Dan Snow's History Hit - Soviet "Bone Music"

Episode Date: March 20, 2023

While rifling through a stall at a flea market in Leningrad- now St Petersburg- composer and music producer Stephen Coates came across something unusual. It looked like a vinyl record, but when he held it up to the light, he noticed he could see the pattern of human bones on it. It was a bootlegged record made from an old x-ray. He dubbed his find "Bone Music" and set out to find out more about this ghostly flexi-disc, and the many others he soon found like it.Known as "music on the ribs" in Russian due to the TB x-rays commonly used, these homemade vinyls were sold in back alleys and out of cars when music was ruthlessly controlled by the State in the Soviet Union. Not only was Western music- Rock'n'Roll, Jazz, Blues - banned but so were traditional Russian folk songs. Stephen travelled around Russia for years collecting Bone Music vinyl and interviewing the bootleggers and the buyers to find out just how dangerous and important it was to keep the music playing in the USSR.You can find out more about Stephen's work and Bone Music here: www.x-rayaudio.comMusic heard in this episode is courtesy of Nikolai Rechetnik.Produced by Mariana Des Forges and edited by Dougal Patmore.If you'd like to learn more, we have hundreds of history documentaries, ad-free podcasts and audiobooks at History Hit - subscribe to History Hit today!Download the History Hit app from the Google Play store.Download the History Hit app from the Apple Store.

This is History's Heroes. People with purpose, brave ideas, and the courage to stand alone. Including a pioneering surgeon who rebuilt the shattered faces of soldiers in the First World War. You know, he would look at these men and he would say, don't worry, Sonny, you'll have as good a face as any of us when I'm done with you. Join me, Alex von Tunzelman, for History's Heroes. Subscribe to History's Heroes wherever you get your podcasts. Hi everybody, welcome to Dan Snow's History. A few years ago, a musician, a composer, a performer,

was walking through the mean streets of St Petersburg. It was Leningrad at the time. And he came across a strange looking record. He took it home, he played it, and that was the spark that ignited a passion to discover the true story behind bootleg music in 1950s Russia, in the Soviet Union. Stephen Coates had just stumbled across a precious historic artifact. It was a piece of what he calls bone music. Forbidden music carved into human x-rays. This is the story of how the Soviet Union tried to stop their people

listening to their traditional music, their folk songs, but also Western music, rock and roll and jazz. It's a story about censorship, about dissidents, and people who love music so much, they believe the streets have got to have it. T-minus 10. The atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. God save the king.

No black-white unity till there is first and black unity. Never to go to war with one another again. And lift off, and the shuttle has cleared the tower. Stephen, thanks so much for coming on. Pleasure. Always a pleasure. This is a bonkers story. First of all, let's talk about 1950s Soviet Union. In my head, I've got a kind of grey image. Is that unfair? I don't think it is, actually. Partly, obviously, because all the images that we see of it are black and white or grey, in fact. But I think that in some ways, actually, it was quite a grey

world. I mean, talking to Russians who were young Soviets at the time, the way they describe it is actually quite grey and oppressive, yeah, for sure, culturally. But of course, Moscow and all these places, they were also vivid, bright, shiny, swinging places too. But I think in people's minds, they were quite great. Were they cut off from... I know we can overdo the kind of rock and roll revolution here in the West. We can get rather smug about it. But I mean, something extraordinary did happen in popular culture and music, didn't it? And were the Russians denied access to that?

They weren't. I mean, there is a story which is about Western music, rock and roll and jazz. But in terms of bone music, that's only part of the story. It's not even half, actually, because in a way, the real tragedy was that a lot of Russian music was becoming forbidden, increasingly so. So actually, it's a much more poignant story because you've got Russians cut off from their own culture,

which I think is much more tragic than necessarily them being cut off from our culture. And that would be religious in all sorts of ways. Yeah, so I suppose the three groups of Russian songs that become forbidden, anything which was made by emigres, you know, Russians who'd fled since the revolution, people like Pyotr Leshenko who were living in the West, their music became forbidden because they were forbidden.

