2024-12-24
22 分钟At a time when Vladimir Putin is attempting to redraw the Iron Curtain, we revisit an earlier episode in which we take a trip back to the Soviet Union circa 1985 when four American musicians smuggled messages in and out of the Soviet Union — with music.
From Recorded Future News and prx, this is Click Here.
Hey, it's Dena.
The Click Here team is taking a break from producing brand new episodes in December, so we can work on some great stories.
We want to bring you in 2025.
So we started going through the archives, and we have a story we thought would be perfect for the holiday season.
It's about a group of musicians who went behind the Iron curtain in the mid-1980s and smuggled out secret information with coded music.
Take A listen.
It's 1985 in Soviet Russia.
Mikhail Gorbachev is the head of the Communist Party, and his great opening to the west, glasnost and perestroika, is still just a glimmer in his eye.
1985 was still the time of that old Soviet Union, the one with defections and the kgb.
And into this world stepped the most unlikely of people, four members of a klezmer ensemble from Boston.
Klezmer is a kind of Jewish folk music.
It's secular music.
And if you've heard Fiddler on the Roof, it's kind of in that style, but more authentic.
Meryl Goldberg is a professor of music at Cal State San Marcos, and that's her on the saxophone.
But back in the day, she was part of a pretty famous klezmer ensemble called the Klezmer Conservatory Band.
And they had heard about a group in the Soviet Union that went by a very intriguing name, the Phantom Orchestra.
So we first heard of the Phantom Orchestra through the network of people who were working in the 80s, trying to help people escape from the Soviet Union.
They were musicians like them.
We started thinking, we ought to find out about these people.