Rap is (or was) popular in Russia. Центр (tsentr) or Centr is one of the pioneers of modern rap. It began in Moscow in 2004, founded by Rolexx (now known as Гуф or Guf) and the Princip – see more on Wikipedia.
Padarok
Also from there: ‘Initially, they wrote an unofficial album Подарок (Podarok / Gift), but only 13 copies of it were made and given to their close friends for the New Year.’
Качели (katsjeli) means swing, and that’s also the title of their first album (released in 2007, more on Википедия = Wikipedia in Russian). This is the title track, and too beautiful to be left unmentioned are the words свои качели качают каждого. Google Translate renders this as ‘Swing each swing,’ and that’s too poetic to correct.
Studio version without moving image here, lyrics here, and here’s a live version from 2010.
Те дни (Te dni) is from the same year and means ‘Those days’. Я не забуду никогда те дни (the chorus): I will never forget those days. Lyrics here.
Собаки Павлова (sabaki Pavlova) = Pavlov’s dogs (2012), about dogs and people and the things they do. Explicit lyrics.
Bonus: Гудини (Houdini) – Centr in 2015, featuring Каспийский Груз.
Most of the music here can also be found in an
R1 playlist on YouTube (from recent to old).
Best Russian Music in the
Лучшая русская музыка.
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Music
Anyone who wants to present Russian music cannot ignore Zemfira. Popular and mainstream – millions of records sold – but also distinctly idiosyncratic. The music is usually accessible (we categorize it under Pop), but the attitude is rock.
Raw Anti-Putin punk from Nizhny Novgorod / Нижний Новгород. Loosely based on ‘Maggie’ by The Exploited.
From the green city of Zelenograd / Зеленоград. Dreamy indie-folk with a melancholic undertone. Created by Mikhail Rodionov (1992).
The alarm blares (Ревёт тревога), the road awaits (ждёт дорога). They are many (Их немало), we are few (нас немного). We are in an unjust world (Мы в несправедливом мире) tin wolves in the shooting range (Жестяные волки в тире).
The word offret is Swedish and means ‘sacrifice’; the band Offret is Russian and makes heavy music. The link between the word and the band: a 1986 film in Swedish by the Russian Andrei Tarkovsky.
A band from Saint Petersburg that makes a kind of post-punk/indie-pop. Not for long yet, so not much material yet. However, they already have a few very successful tracks with original music videos. До свиданья, дорогая is the Russian title for the film The Goodbye Girl (1977), but it has nothing to do with it.
