“Music on the Ribs”
How Russian youths listened to banned music like Elvis, Ella, and the Stones despite the ever-darkening shade of the Iron Curtain
While on tour several years ago, musician Stephen Coates did what so many artists do when they find themselves with down time before a show. He spent an afternoon immersed in local culture, perusing a flea market in St. Petersburg, Russia. One item in particular caught his eye—a record. At first glance, it appeared to be part vinyl, part X-Ray. He inquired about its history, but the man selling the mystery disc only offered a benevolent shrug. Coates bought it anyway.
His impulse purchase turned into a multi-year, multi-medium project known as, “Bone Music.” Now detailed in an art exhibit, documentary, and book, Coates’ project tells the story of brave individuals who smuggled in Western music during the reign of Russia’s most oppressive regime, the Soviet Union.
So how did these heroic rebels distribute banned music on makeshift vinyl, risking a stay in the gulag, and death? And more importantly, why did they do this in the name of music?
The story behind Russia’s “Bone Music” is a poignant reminder that even as populations starve at the hands of tyrannical, authoritarian governments, music is still a sought-after commodity. It’s also an inspiring tale of innovation, invention, and rebellion sure to stoke the freedom-loving fire inside us all.
“Bone Music”
The Soviet Union is one of history’s most oppressive and deadly regimes. Death counts vary because the communist government kept their dealings shrouded in mystery. Some reports detail a striking figure, with over 126 million deaths. Other more conservative reports estimate those in charge of the Soviet Union’s reign from 1917 to 1987 and their policies killed over 61 million.
In communist Russia, there was a black market for everything, from bread to cigarettes. There was even a black market for the arts. And a group of youths nicknamed the “stilyagi,” which loosely translates to “style hunters,” figured out an ingenious way to smuggle in and distribute various genres of Western music they so longed to hear.
Thanks to the work of the stilyagi, and others, throughout the 1940s to 1960s, Russians were able to hear the crooning sounds of Elvis Presley and the smooth solos of trumpeter Louis Armstrong for the first time, long after Americans had already become enamored with them.
As rock music took over America in the 1950s, Russians longed to hear it too. A few brave souls came up with an innovative idea. They’d scrounge around hospitals, in search of used X-Rays. Sometimes, they’d purchase X-Rays as well. Then, they’d manually cut the X-Rays into circular, vinyl shapes. Those with specialized skills etched the music onto the makeshift vinyl with various machinery. Then, a hole was burned in the middle of the bootleg record to mimic a spot for the spindle.
In an interview with NPR, Coates explains how this delicate process worked in the USSR:
“In St. Petersburg — Leningrad, as it was then — a guy turned up, and he had a war trophy with him. That war trophy was what's called a recording lathe: It's like a gramophone in reverse, a device which you can use to write the grooves of music onto plastic. People who came into his shop observed what he was doing, and, as is the Russian way, they "bootlegged" his machine and made their own machines.
It was a bit like dealing or buying drugs, actually. These records were bought and sold on street corners, in dark alleyways, in the park. We did hear a funny thing, which was that if you asked for a particular song — say, "Rock Around the Clock" — and the dealer didn't have it, quite often they would say, "Yeah, I've got that," and they would go in the corner and write "Rock Around the Clock" on one of their other records and give it to you. So there's lots of stories about people buying these records, and they may not have even known what "Rock Around the Clock" sounded like. They'd go home and put it on and it could have been anything, and they were like, "Yeah, that's Bill Haley. He's great!"
These homemade records garnered several different nicknames, including “rib music” or “music on the ribs.” Their genre? “Bone Music.”
Like Coates’ flea market find, part vinyl and part X-ray, these records got their memorable nicknames because so often the music would be etched over X-Rayed images, with of a set of ribs or a hand burned into the film acting as vinyl art.
In an article written for Fast Company, and later covered by Smithsonian Magazine, writer John Brownlee detailed the quality of this highly unique and coveted contraband:
“Bone records were certainly crude compared to real records: the sound quality wasn’t as good and each bone record could only hold one side of music. Record-makers had to cut the rough discs out of large vinyl sheets by hand and usually made the spindle holes by pressing a lit cigarette in the disc's center. But bone records were dirt cheap, only costing about one ruble while records smuggled in and sold on the black market often cost as much as five rubles – a huge difference at a time when lots of things were scarce and expensive…”
On that fateful day in St. Petersburg, Coates’ unique find turned out to be one of these rare “bone records.”
“You will hear thunder and remember me”
Western music from America wasn’t the only type of music banned by the Soviet Union. Yes, The Rolling Stones, Ella Fitzgerald, The Beatles, and many more Western groups were banned. But music representing the cultures of Russia were outlawed as well. Gypsy music and Russian music detailing the harrowing experiences of citizen life under communist control weren’t allowed either.
As word got around about the bone music market known as the “roentgenizdat,” or the “X-ray press,” government controls tightened.
