2024-09-17
28 分钟Monocle’s Andrew Mueller finds out about Soviet-era rock’n’roll in Ukraine ahead of the release of ‘Even The Forest Hums: Ukrainian Sonic Archives 1971-1996’. Plus: we discuss a new biography about filmmaker Agnes Varda and hear from Serbian performance artist Marina Abramovic. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Hello and welcome to Monocle on Culture.
I'm Robert Bound.
This week we have an eclectic mix of stories for your ears and for your entertainment.
We'll be finding out about rock music in Soviet Ukraine, exploring the incredible career of one of France's very best auteurs.
And we'll be finishing the episode with an interview with a little known Serbian performance artist.
I wonder if you can guess who that might be.
There is heaps to get through on today's show, so let's get stuck right in.
In Soviet era Ukraine, rock n roll was frowned upon doubly by Moscow authorities who were keen on neither decadent capitalist pop music nor expressions of a recognizable Ukrainian cultural identity.
But with a combination of ingenuity and bravery, a modern Ukraine music scene was constructed, embracing folk, rock, jazz and electronica and endowing them all with a distinctly Ukrainian flavour.
A genre which became known as Mustache Funk.
These artists are celebrated on a spectacular new collection entitled Even the Forest Ukrainian Sonic Archives 1971-1996.
The liner notes for Even the Forest Hums were written by the Ukrainian writer, DJ and filmmaker Vitaly Bardetskiye, better known as Bard.
Bard joined Monocle's Andrew Muller from Kiev.
And Andrew began by asking Bard how he would define Mustache Funk.
It has not much to do to the music itself.
It's more like a vision, you know, like an idea.
Could be psychedelic row, could be early electronic music, it could be ambient, but it's still like, you can brand it like crowd roll.
The same thing is all about Mustache Up Funk.
I created this name myself because I used to be a music journalist in the 90s.
So I used to be more into punk and post punk music and some techno music.