#cold war music

[iisthings]

Couldn't stop thinking about Spies Are Forever since seeing it live in London sooo

I figured out what specific time window it's set in!

We know that at the start of the show Cynthia is on the phone with Nixon and refers to him as Vice President

Weeellll thanks to my partner laughing their ass off when I showed them and them then questioning the historical accuracy of the joke, we then looked when/if Richard Nixon ever was Vice president

And he was! Under Dwight D. Eisenhower, whose presidency ran from january 20 1953 - january 20 1961

(This might be common knowledge, but I'm not american so whooo to me for learning something new)

JFK was elected right after, which is in line with the historical accuracy of saf, since at the end of the show, we again see Cynthia at the phone, this time with President Kennedy

Here's a nice chart for better visualisation:

Also! In the first phonecall she has with Nixon, she refers to an election he lost!

(Again very well may be common knowledge, but my non-american ass doesn't know SHIT)

So to my partner: Spies Are Forever is wonderfully historically accurate :)

To everyone else: the play takes place over 5-6 days, so using the 20th of january as point zero, with a margin of ± 6 days, we can say that the main plot of Spies Are Forever takes place sometime between january 14 1961 and january 26 1961!

Tl;dr Spies Are Forever takes place over the course of 5-6 days between January 14 1961 - January 26 1961

[strayvic]

i've seen no one talk about the way adler leaps at that dude, made me giggle when i looked back at the footage. like, get that shit!! old man!!

bell, play firestarter by the prodigy

more coming later as i wait for the usb to load up the rest of the recordings.

:]

[prickly-paprikash]

Feels like the beef is over. Possible Kendrick album drop on the horizon. He even went and lifted copyright claims over any video that uses his four diss tracks since him and his team knew the fire they started over the weekend and that this would go a long way in helping out reactors, edit channels, dissection channels and more.

With the (likely) end of this feud, investigations need to begin. If Kendrick has proper receipts over his allegations, it needs to see the light of day and I hope it's soon. Rap disses is one thing—these are predator accusations that need to be met with the proper gravity. Given his relations with Baka and the stories in Toronto cropping up of his activities, I feel at the very least confident that there will be things Drake needs to address. And address them soon.

But I also want to discuss the (possible) last diss. The Heart Part 6.

A pathetic attempt to steal a title from Kendrick's own series of singles "The Heart Parts I-V". Songs that Kendrick has utilized to give introspection regarding the industry, his masculinity, depression, his savior complex and so much more. And Drake uses that title for what exactly?

Not a brutal response. Not a catchy summer bop.

He sounds defeated. His lyrics are incoherent, going from saying he planted that false information, to also saying that those who planted it are clowns and fakes. He dismisses and ridicules Kendrick's "Mother, I Sober" song, a story about Kendrick being harassed and SA. Except, as I have since corrected myself over thanks to others on here, that the entire song is him saying the assault never happened and no one believes him. So not only did Drake contradict his claims in one song, he showed his illiteracy.

And Kendrick doesn't respond like he does with Family Matters. When Drake dropped FM, Kendrick immediately invalidated an entire seven minute track by dropping his own response, a haunting meet the grahams, within thirty minutes. A malicious dissection and mock therapy session between him and every member of the Grahams, including Drake's alleged hidden daughter. And finishes the blow by dropping Not Like Us in less than a day, a certified summer hit that has already been played over and over again across the world. When Drake stans accused him of making boring, sleep-causing disses because they were too deep and complex, Kendrick dropped all pretense and released a song produced by DJ Mustard himself to bluntly call Drake and his posse predators while making everyone, including Drake's own base, to dance to the beat.

And we return to Drake's last response. More dislikes than likes. Boring. Lacking the pettiness and replayability that previous disses possessed. A sad, final attempt at a defense and Kendrick doesn't seem to bother responding.

Instead, it seems he leaves it up to the public now. Let them do the rest of the work.

I have to ask one final time.