In 1958, bone records were officially banned. Officials were sent out to destroy any possible paraphernalia associated with the “roentgenizdat,” and, just like in Orwell’s pivotal novel, 1984, children and teens were encouraged to report anyone who was listening to or distributing outlawed music.
Music wasn’t the only thing highly regulated in the Soviet Union. All forms of art were, including literature.
In communist Russia, artists were turned into mere propagandists because they had to adhere to strict rules which stated they could only speak positively of the Marxist regime. And unless an artist had the approval of the “Goskomizdat,” the state-run publishing house, one’s work would never see the light of day.
Mikhail Bulgakov is perhaps one of Russia’s most famous classic writers. Among others, he wrote the novel, The Master and Margarita, his best-seller, which details the devil paying atheist Russia a visit.
He burned the first draft of his novel, but later re-wrote it. Then, he spent a decade revising it, only to never release it until after his death due to the novel’s provocative, satirical take on the Soviet government.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn is another well-known Russian writer who’s become famous for his eye-opening look into life spent in the Soviet gulag through his works like, The Gulag Archipelago. The KGB forced his hand when they found a copy of his work in 1973. He hadn’t planned on releasing it yet, but he and his publisher were left with no choice when the manuscript was found. Thankfully, YMCA Press released the book before the KGB could stop it from going to print.
Anna Akhmatova is one of Russia’s beloved poets who was censored throughout the early-to-mid-1900s. Now representative of what a steady force pushing back against an oppressive enemy looks like, her poems highlight the desperation and vitality dissenters feel when living under impossible conditions:
“You will hear thunder and remember me, And think: she wanted storms.”
“Manuscripts Don’t Burn”
Russian government officials understood why it was so important to keep such a tight grip on the arts. Amidst a million resounding voices saying, “yes,” the creator is the one who says, “no.”
Rivka Krause of The Commentator explained:
“...the Soviet government knew, art has the power to disrupt political constructs and undermine conventional power structures. However, despite their attempts — disrupting Western radio broadcasts and confiscating prohibited writings — to limit exposure to capitalist culture, Western music, style and movies snuck in through the Iron Curtain. Slowly, contraband inspired a generation of underground Soviet artists who began forging a new sound. Like all things illicit, their music slowly spread through bootleg recordings known as magnitizdat.”
As citizens struggled to find food to eat and get the medical care they needed, they still had the mental fortitude to understand why it was so important to fight the grip the Iron Curtain had on art.
Music and the arts ignite our soul, no matter how much we are burdened. It reminds us of how alive we really are. “Bone Music” reminds us of how essential music is to the human condition, and human existence, which is why people risked execution in order to hear Presley’s “That’s Alright Mama” or The Beatles’ “I Wanna Hold Your Hand.”
While food and medical care are essential goods for the human body, music is the soul’s highest good.
Amidst relentless authoritarian torture that would render even the strongest of minds broken, many Russians never forgot this paramount philosophical principle.
The distribution of “Bone Music” was an act of rebellion any true artist would be proud of. While contemplating the life-threatening risks Russians went through to distribute banned music, I am reminded of a historic quote by Bulgakov, which he included in his best-selling novel, and has since taken on a life of its own, becoming a battle cry for artists facing harsh punishments from totalitarian regimes:
“Manuscripts don’t burn.”
For more information about “Bone Music” and the climate of the arts during the era of the Soviet Union, check out Coates’ documentary, X-Ray Audio: The Documentary, and book, X-Ray Audio: The Strange Story of Music on the Bone. You can also find an overview of his art exhibit with photos here.
Sources:
https://shapero.com/en-us/blogs/bookshop-blog/censorship-of-books-in-the-soviet-union?srsltid=AfmBOop0AxBTEggTkFl_Z4K93EBJgGFqe8abouPL--II8LwdyjHU6qlh
https://garagemca.org/en/exhibition/bone-music
https://yucommentator.org/2023/11/arts-and-culture-soviet-rock-and-american-dreams/
https://www.npr.org/2016/01/09/462289635/bones-and-grooves-weird-secret-history-of-soviet-x-ray-music
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/soviet-hipsters-bootlegged-banned-music-bone-records-180957505/
https://www.vice.com/en/article/soviet-russia-forbidden-music-x-ray-records/
https://hawaii.edu/powerkills/USSR.CHAP.1.HTM#:~:text=In%20sum%2C%20probably%20somewhere%20between,of%20this%20number%20is%2061%2C911%2C000.
What a fascinating story! Thank you for bringing this to my attention. It definitely shows the resilience of the human spirt and its refusal to bow down to tyranny.
It's ironic that this subject would come up at the same time vinyl recordings have made such a resurgence. Music isn't just sound in the air or bits on a computer, but something people want to hold in their hands. This desire to be in the physical presence (<-- there's that word!) of musicians and their performances is a big reason why Spotify will never take over the world.
I know a great deal about this topic from my own personal history 🎸🎶