My project focuses on the songs of Siberian punk musician Yanka Dyagileva. Dyagileva navigated the gendered traditions of male bard culture and female poetic solemnity to produce music that spoke to the condition of womanhood in the Soviet Union. Dyagileva worked alongside a number of prominent male punk musicians during her career, thus creating a fanbase of her own. These collaborative projects harbored non-gendered political messages, aimed against the state as a whole, rather than internal politics of identity. Dyagileva’s solo work, by contrast, often spoke out against the systematic and violent abuse of women in Soviet culture and her personal struggles with mental illness. I hope to compare Dyagileva’s solo acoustic work to her Grazhdanskaya Oborona collaborations, examining how her stage presence and lyrical themes differed depending on her circumstance and audience. I also hope to explore how Dyagileva asserted herself within a masculine-dominated music scene, and how audiences responded to her work.
Yanka Dyagileva – Burn, Burn, Brightly (live performance)
Yanka Dyagileva – Home (live performance)
Yanka Dyagileva – My Sorrow Is Luminous
Alexander Bashlachev – Time of the Bells (live performance)
Live Performance with Grazhdanskaya Oborona