What made Drake think it was a smart idea to go bar for bar in a lyrical war against a man who won a Pulitzer and has more than three times the amount of Grammy's he does?

RIP Drake, I guess. Didn't realize your entire legacy would be destroyed on a club beat. Ironic, actually.

[obscureloftgem]

—“The Color of Pomegranates” (1969) | By Sergei Parajanov

Song: Born to Die by Lana Del Rey.

[x-heesy]

Nᴏɴ-ᴇxɪsᴛᴇɴᴛ sᴘᴀᴄᴇ: ғᴜᴛᴜʀɪsᴛɪᴄ ᴄᴏɴsᴛʀᴜᴄᴛɪᴏɴ ᴏғ ᴛʜᴇ ʟᴀᴛᴇ USSR.

Pʜᴏᴛᴏs ʙʏ ᴘʜᴏᴛᴏɢʀᴀᴘʜᴇʀ Fʀᴇᴅᴇʀɪᴄ Cʜᴀᴜʙɪɴ.

#Travelingwithoutmoving

#architecture #architecturephotography #architecturelovers #architectureporn #architecturedesign #architecturelover #architecturephoto #architecturedaily #architecture_hunter #architecturedetail #architecturephotos #architecturedose #architectureanddesign #architecturelife #architecturegram #architecturelove #architecturephotograpy #architectures #architectureinspiration #architecture_view #architektur #architekturfotografie #architekturfotograf #architektur_erleben #architekturliebe #architekturporn #architekturelovers

Dᴏᴜʙʟᴇ Dᴀʀᴋ ʙʏ Wɪʟᴅʜᴏᴏᴅ

[faaun]

we sang in the aeroplane over the sea tgth ☆

[sera8273]

Whenever I think back on Odysseus Doxxing himself to Polyphemus in Remember Them, I can’t help but feel pity for the man.

Now from an outsiders POV it just seems like Arrogance and pride which isn’t entirely wrong.

But when you look at it from Odysseus POV it’s more than that.

Polites, One of Ody Best (Childhood) Friend who was practically his light just died in an instant. He couldn’t save him, couldn’t warn him. He.just.died.

He couldn’t even process or mourn because his Second in command- his Brother is looking at him in a terrified manner because, oh yeah! He and his men (43?) are in the cave that has a Cyclops that’ll kill them off one by one who is also blocking the exit!

They can’t kill him bc he’s blocking the exit but the Lotus Fruit that Ody snuck in the wine will eventually wear off. So they have to blind him if they’re gonna escape.

But! They realize that there’s more! So now, without alerting any of the cyclops, Odysseus has to get Himself, his men, and the sheep outside the cave as quickly and quietly as possible.

Without any sort of warning however he’s thrusted into Quick Thought by his mentor, Athena, who -with no explanation- tells him that he has to kill the blinded cyclops who would most likely get more men, if not all, killed while also alerting the other Cyclops and most likely Gods and Godesses.

Now to point out. Odysseus is not keen with murder or death and chooses to avoid the most safest options available if it means the safety for his crew.

But at this point. He’s stressed, Terrifired, Tired, Sad-

And most importantly

Angry.

So him basically doxxing himself was literally just Ody saying to Athena “Look! Look! He’s not killing us! Is he? No! He’s not! Murder isn’t the solution to every little thing! Ok! Ok!” Why? Because he’s so tired and just wants to get home.

[mr-scandinavian]

Where the fuck are all the Chess The Musical fans, are they all just old people or.... like....

[kazoosandfannypacks]

sabezra life day week day six • sabezra christmas playlist edits • do not repost • likes and reblogs are grealy appreciated • I used christmas music in every day of this event so far, so I figured I'd end on a high note with some edits based on some songs I didn't already use from my christmas love playlist. It's not technically labeled a sabezra playlist, but they were definitely one of the things on my mind as I made it!

taglist:@laughingphoenixleader @accidental-spice @kanerallels @piraterefrigerator @jedi-nurse @dootchster @lucasbridger @redroverrider @light-umbra @commander-tech @jedimandalorian @sabezra-life-day-celebration {if you’d like to be added to or removed from my Sabezra taglist, let me know!}

[colleybri]

To the Peter Gabriel fan on the crew of The Americans… omg, let’s get married! Lay Your Hands on Me hits extra hard now. “Watched on by the distant eyes, watched on by the silent hidden spies”. And oh yes: “ there are no accidents round here”.

