The Soviet TV Show 'Song of the Year': The Socialist-Realist 'Canon' in Popular Music

• In Event: Liberation from Socialist Realism or Its Transformations?: Literature and Other Arts in the Late Soviet Period

Abstract

My paper deals with “Song of the Year”, a Soviet TV show in the 1970s and early 1980s. It was a television festival of pop songs, broadcasting a kind of “socialist-realist canon” of popular music. I will discuss the peculiarities of the repertoire, the process of selecting the performers, dress code and behavioural norms. Particular attention will be paid to the ways in which songs were theatricalised.

Author

• Daria Zhurkova, State Institute for Art Studies (Russia)