Genre research project 16/1360: Bard Music

Przemysław Gintrowski, Jacek Kaczmarski, Zbigniew Łapiński - Wojna Postu Z Karnawałem

The term bard came to be used in the Soviet Union in the early 1960s, and continues to be used in Russia today, to refer to singer-songwriters who wrote songs outside the Soviet establishment, similarly to beatnik folk singers of the United States. Because in bard music songwriters perform their own songs, the genre is also commonly referred to as author song. Bard poetry differs from other poetry mainly in being sung with simple guitar accompaniment as opposed to being spoken. Another difference is that it focuses less on style and more on meaning. This means that fewer stylistic devices are used, and the poetry is often in the form of a narrative. What separates bard poetry from other songs is that the music is far less important than the lyrics; chord progressions are often very simple and tend to repeat from one bard song to another. A far more obvious difference is the commerce-free nature of the genre; songs are written to be sung and not to be sold, as the bards are often working professionals in a non-musical occupation. Musically quite simple, as the poetic lyrics are the main focus, lyrics which were usually about people and their everyday conflicts or often very political. As a result, the music was underground and several of the artists faced persecution from the KGB.