Chills.

[the-river-rix]

I love fantasizing about Bones characters watching spies are forever (and also Zack and Fisher specifically watching psycho and psycho ii because I have a very specific and funny vision for it)

[oldshowbiz]

Watched an old episode of Nightline from the 1980s and they showed footage of a Soviet fashion show with this song playing in the background.

[sixty-silver-wishes]

Okay I Could do work but instead I'm going to write about the time shostakovich had the worst time in america

(So, despite the clickbaity title, this will be more of a serious post. I wrote about the topic a few years ago on Reddit , and I'll be citing a lot of the same sources as I cited there, because there are some good ones, along with some new information I've gathered over the years. This was going to be a video essay on my youtube channel, but I sort of kept putting it off.)

The Scientific and Cultural Congress for World Peace, held in New York in 1949, is a particularly fascinating event to study when it comes to researching Shostakovich because of just how divisive it was. True, the event itself, which only lasted a few days, doesn’t get as much spotlight as the Lady Macbeth scandal or the posthumous “Shostakovich Wars,” but you’ll find that when reading about the Peace Conference, as I’ll be referring to it here for the sake of brevity, many of the primary accounts of it never quite tell the full story. The Peace Conference was held during a volatile time, both in Soviet and American politics, as Cold War tensions were on the rise and an ideological debate between capitalism and communism gradually extended to become the focus of seemingly every factor of life- not just politics and economics, but also the sciences, culture, and the arts.

While artists on both sides were frequently cast in different roles in order to create or destroy the image of Soviet or American cultural and ideological superiority, the image either government sought to cast was sometimes contradictory with the sentiments of the artists themselves. For instance, while the CIA-founded Congress of Cultural Freedom (CCF) sent African American jazz musician Louis Armstrong on various tours around the world to promote jazz as American culture and dispel perceptions of racism in America, Armstrong canceled a trip to the Soviet Union in order to protest the use of armed guards against the integration of Black students at Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, in 1957. Meanwhile, the Soviet government’s use of international diplomatic missions by artists as cultural warfare also reflected a desire to portray themselves as the dominant culture, despite the tensions and complications that existed for artists at home. When the Soviet Union sent Dmitri Shostakovich to New York in March 1949 for the Peace Conference, such cultural contradictions are why the conference occurred the way it did, and why Shostakovich’s image has received so much controversy, both in Russia and in the west.

If you’re familiar with Soviet history, you may be familiar with the term Zhdanovshchina, which refers to a period of time between 1946 and 1948 in which Andrei Zhdanov, the Central Committee Secretary of the Soviet Union, headed a number of denunciations against prominent figures in the arts and sciences. Among musicians, Shostakovich was one of the most heavily attacked, likely due to his cultural standing, with many of his pieces censored and referred to as “formalist,” along with his expulsion from his teaching positions at the Moscow and Leningrad conservatories. During this time, Shostakovich often resorted to writing film and ideological music in order to make an income.

Meanwhile, in the United States, as fears of nuclear war began accumulating, peace movements between the two superpowers were regarded more and more as pro-Communist, an opinion backed by the House Committee of Un-American Activities (HUAC). The Waldorf-Astoria Peace Conference, to be held from March 25-27th 1949, was organized by the National Council of Arts, Sciences, and Professions, a progressive American organization, and was to feature speeches held by representatives of both American and Soviet science and culture. Harlow Shapely, one of the conference’s organizers, stated that he intended for the conference to be “non-partisan” and focused on American and Soviet cooperation.

