Russia Gets the Blues

Michael 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...

Michael Urban is Professor of Politics at the University of California, Santa Cruz. His books include The Rebirth of Politics in Russia. Andrei Evdokimov hosts All This Blues, a weekly radio show in Moscow.

This fascinating study clearly shows the previously unacknowledged edged role of blues to offer solace and hope in the turbulence of post-communist Russia.

Neil Edmunds:

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.

Fran Markowitz:

An 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.

Nancy Condee, Department of Slavic Language and Literature and Director, Graduate Program for Cultural Studies, University of Pittsburgh:

Tracing Russian blues from the late 1960s to the present day, Michael Urban provides the first extensive account of its history and complex internal struggles. Blues culture in Russia—the First Moscow Blues Festival, the Arbat Blues Club, and the Dr. Blues Radio Show of the 1990s—is situated in a nuanced, comparative argument about the roots of slavery and serfdom, drawing on a range of cultural-studies theorists to foreground its connections to both alternative communities within the second world and to the global music industry. Both scholars and blues aficionados will find Urban's book an engaging read and an invaluable resource.

Mark Slobin, Wesleyan University:

This book riffs on the postsocialist blues, with a groovy blend of ethnomusicology, sociology, and politics. The 'Russian soul' gets a major makeover as Urban places Russia on the world music map for the first time.