But also it was made in certain styles, like the gypsy, what they call Russian gypsy tango, which is these very flamboyant styles which were regarded as being unhelpful for young people's passions. certain styles like the gypsy, what they call Russian gypsy tango, which are these very flamboyant styles, which were regarded as being unhelpful for young people's passions. But, you know, it got to the point where rhythms were being forbidden, particularly rhythms which might make people dance in a certain way. But also the idea of, like I say,

a single songwriter in the Soviet Union was not really possible. So their own homegrown folk music, Black Nye music, the music of the gulags and the songs that were sung in the trenches and in the kitchens and in the courtyards, songs of sort of real life, that was completely forbidden. There's no opportunity to record it. So you've got a huge amount of music which is forbidden for different reasons. Western music, all these other types of music. What music would there be if you turned on the wireless? Well, of course, what it often came down to, it seems, that the music that wasn't forbidden was the music that Stalin liked. Like most dictators, he'd send to light either jolly songs or big, simple orchestral numbers or massed choirs of people singing together about worthy staff.

Now, privately, of course, a lot of the actual communist bosses loved to listen to Western music and to forbidden emigre singers as well. But certainly in terms of what was publicly consumable, it was either sort of very worthy stuff, some beautiful music, it's unfair to that, and of course, classical music as well. So that wasn't forbidden. And would there have been an underground culture

where that music have been secretly distributed? Yeah, So this story, the story of bone music, is really the story of the people who decided to take it into their own hands. They decided to make records of songs that they wanted to listen to, which included Western songs, but also these forbidden Russian songs. The problem before the war had been, how do you do it? How do you actually make a record, right? By yourself, it's very difficult. After the war, because of certain machines that become available, which they were able to bootleg themselves to hack technology to make their own records. They call recording layers, you can make a record one at a time, not stamping it like we do with black vinyl records, but scratching the grooves of music onto a surface.

Because what this story makes it particularly significant is that what's that surface going to be? Tell me actually how you stumbled across, literally stumbled across this, wandering about the streets. I did, yeah. So like I'm a musician, so I've been performing in Russia for a long time.

And our habit, we'd play a gig and the next day we get our russian friends to take us to the flea market to buy some tat to bring back home and i was in a flea market in saint petersburg leningrad as it was and i saw this strange looking record and i asked my russian friends about it they didn't know what it was the guy who stole it was was not really interested in selling it was much more trying to guide us towards more expensive things but i kind of insisted because i like strange records and brought it back to london tried to play it and that's how it all started and could you play i could play it was 78 rpm single-sided floppy flexible and the tune on it was rock around the clock bill haley 1957 but the most significant thing, of course, is when you held it up to the light.

What did you see? I saw two skeletal hands. This was a record that had been made on an X-ray. And did you think initially that was artistic? What I thought initially was the thing which has driven me since, which was who made this, Why did they make it? And then how did they make it? Those three questions,

trying to answer those three questions, sent me down this rabbit hole of trying to understand what on earth this record was about. It wasn't alone. This was not a random record, was it? It wasn't. It was actually part of an underground culture. I mean, I call it bow music. In the Soviet Union, they would call it music on the ribs,

for obvious reasons, right? Because quite a lot of these x-rays were of people's ribs. In the Soviet Union, like in the West, you had to be tested for TB. So they generated a huge amount of x-rays of people's ribcages. And as it happens, x-ray film at that time is flammable. So orders have been given to the Soviet hospitals that they had to get rid of their used x-rays. And initially, a very small group of music aficionados, entrepreneurial types, anti-establishment types, music lovers,

had worked out that it's possible to make a record with a used x-ray. No way. Yeah, so you've got a ready source of blank media, as we call it. What format were x-rays delivered on? It's like those things you see in ER, people sort of holding up to the lights. They're kind of hard, bendy plastic. Yeah, yeah. So quite thick in those days, particularly it's quite thick, slightly rubbery plastic.

Come on a square or a rectangle, that's how you'd get them. And once they've been used, you put a plate on it, you draw a line around it, and then you get a pair of scissors and you cut it into a circle. Now, traditionally, I don't know if this is true, it might be a myth, but they used to say that the way that they made the central spindle hole was getting a cigarette and making the end really hot and then burning the hole in the middle i'm not sure about that because of course these were flammable it sounds like a bit risky to me to actually do that but who knows that's so cool and were they made on is it right an industrial scale do you think or was this a

