| This dissertation is an examination of contemporary avtorskaia pesnia [author's song], a Russian-language genre of sung poetry that enjoyed its first efflorescence in the Soviet Union several years after Joseph Stalin's death in 1953. The dissertation is addressed both to ethnomusicologists and to the highly-educated practitioners of the genre who constitute its research subjects. It also aims to provoke dialogue within and between these two groups.; The dissertation is structured to both reflect and participate in the ongoing Russian discourse on the nature of the genre, its history, its characteristics as a fusion of music and poetry, and its viability in post-Soviet Russia. Employing a diverse array of theoretical approaches from literary studies, history, phenomenology, musicology, anthropology, and ethnomusicology, it also contributes to current ethnomusicological discourse on the cultural significance of genre as an interpretive device, the ways in which individuals employ metaphors both to understand individual musical works and to construct "imagined histories" of their musical traditions, and the complex dialectical processes through which musical meaning emerges.; The dissertation presents contemporary avtorskaia pesnia as a vibrant mode of cultural production, one that allows its practitioners to portray themselves as simultaneously Russian and cosmopolitan, articulate an ethical stance that places them in opposition to Soviet collectivism as well as post-Soviet consumerism, and navigate their own idiosyncratic trajectories through a confusing post-Soviet present. |
