I believe that in a writeup about bards a certain Russian generation must be mentioned. The Bard movement (also known as "poet's song", "author's song" and "artist's song") in the
Soviet Union started in the 1950's when
poets such as
Bulat Okudzhava and
Alexander Gorodnitsky started singing their poetry to simple
acoustic guitar tunes.
The songs themselves are as deep and meaningful as poetry and the music adds the touch to bring the words closer to the people's hearts. The themes in the Bard songs vary greatly: some are about the government (only metaphorical and never direct, of course, because the USSR did not have much freedom of speech), others are about nature and the mountains (many of the bards and fans of the music enjoyed the deep woods and mountains and went on expeditions). Some songs are simply about society, people, and feelings.
Typical bard songs sound like folk songs, with basic chords and always a simple rhythm so that it could be played by amateur guitarists (many of the bard fans played the guitar). Many are in the ballad format, and most, being poetry in nature, do not include a chorus.
The internet and p2p sharing would have been a much appreciated thing during the Bard generation because most of the songs were not allowed to be officially published and were at first passed from one person to another (just like with the ancient Celtic bards) and later recorded on tapes which were copied between friends. The poets never had problems with the tapes being free and the fact that they lived simple lives despite the that their music was as popular as that of the Beatles. Instead of concerts, the bard generation had mass gatherings in nature, where the bards - famous and amateur - played their old and new songs. When the concert was over, groups of friends lit their own bonfires and played the songs on their own guitars.
It could be said that the bard generation collapsed with the collapse of the Soviet Union. Without the eternal struggle for freedom, inspiration was far less common (better said by Vladimir Vysotsky in one of his songs: "Yesterday they gave me freedom – What I to do with it today?") and great bard songs became a rarity. Several of the famous bards are still alive today, traveling through the world and singing their songs to the Russian publics there (Alexander Gorodnitsky is turning 70 in 2003 but is still very active in his music career: writing new songs and poems, giving many concerts and recording CD's.) The gatherings still exist all over the world, new CD's are released (although most are collections of the old classics) and several new and young bards also appeared.
I visited the Ottawa festival (the largest annual gathering of this sort in Ontario, and one of the largest in Canada) this year and found out that the spirit of the bards is not yet dead. New and old bards were playing excellent music, almost as good as the one written during the 70's. New themes appeared with the new millennium (I heard a great new song by a young bard with the title 'Role Playing Games').
I believe that although the major generation of national soviet legends will soon pass away, it will be replaced by a new one that will make sure that the music of the bards will be played for many years to come.
If you want to listen to some samples of the bard music, it is freely avaliable on the net (there are huge archives of real player and mp3 formats in which you can find many of the bard songs). Try visiting http://russia-in-us.com/Music/.
I will try to translate as many songs of this genre to English as I can and post them on E2. The following writeups have song translations:
Nodes/nodeshells about bards (I'll fill as many of these nodeshells as I can, honest!):