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THE POINTER SISTERS - DARE ME (KIBOU Remix)

Zhanna Aguzarova (1962-): "Star" 1989

A genuinely innovative figure in the history of Russian song, Zhanna Aguzarova was born in a small Siberian settlement fifty-seven years ago. Beyond such simple facts and figures, biographical details are frequently debated. Or simply fabricated. 

Keen to escape the drudgery of Brezhnev’s USSR, a young Aguzarova travelled the length of Russia in the hope of entering a stage school. Frustrated by her lack of success, she moved to Moscow. Here a resulting nomadic life led her, most unexpectedly, to membership in the retro/rock band Bravo. Ironic treatments of a rockabilly aesthetic interwove with Aguzarova’s famously monotone and emotionally detached vocals. The endless sentimentality or pathos of Russian popular song was dealt a significant blow when Bravo first appeared on television in 1986. To this day that illustrious show is considered her creative peak.

1989

Zhanna Aguzarova (1962-): "Star" 1989

There Comes A Time

Social Club Theme Song

The Investors

Hey You

Ditch The Dirtbag

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.

Zhanna Aguzarova (1962-): "Star" 1989

Wende Museum

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