"I Will, Of Course, Return": Russian Bardic Song and the Politics of Resurrection

Brian Horne, University of Chicago, will explore how national images of life, death, rebirth, and resurrection are reflected, negotiated, and experienced in a musical-poetic genre: Russian bardic song (bardovskaia pesnia), an art form that emerged during the early years of the Khruschchev Thaw and achieved extraordinary popularity despite official censure and censorship. Based on fieldwork conducted in Moscow between 2004–09, Horne will discuss how this historically marked genre is deployed in different private and public settings, and in doing so, how Russians and non-Russians use the once un-publishable sound of bardic song to make sense of—and make sensible—relationships between the national past, present, and future. More generally, his presentation takes up some of the challenges of researching affect, sound, and genre as objects of ethnographic observation. 

Free and open to the public.

Sponsored by the Reed anthropology department as part of the Roundtable Symposium Series.