The Ethnic Component in the Russian Mass Music

Thearticle is devoted to an actual problem of the mass musical culture — implementation of folklore material into the mass music fi eld of view. The process of commercialization and “massifi cation” of folklore is accompanied by disappearance of indigenous ethnic traditions and inclusion some of their means of expressiveness into the global, supranational cultural space. The phenomenon of ethnica is regarded as an important participant of the modern popular music industry. The author attempts to classify the ethnic segment, on the basis of a number of parameters: its closeness to/distance from the folklore original, its geographic and stylistic background (jazz, rock, pop). It is noted that the interest in ethnic style was a reaction to the growing integration trends in the world masscult practice and indicated the need to overcome the internal unilateralism and certain stylistic uniformity of the world pop scene. As a result, the Slavic, gypsy and oriental styles, native for the Russian mass music, were complemented by the celtica, latina, reggae, balkanism, and other “alien” styles. With all this, the most creative approach to the folk material is realized by jazz and rock musicians, while the eth-no-pop is limited to certain elements of folklore, used as an original colorful material. The article investigates the mechanisms of implementation of the “alien” traditions into the auditory experience of Russian listeners. There is put out a hypothesis about further dissolution of ethnicity in the popular music, which is adequate to the current multicultural processes.

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