chris Golya (chris.golya@port.ac.uk)
Mon, 15 Nov 1999 12:05:49 +0000
from the Guardian web site
http://www.newsunlimited.co.uk/observer/life/story/0,3879,103341,00.html
Hip of the old block
Some of Russia's disaffected teenagers are
turning to home-grown hip-hop in a big way,
believing it will bring structure to their lives.
But apart from the music, graffiti and
break-dancing, there are also the guns
Oliver Swanton
Sunday November 14, 1999
Twenty-eight-year-old Kirill has just told me
hip-hop saved his life. He isn't being
melodramatic - Russians only really go in for
melancholy. He first saw break dancing in 1985
on a videotape smuggled into the USSR. It looked
exotic, romantic even. Compared to his 'grey
existence', it was a Technicolor dream world. He
quickly became obsessed. Hip-hop defined his life,
he says, saving him from a career of violent
crime - and ultimately from prison. 'I still don't
smoke or drink,' he says. 'This is because of my
break dancing.'
We're standing under a bright blue sky with the
rest of Kirill's break-dance crew, Jam Style and
Da Boogie, in the Olympic Village, built for the
1980 Moscow Games, looking at some of the latest
graffiti by local gang members. Most of it is
crude, no more than tags marking out rival
territories, but here and there Kirill sees potential.
Kirill and his friends are local celebrities. Word
of their appearance at the park has travelled
quickly, and a group of curious teens has gathered
in the shade of the silver birch trees. Before the
currency crashed (again) last year, Kirill and co
ran a hip-hop shop, selling records, trainers and
clothes. They still have a weekly slot on national
television and a radio show. As part of the annual
Moscow Day festivities, run-ning throughout the
weekend of my stay, they will also perform for
the mayor and assorted dignitaries.
Slowly and tentatively, the teens emerge from the
shade, clutching school exercise books. Their
requests for autographs and their keen desire for
advice and approval of their own graffiti softens
Kirill considerably. Earlier, as we drove through
the no-man's-land between two rival gang turfs,
he was very despondent. On the winners and losers
scale in post-communist Russia, the teenagers
hereabouts belong to the vast majority of losers.
By the time they turn 15, all too many are
embroiled in the ever-increasing number of
street gangs.
Ridiculously cheap heroin is flooding into Moscow
from the former Soviet Republics of Azerbaijan
and Tadzhikistan. For now, glue and vodka are still
the preferred options - a litre bottle of vodka
costs less than the imported Western chocolate
bars advertised on huge neon signs all over the
city - but it's only a matter of time.
Disenchanted, disenfranchised, bored and angry,
young Russians are fast losing their way, worries
Kirill. They take solace in American gangsta rap
and its stories of alienation and glorification of
guns and easy money. 'Kids are lazy, they always
look for the easy way,' opines Kirill. 'They copy
the hand signals, get a gun and think they're the
big man - a banger [serious gang member] - but
there's more to hip-hop than the baggy trousers,
trainers and guns.
'Hip-hop is about building yourself up. We try to
show the kids what you can do with your body and
with your mind,' says Kirill, tapping his temple.
'When I grew up, the future seemed bleak, but
today it's sometimes worse. These kids need
hip-hop even more than I did. The attraction of
preacher come to save them.'
The preaching profession can be a dangerous one.
Two years ago, Kirill and his crew talked on the
radio about what they regarded as the negative
lyrics that dominate gangsta rap. Afterwards, they
were jumped outside the radio station by a gang
armed with motorcycle chains and knives. 'We
didn't dis[respect] nothing,' pleads Kirill. 'We
just explained how we felt. They didn't see it that
way.' Two of their number were hospitalised. It
was touch and go for one of them.
There have always been haves and have-nots in
Russia. Once it was Communist Party membership
that ensured access to life's privileges - now it is
the almighty greenback. Although shops officially
only accept Russian roubles, the US dollar is
actually king. It ensures savings are not wiped out
when the rouble crashes, that top-of-the-range
Mercedes can be 'purchased' (usually stolen to
order in Germany) and customs 'negotiated'
(bribed). When the rest of the population is paid
- when being the eternal question - they get paid
in roubles. Roubles buy life's basics - just.