On the 16th of February, 1949, Shostakovich was chosen to be one of the six Soviet delegates to speak at the conference. This was largely due to his fame in the west, where both his Seventh and Eighth Symphonies met a mostly positive reception. Shostakovich initially did not want to go to the conference, stating in a letter to the Agitprop leader Leonid Ilichev that he was suffering from poor health at the time and wasn’t feeling up to international travel and performances. He also said that if he were to go, he wanted his wife Nina to be able to accompany him, but he ended up being sent to New York without any members of his family- perhaps to quell concerns of defection (recall the amount of artists who defected around the time of the 1917 revolution, including notable names such as Rachmaninov and Heifetz).

Stalin famously called Shostakovich on the phone that same day to address the conference, and again, Shostakovich told him he couldn’t go, as he was feeling unwell. Sofia Khentova’s biography even states that Shostakovich actually did undergo medical examinations and was found to be sick at the time, but Stalin's personal secretary refused to relay this information. Shostakovich's close friend Yuri Levitin recalls that when Stalin called Shostakovich on the phone to ask him to go to the conference (despite the fact he had been chosen to go in advance), Shostakovich offered two reasons as to why he couldn't go- in addition to his health, Levitin claims that Shostakovich also cited the fact that his works were currently banned in the Soviet Union due to the Zhdanov decree, and that he could not represent the USSR to the west if his works were banned. While accounts of the phone call vary, the ban on Shostakovich's works was indeed lifted by the time he went to New York for the conference.

When Shostakovich arrived in New York, general anti-Communist sentiment from both Americans and Soviet expatriates, as well as media excitement, resulted in a series of protests in front of the Waldorf Astoria hotel where the conference was to be held, with some of the protesters directly referencing Shostakovich himself, as he was the most well-known Soviet delegate on the trip. In 1942, Shostakovich's 7th ("Leningrad") Symphony was performed in the United States under Toscanini and the NBC Symphony Orchestra to high acclaim, helping to promote the idea of allyship with the Soviet Union in the US during the war, and Americans were aware of the Zhdanov denunciations in 1948, as well as the previous denunciations that Shostakovich had suffered in 1936 as a result of the scandal surrounding his opera "Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District." So by 1949, many people in American artistic circles had a sympathetic, if not completely understanding, view of Shostakovich during the birth of the Cold War. They viewed him as a victim of Communism and the Soviet state, who was forced to appease it in order to stay in favor, and as a result, could potentially voice his dissent with the system once in the west. Pickets visible in footage from the protests outside the Waldorf Astoria carried slogans such as "Shostakovich, jump thru [sic] the window," a likely reference to Oksana Kosyankina, a Soviet schoolteacher who had reportedly jumped out of a window in protest (although the details of this story would be found to be highly dubious). Meanwhile, another sign read "Shostakovich, we understand!," a statement that would prove to be deeply ironic. At the conference itself, Shostakovich did not jump through the window, nor did he attempt any form of dissent. Instead, an interpreter read through a prepared speech as he sat on stage in front of a crowd of about 800. The speech praised Soviet music, denounced American "warmongering," and claimed that Shostakovich had accepted the criticism of 1948, saying it "brought his music forward." Many in the audience could see that Shostakovich was visibly nervous- he was "painfully ill at ease," and Nicholas Nabokov (brother of the writer Vladimir Nabokov) remarked that he looked like a "trapped man." Arthur Miller recalled he appeared "so scared." As they noticed how nervous he looked, some of those in attendance sought to make a demonstration of him in order to illustrate Soviet oppression in contrast to the freedoms supposedly enjoyed by American artists, asking him intentionally provocative questions that they knew he would not be able to answer truthfully. From Nicholas Nabokov:

