This is the third episode XYU BOUHE fuck the war – collaged for you from soviet and postsoviet antiwar music of all genres. This series is put together by Arkadiy Kots band – antifascist folk-punk, riot cantautore group formerly based in Moscow.
And here we will focus on Two particular authors
Galina Ustvolskaya – symphonic and camera music composer of the post World War Two period. Whose life and work was severely affected by the experience of that war. Even if she had never expressed any interest in politics or even social life, she was actually always monastically and frugally dig into her music, - her only refuge. But we can draw a clear line through the trauma of her early life during the fascist invasion in Europe and Soviet Union 80 years ago and her method of creating her music in this clearly painful way.
She herself could not apply any lable to her work, she was saying: There is no link whatsoever between my music and that of any other composer, living or dead
Critics called her a woman with the hammer for a reason, in her mature period she uses the hammer as a percussion instrument, and the octets of upright basses, and a fist-hammering technique to play grand piano.
Another feature we put in dialague with Ustvolskaya – is Egor Letov and Grazhdanskaya Oborona his flagship band. Fans of Letov are uncountable including Arkadiy Kots band ourselves. and he is referred to as a Father of Siberian Punk, which is a very specific phenomena of late soviet underground music scene. Letov died 14 years ago, he was only 42.
Here we collected for you some of the most clearly antiwar manifestation of Letov. Who in the time of war become even more required by the people who oppose the invasion of putin in Ukraine.
Buon ascolto, comrades
XYU BOUHE