cottage industry tall cottage industry so it's something that took place outside of the supervision and the site, of course, of the authorities. So in workshops, secret workshops, in dachas, which is the kind of Russian word for a country cottage. And each record is made individually and in real time. So you get whatever you're copying, say another record, and you play that out and it plays in in real time so you get whatever you're copying say another record and you play that out and it plays in in real time so it's quite a slow laborious business and actually needs a quite skilled hand as well so the results were quite variable depending on who was doing it i'm getting flashbacks to me sitting in my room as a kid making mixtapes my girlfriend with the twin cassette thing but this is even more complicated

so i mean i don't let's not get into the science but what you as one record is playing on it with the needle somehow that needle is connected to something carving a groove in another record yeah so the recording laid it's a bit like a gramophone or record player in reverse rather than reading a groove which is the needle on a record player does it's actually writing it so you send an audio signal in listen it's magic i don't understand if it works that somehow makes this cutting head vibrate in a certain way and it scratches the groove of that into the surface so they're pretty accurate reproductions yeah they can still sound amazing but often they sounded terrible okay but it didn't matter because this was... It's the vibe. It's the music that people loved. So if you're a young person in Leningrad,

and, you know, you're hearing Little Richard for the first time, or you're an older person who's hearing a forbidden tango by Pyotr Leshenko, that was what was important, not that it sounded a bit rough and ready. You're listening to Dan Snow's History Hit. There's more to come. Why were medieval priests so worried that women were going to seduce men with fish

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you possibly want? Listen to Betwixt the Sheets today, wherever it is that you get your podcasts. A podcast by History Hit. This is history's heroes. People with purpose, brave ideas, and the courage to stand alone. Including a pioneering surgeon who rebuilt the shattered faces of soldiers in the First World War. You know, he would look at these men and he would say, don't worry, Sonny, you'll have as good a face as any of us when I'm done with you. Join me, Alex von Tunzelman, for History's Heroes. Subscribe to History's Heroes wherever you get your podcasts. They're being sold on street corners, out of the back hospitals.

How are you getting hold of them? If you had a connection, if you knew somebody who was selling, you would go into their place, right? That's probably the safest way to do it. If you don't know somebody who's selling, you would go to certain places, flea markets, corners of courtyards, out-of-the-way places, and you would approach a dealer. And it was risky business. How did you get the records? They smuggled in through foreign connections? So in something like Leningrad, which is a port, a little bit like Liverpool, I suppose, you've got sailors coming and going

from the West, right? So they could bring stuff back. You're also near Western Europe, so you could maybe hack into radio, even though they tried to jam the radio signals, places like Leningrad, it was easy to get them and you could record from Western radio.

We were broadcasting, say we, I mean, the Americans were broadcasting jazz into the Soviet Union deliberately. Or the sons and daughters of high level apparatchiks and diplomats, the sort of people who had the opportunity to travel abroad, could bring back records and smuggled, yeah, all sorts of different ways. And records, in fact, from before the war, before the people who made them had been forbidden. Tell me about some of the people that you interviewed.

before the people who made them had been forbidden. Tell me about some of the people that you interviewed. So Rudolf Fuchs was the first person that I met. He's very old, lives in St. Petersburg still. His apartment is full of strange things, recording machines and musical instruments. He was a young guy in the 50s. He became a bootlegger.

He fell in with a group of bootleggers. He became a bootlegger himself, making these records. He went to prison for two years. He got busted. Informed on, of course, it was Soviet Union. And he sort of opened it up for us because he told us about the culture of it, how they did it, where they got the stuff from. I interviewed a guy called Mikhail Farafanov, same thing in Moscow.

He was a 17-year-old. He was in Berlin with his parents when he was little at the end of the war, and his mum came across a stack of jazz records, and he fell in love with jazz when he was about six years old and then when he was about 17 and he came to moscow on his own he fell in with bootleggers and he took pride in making very good quality bootlegs of jazz records and introducing them to people so for him it was money in it for sure it was a cool thing to do a for him, it was money in it, for sure. It was a cool thing to do, a bit risky, but there was money in it. But also he enjoyed introducing people to Ella Fitzgerald, to these records that they might not really know about. So there's a curatorial aspect of it for him as well.

Is there a link between them becoming distanced, or were they just entrepreneurs and bootleggers, or did they inevitably get involved in politics and opposition to the regime? They were completely apolitical. So I think the nearest thing that we can imagine now is something like hackers. You know, like anti-establishment young people, a bit scallywag-ish.