Meanwhile, the 'Novy Russky' (new rich) holiday
in Turkey, sometimes Paris and London, and kit
their children out in the latest Hilfiger and Nike gear.
Back in the centre of Moscow at the Adidas
roadshow, which has set up shop in the shadow of
the Kremlin, the contrast could not have been
clearer. Hip-hop - or street beat, as it is called
locally, to include the big beat of Fatboy Slim and
the break beat of The Prodigy - has never been
bigger in the former Soviet Union. On both the
Saturday and Sunday, more than 5,000 Russian
teenagers descended on Red Square to watch the
bands, break dancers and DJs on stage. Because
the show was free - unlike the increasing number
of nightclubs - it drew teens from both sides of
he ever-widening financial divide. In fact, a
mutual love affair with street beat is one of the
few things those with dollars and those without
still have in common. They don't even look alike.
On Saturday, as the sun shone, the immediate
impression was how international the audience
looked. Drawstring Nike rucksacks were on every
other back, baggy FUBU trousers alternated with
three-quarter-length Mambo shorts, dog chains
slung from back to front pocket, American hockey
and basketball team colours were displayed. To a
teen, they were clearly wired-up members of the
Digital Village, and wouldn't have looked out of
place on London's Camden High Street, or Melrose
Avenue in Los Angeles.
Then, as the night drew in, the more boisterous,
definitely drunker Russian teens made their
presence felt. Skirting the crowd in packs, they
wore dirty, nondescript, pale blue denims, their
shaved heads peppered with scars. Kids no more
than 4ft high drank vodka straight up (from the
bottle). Others illicitly tagged a billboard
advertising a $30,000 Saab that none of them
could ever hope to afford - this despite the
militia's habit of breaking teenage arms for such
offences. When the music picked up, they were the
ones who immediately formed a circle, break
dancing and pogo-ing (often at the same time).
These are the teens who most interest
Russian-born London DJ Vadim. Unlike the Novy
Russky, these poorer teens are really 'living'
hip-hop, Vadim maintains. It isn't just another
Western label to consume, but an integral part of
their identity. When they can't afford the gear,
they improvise, making music without Akai
samplers and squirting paint on to walls using
hypodermic syringes instead of spray cans.
Although they clearly cannot afford Vadim's CDs
on Ninja Tune or his own label, Jazz Fudge, their
aggression and determination will, he hopes,
drive the hip-hop scene in Russia.
'The only reason,' believes Vadim, 'that hip-hop
got a toehold in America is because people could
relate to what the rappers were saying. They
represented the disillusioned youth and based the
scene around free block parties where anything
went and people could make up their own rules.'
It's worth noting that in the past 20 years, the
music of disillusioned American youth has become
a billion-dollar industry that outsells all other
types of music and dominates popular music
charts all over the world. To date, Russia's
hip-hop acts have been dismal copies of their
American predecessors. Like many of the pop
bands in Russia, they've often been bankrolled by
'real money' (Mafia cash) and, despite their
popularity, are far removed from what's
happening on the street. But, like the gang graffiti
at the Olympic Village, there is a glimmer among
the dross: a three-man DJ and MC outfit from
Moscow called Legal Business.
This month, Legal Business are releasing an
album that is expected to change Russian youth
culture for good. It is a watershed moment,
because Legal Business have cracked it: they've
learned to 'flow' (rap) convincingly in Russian.
Perverting the pronunciation of the language,
accentuating certain letters over others and
making up their own slang, they're the first
Russians to make the genre truly their own.
'Hip-hop is much more than a soundtrack for the
new fast-food culture,' says DJ Tonic, Dimitry
Semenov. 'It's not just a new pair of Adidas
trainers to buy, it's everything. There is a very
real hunger for Russian hip-hop like ours.'
The teens, especially those without dollars, are
hungry for it. American hip-hop pioneer Ice T's
performance the night before had been
perfunctory, at best. Despite his lack of
enthusiasm, however, the reason he actually
failed to ignite any interest was that the crowd had
heard it all before - and they didn't understand it
first time round, either.
