MOSCOW — These Russians wear hip American baseball caps on their heads, not frumpy fur hats. The guiding force in their lives is no longer Marxism--it's MTV. And they favor the frenetic beat of rap music over the delicate strains of Tchaikovsky.
This is the hip-hop generation, Russian-style.
In much the same way as it captured the voice of a generation of young Americans, rap music has caught on among trendy Russians. Although the number of fans may be relatively small when compared to lovers of pop or rock, they are die-hard.
Since rap music came to Russia in 1990--when Western-style radio stations and music television came to the then-Soviet Union--dozens of rap acts have appeared around the nation. Rap is a natural in Russia, the homeland of such great poets as Alexander Pushkin and Mikhail Lermontov, where society values expression through verse.
"Rap music means something," college student and rap lover Anatoly Makarov said as he swayed to the beat of a rapper performing in a Moscow nightclub. "It's the only kind of music that talks about the problems we're having here: the crime, the government, the economy. The last thing I want to hear is some Russian pop star crooning about love."
While pop music singers warble about dating and the weather, some Russian rappers are launching a new effort to address Russia's social problems head-on.
"Hip-hop is a movement for all young people," Vladislav Valov, lead singer of the rap group Bad Balance, explained. "We can give each other ideas to help deal with society's wrongs."
Valov, 23, is one of the founders of an organization called Hip-Hop Against Violence (in Russian: Heep-Hop Protiv Haciliya), which was founded in February by some of Russia's top rappers as a way to politicize musicians, artist, dancers and their fans.
"We've had enough of this mayhem where we live. We're ready to do something," explained Peter Martiyanov, a 28-year-old businessman who is the enterprise's president. "We decided to unite all people who like hip-hop, all people who are interested in this culture." There are no accurate figures for the number of rap fans in Russia, nor on sales of rap albums.
Hip-Hop Against Violence has already begun a series of fund-raising concerts aimed at helping children in such war-torn areas as the former Yugoslavia and the former Soviet republics of Georgia and Tajikistan. The group also hopes to get in touch with other rappers in Europe and America, and to perform abroad.