There's a bit of money to be made. They like living on the edge. And they were music lovers mostly at the beginning. Later on, of course, a lot more people got involved who were just after the money. But none of them, I think, as far as I know, were political. When they were arrested and taken to court, they were accused of that. They were accused of trying to bring down the Soviet system. They were accused of trying to pervert young people. But that just wasn't true, really, at all, actually. They just believed that

you should be able to listen to what you wanted to listen to, with whom you wanted to listen to it, and when. You know, that was it. Freedom in music, that was it. So have you built a big collection of bone music now? I have, yeah, quite a big collection. You're very poignant listening to it because you're thinking each one of these, made by an individual illegally, it's a big statement. It's like, I love this tune,

you need to listen to this as well. I think it is, yeah. Each one of them sounds different because it's made individually. They look different because they've got different parts of the human anatomy on them. And some of them, without any doubt, were treasured by people as kind of badges of

individual identity and anti-establishment you know what it's like when you're a young person you're defined by the music that you love right well with that music is forbidden and difficult to get and risky to own even more important to you right you must have been cool if you had a shelf of bone music you were pretty cool i think so but also you'd have to be quite careful you know it was uh and the other thing to remember about these records is that they don't last that long. So 10 plays in the early days when they were using steel gramophone needles and it would be done. Maybe later when you've got an electric needle, like on a record player, 30 plays, and then you just chuck them away and buy another one.

You've showed me ones with hands on them, with femurs, every single body part imaginable. Skulls, yeah, absolutely. It's a question when we show these sometimes, if there's a doctor or a radiologist in the audience, they come up because they're not interested in the music. They want to say, oh, you can tell where he fractured his tibia or his fibula or whatever. So it'd be a special thing to have one. You might have them for a party or something and then you play them all out and yeah i think young people would gather outside the thought is particularly you know in the 50s it was very dangerous in the 40s while stalin was still alive you know if you

got busted for that you could be in very very bad trouble but i think later on still you argue the the young hipster youths would gather secretly and you know they'd have their own parties and play these things probably quite quietly i did ask somebody who you know, they'd have their own parties and play these things probably quite quietly. I did ask somebody who, you know, at the time was like, weren't you afraid that people were going to hear you? And he said, yeah, we used to put, like, Little Richard on, but super quiet. Just with your ear right next to it so you could just hear it. I talked about it being poignant. It must be also very poignant now that Russia is...

It hardly ever emerged from it, but it's being really swept back into a world of very closed opinions and shutting off people's access to the outside world and new music and ideas and thinking. I was supposed to be in Moscow in July and I was supposed to be in Kiev in May and everything's happened. And it's been a shock, I think, for all of us, but lots of my Russian friends to see how quickly the clock turned back. And in terms of cultural censorship, well, there's no point in censoring music anymore. It hasn't got the power that it once had. And also it's impossible because of the internet. But the cultural censorship is very much back on the

table. You know, there are certain words you can't use, right? You can't use the word war. Playwrights getting arrested, writers getting arrested. So it's always been there, actually, that's the truth of it. But it is back with the vengeance, unfortunately. I wonder what, in 20 years' time, it will emerge, the equivalent of bone. Because there will be an equivalent of bone music. I wonder what that will be. Isn't that fascinating? Yeah, what would it be now?

There'll be groups of young people, I'm sure, in Russia now who are plotting and planning and doing stuff. This feels like it's been a personal sort of mission for you. What is it about the bone music that you think just obviously fires you up? Well, you've got these artefacts, which are images of pain and damage, but they're impressed with the sounds of pleasure, right?

And they are photographs of the interior of Soviet citizens containing the music that they secretly loved, right? They look extraordinary. And so within that they secretly loved, right? They look extraordinary. And so within that whole artefact, I think, you know, if you love music and music has affected you in your life, there's something very powerful about it. But far away, in a strange place This is History's Heroes. People with purpose, brave ideas and the courage to stand alone. Including a pioneering surgeon who rebuilt the shattered faces of soldiers in the First World War. You know, he would look at these men and he would say, don't worry, Sonny.

You'll have as good a face as any of us when I'm done with you. Join me, Alex von Tunzelman, for History's Heroes. and I'm done with you. Join me, Alex von Tunzelman, for History's Heroes. Subscribe to History's Heroes wherever you get your podcasts.