Legal Business, on the other hand, speak their
language. The crowd relates to them not simply
because they rap in Russian, but because their
more cerebral story rhymes are about a life they
recognise. Already, before the album has even
been released, other younger Russian rappers are
copying their style.
Vadim hopes he is witnessing the stirrings of a
genuine youth-culture movement in Russia. He
could be right. After a short dalliance with dodgy
soft rock and then house and techno, a new
generation of teens is emerging with no
meaningful recollection of the Soviet era - the
current crop of 15-year-olds was barely walking
when Gorbachev first introduced the concept of
perestroika and glasnost to an unsuspecting world.
The former Soviet Union has never seen anything
like it. Ten years ago, the streets and squares of
Moscow were empty, bar the odd well-disciplined
crocodile of children on an official school trip.
Today, they're hanging out everywhere, in gangs,
tribes, crews, with their own dress codes,
musical tastes, getting into trouble.
A more static illustration of the new Russia can be
found at October Square. The square, built to
commemorate the October Revolution of 1917,
was a quiet place for reverential reflection.
Today, the statue of Lenin looks down on his huge
marble base and sees 'truck marks' (long grooves
created by skaters crashing their boards on to the
base and skidding along it). A few years' worth of
skateboarders pulling jumps and greasing up the
statue's base with butter and lard has rounded off
the hard, regimental corners.
These are confusing times - and not just for the
old-guard communists. As hip-hop beats bounce
off the walls of the Kremlin, disturbing the peace
at the eternal flame, militia - complete with old
Soviet-style peaked caps - look on with disdain.
The problem nowadays is that the kids have no
respect for authority. And they're so angry, too.
As night falls on Sunday, and some have been
drinking for days, the mood turns ugly. Missiles
begin to fly on to the stage. When a black girl
appears during the fashion show, the gang hand
signals are raised and heavier glass bottles
thrown. She is escorted away and the militia take
up positions around the crash barriers, glaring
into the crowd, daring them to misbehave.
Initially, this alone quietens the proceedings but,
as it gets darker and the atmosphere becomes even
more drunken, the bottles start crashing on to the
stage again. When MC Pans, a black rapper with
Legal Business, appears, it goes right off.
Pans is helped from the stage, his head bleeding
profusely. From the back of the square, the army
charges the crowd, batons raised shoulder-high. A
dozen bloody, unconscious teenagers are wrenched
out.
Preaching to this lot is some task for Kirill. The
troublemakers are identified as skinheads. The
skins in Russia love hip-hop, but hate blacks. The
consensus is that they're not committed racists,
they're just angry and blacks are a convenient, if
hard to find, target. In the absence of an ethnic
minority, they turn on each other, usually at
football matches. They just want to fight
somebody, anybody, I am informed.
The illogical behaviour of the local skins,
however, is the least of Kirill's problems. The
gangsta-rap glorification of guns has the potential
to completely eclipse a few drunken yobs.
Already, in the city's hip-hop clubs, young men
sport handguns. Most at least keep their guns
under their shirts, or in their cars, but several
proudly display their 9mm automatics by tucking
them into their belts.
The following day, I watched an eight-year-old
break dancing with his friends. As he executed a
superb headspin, a small replica 9mm handgun
fell from his baggy jeans.
I had my translator ask him why he carried the
toy. The boy looked confused. He didn't understand
why I had to ask. It was part of his hip-hop look,
obviously, he muttered, suddenly shy. He already
had the baggy trousers and the trainers, and one
day - for less than $100 - perhaps a real
handgun. Will Kirill manage to persuade him that
hip-hop needs none of these things?
¥ DJ Vadim's LP 'USSR: Life from the Other Side'
is out now on Ninja Tune. An instrumental version
comes out tomorrow
-- Time is precious. Waste it wisely.Chris Golya Centre for New Media Research School of Art Design & Media University of Portsmouth Lion Gate Building Lion Terrace Portsmouth PO1 3HF
Tel wk: 01705 842297 mobile :07713477543 Fax: 01705 842077
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