Description
Book SynopsisMichael Urban chronicles the advent of blues music in Russia and explores the significance of the genre in the turbulent, postcommunist society. Russians, he explains, have taken a music originating in the "low" culture of the American South and...
Trade ReviewAn elegant, accessible seven-chapter volume that invites the reader to explore the key personae and paradoxes that comprise Russia's world of blues.... Urban blends an analysis of the role of Soviet cultural elites with the hard times that these very elites have recently encountered as nouveaux riches capitalists have altered the supply and demand of art, literature and music to suit their hardly refined tastes. As they strive to remain true to the original, throughout the book blues performers reiterate their goal of educating the public about the universal appeal of a genre that, in its unrestrained expressions of plain and passion, eschews commercialism and celebrates freedom.
-- Fran Markowitz * Soyuz: The Research Network for Postsocialist Studies *
This fascinating study clearly shows the previously unacknowledged edged role of blues to offer solace and hope in the turbulence of post-communist Russia.
-- Pamela Margles * WholeNote *
In a book of comparatively short length, Urban and his collaborator Andrei Endikimov... not only trace the history of the blues in Russia, but place them in their historical, political, economic, and sociocultural context.
-- Neil Edmunds * Russian Review *
