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THE POINTER SISTERS - DARE ME (KIBOU Remix)

Larisa Mondrus: "Maybe No, Maybe Yes" (1964)

Larisa Mondrus was born in Kazakhstan, yet her early life after WWII was linked with Latvia. For millions of Soviets, she was most clearly associated with Union-wide TV shows on New Year’s Eve. That Baltic jollity was countered by real-world drama; Mondrus refused to sing propagandistic material and was thus banned from touring other nations of the USSR. Soon unable to perform solo, was given “permission” to leave for Israel. Her large audiences in East Germany, nonetheless, led her to choose Munich as home. With an émigré’s repertoire in German, Latvian, Russian, English, and Hebrew, she would eventually be able tour the small country in which she began––but not until the 1990s.

Larisa Mondrus: "Maybe No, Maybe Yes" (1964)

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Social Club Theme Song

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Svetlana Geiman (aka Linda, b. 1977): "Northern Wind" (Live, 2018)

The 1990s, among many commercial changes in Russian popular music, witnessed the rise of producers. Free of politics, yet now reliant upon cash flows, a producer could shape the sound of a young performer in dramatically new ways––sometimes using technical expertise garnered in Soviet sound studios. One of the most successful producer/performer collaborations of the late 1990s was between Maxim Fadeev and Svetlana Geiman, a then-unknown singer from Kazakhstan. 

Geiman’s grandmother had been exiled to Kazakhstan in 1941; her grandfather was executed by Stalin’s decree four years earlier. The demise of Soviet power in the 1980s allowed the family to move gradually back to Russia, specifically to the nation’s version of Detroit––Togliatti. As Geiman’s father met with increasing success in post-Soviet banking, the family moved again, this time to Moscow. 

Svetlana entered an elite music school and entered state-run competitions, where she was eventually introduced to Fadeev and would soon begin recording under the name Linda, in honor of her exiled grandmother. 

Max Fadeev was intent on erasing the maximum number of clichés from Russian popular song. Hence the debut collaboration between himself and Linda in 1994, “Songs of Tibetan Lamas.” Although its insistence upon audible forms of some imagined “Orient” may seem rather studied today, the LP would mark a dramatic move from conservatism towards studio wizardry in the 1990s. 

As mentioned, though, studio time was always dependent upon cash, and Russian music magazines of the time were full of rumors that Geiman’s father had bankrolled the project from start to finish. Fadeev and Geiman thus began another trend in popular song, albeit unwillingly: the cynical post-Soviet conviction that lots of money and a good producer can compensate for minimal talent. 

Recent years have witnessed a comeback by Linda, as in this 2018 radio performance of an early hit, stripped down to absolute basics in the name of self-respect and a newly found self-reliance.

Svetlana Geiman (aka Linda, b. 1977): "Northern Wind" (Live, 2018)

Selections from the Wende Collection. Follow us on social media @wendemuseum

Larisa Mondrus: "Maybe No, Maybe Yes" (1964)

Wende Museum

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