, 1902–1910 (New York: Literary Classics of the United States/Viking)Google Scholar
Kaplan, S.A. (trans. IPST Staff) 1971 [1969]. Extraterrestrial Civilizations: Problems of Interstellar Communication (Jerusalem, Israel Program for Scientific Translations)Google Scholar
Kon, I. 1993. ‘Identity crisis and postcommunist psychology’, Symbolic Interaction, 16/ 4, pp. 395–410Google Scholar
Korpe, M., Reitov, O., and Cloonan, M. 2006. ‘Music censorship from Plato to the present’, in Music and Manipulation: On the Social Uses and Social Control of Music, ed. Brown, S. and Volgsten, U. (New York, Berghahn Books), pp. 239–63Google Scholar
Kristeva, J. 1984. Revolution in Poetic Language (New York, Columbia University Press)Google Scholar
Lenta News. 2012. ‘Pokonchil s soboi khudozhnik Garik Assa’ [‘Artist Garik Assa commits suicide’], lenta.ru, 3 August. http://lenta.ru/news/2012/08/03/assa/ (accessed 1 December 2013)Google Scholar
Lerdahl, F. 2003. ‘Two ways in which music relates to the world’, Music Theory Spectrum, 25/ 2, pp. 367–73Google Scholar
Lerdahl, F., and Jackendoff, R. 1983. A Generative Theory of Tonal Music (Cambridge, MA, MIT Press)Google Scholar
Lidov, D. 2005. Is Language a Music?: Writings on Musical Form and Signification (Bloomington, IN, Indiana University Press)Google Scholar
MacFadyen, D. 2001. Red Stars: Personality and the Soviet Popular Song, 1955–1991 (Montreal and Ithaca, NY, McGill-Queen's University Press)Google Scholar
MacFadyen, D. 2002. Songs for Fat People: Affect, Emotion, and Celebrity in the Russian Popular Song, 1900–1955 (Montreal and Ithaca, NY, McGill-Queen's University Press)Google Scholar
MacFadyen, D. 2006. Russian Culture in Uzbekistan: One Language in the Middle of Nowhere (London and New York, Routledge)Google Scholar
Masal'tsev, A. n.d. ‘Zhanna Aguzarova’, Liudi, peoples.ru. http://www.peoples.ru/art/music/alternative_general/aguzarova/history.html (1 December 2013)Google Scholar
Nelson, A. 2006. ‘Accounting for taste: choral circles in early Soviet workers' clubs’, in Chorus and Community, ed. Ahlquist, K. (Urbana, IL, University of Illinois Press), pp. 139–62Google Scholar
Nercessian, A. 2004. ‘National identity, cultural policy, and the Soviet folk ensemble in Armenia’, in Soviet Music and Society Under Lenin and Stalin: The Baton and the Sickle (New York, Routledge Curzon), pp. 148–62Google Scholar
Nettl, B. 1995. Heartland Excursions: Ethnomusicological Reflections on Schools of Music (Urbana, IL, University of Illinois Press)Google Scholar
Olkhovsky, A.V. 1955. Music of the Soviets: The Agony of an Art (New York, Praeger)Google Scholar
Olson, L. 2004. Performing Russia: Folk Revival and Russian Identity (New York, Routledge Curzon)Google Scholar
Pilkington, H. 1998. Migration, Displacement and Identity in Post-Soviet Russia (London and New York, Routledge)Google Scholar
Poggie, J., DeWalt, B., and Dressler, W. (eds.) 1992. Anthropological Research: Process and Application (Albany, NY, State University of New York Press)Google Scholar
Ramet, S. (ed.) 1994. Rocking the State: Rock Music and Politics in Eastern Europe and Russia (Boulder, CO, Westview Press)Google Scholar
Ramet, S. 2003. ‘UFOs over Russia and Eastern Europe’, in Kazaaam! Splat! Ploof!: The American Impact on European Popular Culture Since 1945, ed. Ramet, S. and Crnković, G. (Lanham, MD, Rowman & Littlefield), pp. 198–218Google Scholar
Rouland, M. 2004. ‘A nation on stage: music and the 1936 Festival of Kazakh Arts’, in Soviet Music and Society Under Lenin and Stalin: The Baton and the Sickle (New York, Routledge Curzon), pp. 181–208Google Scholar
Ryback, T. 1990. Rock Around the Bloc: A History of Rock Music in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, 1954–1988 (New York, Oxford University Press)Google Scholar
Sarycheva, M. 2007. ‘U Zhanny Aguzarovoi: Kruglaia Data’ [Zhanna Aguzarova: complete data], Komsomol'skaia pravda, kp.ru, 5 July. http://www.kp.ru/daily/23929.3/69576/ (accessed 1 December 2013)Google Scholar
Shcheglova, E. 2008. ‘Poiushchaia marsianka’ [The Singing Martianess]. Super Ctil', superstyle.ru, 20 June. http://superstyle.ru/20jun2008/cancere_aguzarova?page=0 (accessed 1 December 2013)Google Scholar
Shklovskii, I.S. 1962. Vselennaia, Zhizn', Razum [Universe, Life, Intelligence] (Moscow, Izdatel'stvo Akademii Nauk SSSR)Google Scholar
Shklovskii, I.S., and Sagan, C. 1968 [1966]. Intelligent Life in the Universe (New York, Dell)Google Scholar
Smith, G.S. 1984. Songs to Seven Strings: Russian Guitar Poetry and Soviet ‘Mass Song’ (Bloomington, IN, Indiana University Press)Google Scholar
Smith, M.G. 1998. Language and Power in the Creation of the USSR, 1917–1953 (Berlin, Walter de Gruyter)Google Scholar
Steiger, B. and Steiger, S.H. 2011. Real Aliens, Space Beings, and Creatures from Other Worlds (Detroit, MI, Visible Ink Press)Google Scholar
Steinholt, Y. 2003. ‘You can't rid a song of its words: notes on the hegemony of lyrics in Russian rock songs’, Popular Music, 22/ 1, pp. 89–108Google Scholar
Swain, J.P. 1997. Musical Languages (New York, Norton)Google Scholar
Taruskin, R. 1997. ‘Others: a mythology and a demurrer (by way of a preface)’, in Defining Russia Musically: Historical and Hermeneutic Essays (Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Taylor, T.D. 1997. Global Pop: World Music, World Markets (New York and London, Routledge)Google Scholar
Todorov, T. 1984. Mikhail Bakhtin: The Dialogic Principle, Theory and History of Literature No. 13 (Manchester, Manchester University Press)Google Scholar
Troitsky, A. 1987. Back in the USSR: The True Story of Rock in Russia (Boston, MA and London, Faber & Faber)Google Scholar
Vygotsky, L.S. (trans. Kozulin, A.) 1986. Thought and Language (Cambridge, MA, MIT Press)Google Scholar
Whiteley, S. 2000. ‘Daughters of chaos: Patti Smith, Siouxsie Sioux, and the feminisation of rock’, in Women and Popular Music: Sexuality, Identity, and Subjectivity (London and New York, Routledge), pp. 95–118Google Scholar
Zhdanov, A. 1969 [1948]. ‘Concluding speech at a Conference of Soviet music workers, 1948’, in Readings in Russian Civilization, Volume 3: Soviet Russia, 1917–Present, ed. Riha, T. (Chicago, IL, University of Chicago Press), pp. 701–4Google Scholar