National singing voices of the Soviet Union in the 1920s

Abstract

The aim of the study is to determine the ways of describing the national voice in the 1920s. With all the multiple functions of the voice, it is most clearly manifested in singing, and, accordingly, in relation to singing, it undergoes the greatest theorization among music critics of that time. The body of the Soviet singer is marked through social class, topos and ethnicity and is endowed with multiple emotionally charged characteristics. Ultimately, many singers of that time, precisely due to their voice features, often were marked by contemporaries with the ethnographic clichés of ‘nature’ or ‘naturalness’ and formed a musical fashion for many decades. Others, though, despite possessing similar characteristics, were persecuted. The study will be devoted to the analysis of these characteristics. The novelty of the work is determined by the use of approaches to the voice characteristic of cultural studies and Western philosophy of sound, coming from the works of R. Barthes, J. Derrida and M. Dolar, in relation to the problems and tasks of the field of soviet studies. As a result, several clusters of national voices were identified: the first of them are Jewish, Gypsy and Ukrainian voices, marked mainly through class and political affiliation with previous era. The second cluster is represented by Caucasus and Central Asian voices, which possessed, on the contrary, purely colonial-ethnographic characteristics. Conclusions are made about the high level of theorization and politization of the human voice in the early Soviet period.

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About this article

Publication history

• Received: July 18, 2024.
• Published: August 28, 2024.

Keywords

• советский голос
• национальный голос
• советская музыкальная культура
• авангард
• периодика 1920-х гг
• музыкальная критика
• Soviet voice
• national voice
• soviet music culture
• avant-garde
• periodicals of the 1920s
• music criticism

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