After his speech I felt I had to ask him publicly a few questions. I had to do it, not in order to embarrass a wretched human being who had just given me the most flagrant example of what it is to be a composer in the Soviet Union, but because of the several thousand people that sat in the hall, because of those that perhaps still could not or did not wish to understand the sinister game that was being played before their eyes. I asked him simple factual questions concerning modern music, questions that should be of interest to all musicians. I asked him whether he, personally, the composer Shostakovich, not the delegate of Stalin’s Government, subscribed to the wholesale condemnation of Western music as it had been expounded daily by the Soviet Press and as it appeared in the official pronouncements of the Soviet Government. I asked him whether he, personally, agreed with the condemnation of the music of Stravinsky, Schoenberg, and Hindemith. To these questions he acquiesced: ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I completely subscribe to the views as expressed by … etc….’ When he finished answering my questions the dupes in the audience gave him a new and prolonged ovation.

During the discussion panel on March 26th, music critic Olin Downes delivered yet another provocative statement towards Shostakovich:

I found both of your works [the 7th and 8th Symphonies] too long, and I strongly suspected in them the presence of a subversive influence—that of the music of Gustav Mahler.

For Shostakovich, and anyone knowledgeable of Soviet politics and music at the time, it's not hard to see why Downes had explicitly mentioned Mahler. Gustav Mahler (1860-1911) was a highly influential composer when it came to 20th century western music, particularly with regards to the avant-garde movement pioneered by the Second Viennese School- Arnold Schoenberg, Anton Webern, and Alban Berg. Shostakovich was also heavily influenced by Mahler, but such influences were frowned upon in the mid-30s to 50s Soviet Union. Mahler's style was decidedly more "western," and it's potentially for this reason that Shostakovich's 4th Symphony- perhaps his most "Mahlerian," was withdrawn from performance before its premiere in 1936, having followed the "Lady Macbeth" denunciations. To tie Shostakovich to Mahler would be to point out his direct western influences, while he was being made to issue statements that rejected them. During his speech, Shostakovich made statements criticizing Stravinsky and Prokofiev- two composers who had emigrated and adopted western-inspired neoclassical styles (although Prokofiev returned to the Soviet Union in 1936). Stravinsky had taken insult to Shostakovich's comments against him, and carried an animosity towards Shostakovich that appeared once again in their meeting in 1962, according to the composer Karen Khachaturian.

On the last day of the conference, March 27th, Shostakovich performed the second movement of his Fifth Symphony on piano at Madison Square Garden to an audience of about 18,000, and had received a massive ovation, as well as a declaration of friendship signed by American composers such as Bernstein, Copland, Koussevitzky, and Ormandy. He returned to the Soviet Union on April 3.

In addition to the 1948 denunciations, in which Shostakovich was pressured to make public statements against his own works, the likely humiliation he endured at the 1949 conference played a role in cementing his dual "public" and "private" personas. For the rest of his life, Shostakovich displayed mannerisms and characteristics at official events that were reportedly much different from those he displayed among friends and family. For the public, and for researchers after his death, it became difficult to determine which statements from him reflected his genuine sentiments, and which ones were made to appease a wider political or social system.

Both the Soviet Union and the west had treated Shostakovich as a means of legitimizing their respective ideologies against one another, a trend that continued long after his death in 1975 and the fall of the USSR in 1991. The publication of his purported memoirs, "Testimony," allegedly transcribed by Solomon Volkov, fueled this debate among academics and artists, becoming known as the "Shostakovich wars." The feud over the legitimacy of "Testimony," however, stood for something much larger than the credibility of an alleged historical document- as historians and musicologists debated whether or not it was comprised of Shostakovich's own words and sentiments towards the Soviet Union, its political systems, and its artistic spheres, they were largely seeking to prove the credibility of their stances for or against Soviet or western superiority. "Testimony" helped evolve the popular western view of Shostakovich as well, from a talented but helpless puppet at the hands of the regime, to a secret dissident bravely rebelling against the system from inside.

