Gruppa Kino/ Группа Кино

Of this legendary Soviet rock group, I once told a friend that I'd translated a couple of songs. He answered, "You cannot understand. You can know the words but you cannot understand." But I'll try to explain anyway.

Gruppa Kino

Kino were led by the charismatic singer Viktor Tsoi, who wrote their music and continued to work in a boiler room... talented and man of the people, albeit that the work was out of financial necessity. This was an era when Soviet authorities disapproved of western-style rock for its anti-Soviet thinking and sound. Concerts could be banned and some rock groups, including Kino, grew in popularity thanks to people copying cassette tapes and passing them on, the musical form of samizdat.

Viktor Tsoi graffiti

In terms of the sound, Tsoi wasn't, in fairness, blessed with the greatest of singing voices but it did suit the music - sometimes sounding like 'the angry young man' and sometimes melancholy and world-weary. While taking elements of Russian pop and rock early on, they were the first band to become popular with a post-punk, alternative/ goth rock sound. Nowadays the production values seem outmoded - limited time and facilities in days when rock music wasn't an industry - but the melodies are memorable and the music is often driven by tight, syncopated rhythms and a thumping feel of someone marching angrily.

If the sound was revolutionary for young Soviets, it seems to be the lyrics that captured the imagination. The songs often dealt with the mundane such as Vosmiklassnitsa about hanging out with the titular Eighth-Grade Girl or Elektrichka describing a man lacking sleep and on a Train which is going where he doesn't want to go - certainly open to interpretation in the USSR. Perhaps his words suitably equated humdrum with struggle, also frequently referring to war and freedom in songs such as in two of their most popular: Zvezda Po Imeni Solntsa/ A Star Called the Sun and Gruppa Krovi/ Blood Group.  By the time of these songs, Mikhail Gorbachev had become president and had implemented society-wide changes. For Kino, they could now perform large-scale concerts and their popularity rocketed. This era of glasnost and perestroika found a soundtrack in the song Peremen!/ Changes! thus ensuring Kino's, and in particular Tsoi's, association with the mood and changes of the era.

Tsoi's legendary status was sealed in the worst way to attain it, an early death in a car crash - very James Dean, sadly. There are numerous memorials in Russia, most notably the wall of graffiti in an alley off Noviy Arbat, a famous Moscow Street, and not only here does the spray paint declare Tsoi zhiv... Tsoi is alive. The music and image indeed survive today; whether the spirit and possibility of change do is a very different question.

The alley off Noviy Arbat... Tsoi lives