| Tbilisi Rock Festival | |
|---|---|
| Genre | Rock music |
| Dates | March 8 to March 16, 1980 |
| Location(s) | Tbilisi,Georgian SSR,Soviet Union |
| Founders | Georgian National Philharmonic Hall, the Union of Composers of the Georgian SSR, the Republican Center for Youth Culture |
Spring Rhythms: Tbilisi-80 (Russian:Весенние ритмы. Тбилиси-80,Vesennye ritmy. Tbilisi-80) was a musical event held inTbilisi, capital of theGeorgian SSR,Soviet Union, from March 8 to March 16, 1980.[1][2] It was the first officialrock festival in the Soviet Union[3] and is frequently considered the turning point in the history of Soviet andRussian rock music.[4]
The festival was organized by the Georgian National Philharmonic Hall, the Union of Composers of the Georgian SSR, and the Republican Center for Youth Culture at the GeorgianKomsomolCentral Committee. The acclaimed Russian musicologist and the first Soviet rock-criticArtemy Troitsky was also heavily involved in organizing the event. The organizers enjoyed the support ofEduard Shevardnadze, the contemporary First Secretary of Georgian Communist Party, who is said to have sought, in this way, to pacify the Georgian youth increasingly involved in nationalist and dissident activities after theApril 1978 demonstrations in Tbilisi, and to nurture his image as a liberal leader.
Although dubbed by some as a "SovietWoodstock", the festival was essentially a state-sanctioned musical competition with the declared aim "to promote the development of original SovietVIA[5] music... and to discover new talented performers and composers." The jury, formed by the officially established Soviet composers and musicologists, was chaired byYuri Saulsky and includedMurad Kazhlayev,Giya Kancheli,Konstantin Pevzner,Vladimir Rubashevsky,Arkadi Petrov, and others. Many suspected that the festival was an attempt by the Soviet establishment to channel the Soviet rock movement into a controllable ideological vessel. However, the event was truly democratic in that it allowed amateur performers to contest on equal terms with professional musicians. Over twenty groups from seventeen cities of the Soviet Union arrived in Tbilisi to take part in the event. Yet, several notable bands, for example Sergei Rudnitsky'sAraks and Aleksey Romanov’sVoskresenie were not invited to take part in the competition.
The first prize was awarded to two acts:Gunnar Graps'sMagnetic Band andMashina Vremeni. Magnetic Band, a group fromTallinn,Estonia, performed a mixture ofjazz-rock,blues andfunk and was noted for their instrumental mastership. Mashina Vremeni is a rock band fromMoscow and led byAndrey Makarevich, which fascinated the public with their poetic lyrics and, through this success, firmly established themselves on the Soviet rock scene.
The second prize was won byAlexander Sitkovetsky’sart rock groupAutograph from Moscow, Gunesh fromAshkhabad,Turkmen SSR, playing jazz-rock based on Turkmen folk melodies, and Labyrinth fromBatumi,Adjar ASSR, Georgia, which performed a half-hour composition marryingfolk-rock with traditional Georgian choral music.
The professional Georgiansoft-rock bandVIA-75 led byRobert Bardzimashvili, to the surprise of many, received only the third prize which they shared withDialog led by the organistKim Breitburg fromDonetsk,Ukrainian SSR, the eclectic band Integral fromSaratov,Russian SFSR, and Tip-Top fromRiga,Latvian SSR, whose success was largely indebted to the singer Harald Simanis.
A popular Georgianbeat-band Blitz led by Valery Kocharov was awarded a special prize of the audience.
The compilation of the award-winning songs was released as a2 LPLaureaty festivalya "Vesenniye ritmy, Tbilisi-80" (Russian:Лауреаты фестиваля «Весенние ритмы, Тбилиси-80»,lit. 'Laureates of the Festival Spring Rhythms Tbilisi-80') by the Soviet state-runrecord labelMelodiya in 1981.[6]
Among the notable participants, the veteran Soviet rock bands VIA-Ariel andStas Namin Group did not win any prizes.Boris Grebenshchikov’sAquarium was also left without laurels, but the band's outlandish stage antics made Aquarium into a symbol of the Soviet alternative culture. The jury members walked out of a concert when the musicians drank port wine right on the stage and made provocative body movements, with Grebenshchikov playing his guitar in the prone position. The show came as a shock to the organizers and led to an effective ban of the band.[7] Yet, Aquarium managed to organize a second concert inGori, Georgia, in a spacious circus hall near the birthplace ofJoseph Stalin. The concert was filmed by aFinnish TV crew and the segments were included into a 40-minute film of the Tbilisi festival calledSoviet Rock.[8]