Modern Shostakovich scholars, however, will argue that neither of these views are quite true- as more correspondence and documents come to light, and more research is conducted, a more complete view of Shostakovich has been coming into focus over the past decade or so. Today, many academics tend to view Shostakovich and the debate over his ideology with far more nuance- not as a cowardly government mouthpiece or as an embittered undercover rebel, but as a multifaceted person who made difficult decisions, shaped by the varying time periods he lived in, whose actions were often determined by the shifting cultural atmospheres of those time periods, along with his own relationships with others and the evolution of his art. We can be certain Shostakovich did not approve of Stalin's restrictions on the arts- his posthumous work "Antiformalist Rayok," among other pieces of evidence from people he knew, makes that very clear- but many nuances of his beliefs are still very much debated. There has also been a shift away from judging Shostakovich's music based on its merit as evidence in the ideological dispute, and rather for its quality as artwork (something I'm sure he would appreciate!). As expansive as Shostakovich research has become, one thing has become abundantly clear- none of us can hope to truthfully make the statement, "Shostakovich, we understand."

Sources for further reading:

Articles:

Shostakovich and the Peace Conference (umich.edu)

Louis Armstrong Plays Historic Cold War Concerts in East Berlin & Budapest (1965) | Open Culture

Biographical and Primary Sources:

Laurel Fay, "Shostakovich, a Life"

Pauline Fairclough, "Critical Lives: Dmitry Shostakovich"

Elizabeth Wilson, "Shostakovich, a Life Remembered"

Mikhail Ardov, "Memories of Shostakovich"

HUAC Report on Peace Conference

Video Sources and Historic Footage:

Arthur Miller on the Conference

"New York Greets Mr. Bevin and Peace Conference Delegates"

"Shostakovich at the Waldorf"

"1949 Anti Communism Protest"

"Battle of the Pickets"

[liketwoswansinbalance]

Slightly niche Modern AU Rafal headcanon (Does anyone agree or have a different take?):

I had a random association and now, I'm almost certain Rafal would enjoy Russian doomer music, even solely for its vibes (assuming he is the fantasy equivalent of a Westerner who only speaks a Germanic language because most fairy tales in SGE are the Germanic ones. Honestly, one thing I wonder about, even if we have evidence of Spanish and other accents' existence, is how the Woods as we've seen them are rather monolingual, probably for plot convenience, but that depiction just strikes me as a little strange, like, too deeply suspect that their world is that unified, all by itself—unless the Storian is to blame as usual—maybe we're not meant to allot it any critical thought...), although I've looked up some English translations of this genre's lyrics and they are rather dark, so that fits him fairly well—unless being silent with his thoughts would be preferable.

Yet, one clarification to make: Even if the music might resonate with him, I think he wouldn't be a fatalist until much later in whatever character progression he'd have. Instead, I see him as a doomsday prepper, in probably a more I-will-live-against-all-odds, Western, literally every-man-for-himself, individualist sense as that might be more in line with his character in canon. He'd be obsessed with survivalism and TEOTWAWKI (The End of the World as We Know It) as a concept.

Here is an example of the music I found—I'm not sure if this is actually representative of the whole and I don't know much about it or the historical context though.

Also, here are some English lyrics from various songs under the cut that I just happened to like:

Again the spring has come, And warming rays of sun Are looking in my cell through window-panes Again the heart will ache The feelings will awake And memory recalls auld days

Those days will come to me And I shall feel and see The girl whom I loved so long ago That girl came and left That girl I can’t forget Her image’s always in my soul.

Vladimir prison-house Сold northern wind My transport came from Tver And all my evil deeds Lie on my heart like heavy weights

⸻

Stab me with that stare as i walk by It's like poison in my blood It trips me up just like a stone I'm just sick of people, and they're sick of everything

⸻

My ship is sailing straight ahead, avoiding the land The captain drunk and stubborn He'll protect it till the end Drowning to the right, drowning to the left Not enough lifeboats, there isn't help for everyone Swimming away, I'm swimming away somewhere straight, somewhere away

[chaptertwo-thepacnw]

new frontier, donald fagen |1983|