WEBVTT

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This is a story about
how much music can matter.

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A few years ago, I was in Russia
with my band "The Real Tuesday Weld."

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We'd been playing some concerts,

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and afterwards, I went to a flea market
with some Russian friends.

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We were wandering around,
and we came across a store,

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and on the store
were many strange objects,

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but, one thing in particular
caught my attention.

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My Russian friends
didn't know what it was,

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and the guy whose store it was
was rather dismissive.

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But I bought it anyway
and brought it back to London.

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I was so fascinated by it that I began
a journey to find out what it was.

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That research led to a story,

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and the story led
to the X-ray Audio Project,

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and that is why I am here.

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But I'm going to start with a question.

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Who here has got an MP3 player
or a phone that plays music?

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Everybody, right?

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OK, so who's got more
than 1,000 songs

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on that device or on their laptop?

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Ten thousand?

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Twenty thousand? It's like an auction.

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Twenty thousand.

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Right, OK; well, look,
we're used to listening

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to whatever we want, when we want.

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We have abundance,
but you, sir, for the 20,000 songs.

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Have you got anything
illegal on your computer?

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(Laughter)

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OK, well, we'll trust you.

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But imagine this, you're
on the way to TEDx today,

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you're walking through Kraków,
and two men step out of the shadows,

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grab you by the arm,
they demand to see your MP3 player,

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you show them, they go down
and scroll through the songs,

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and they say to you,
"You've got a song by the British band

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'The Real Tuesday Weld',
and that is forbidden."

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It's inconceivable, isn't it?

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It's inconceivable you have a song
by my band on your MP3 player.

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Or it's inconceivable that it would be
forbidden, or what about this?

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You go home after today's TEDx.

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You're asleep in your apartment
or hotel or bedroom.

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There's a tremendous
banging and crashing.

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You go out to the front door.

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Police rush in,
and they go through your things.

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They examine your computer.
They check your emails.

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They say you've been
sending music to people.

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Sharing music, that's illegal,
you are under arrest.

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It's pretty inconceivable, right?

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But, if we go back 70 years to Russia,

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things were very very different.

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This is Nick Markovich.

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He's standing on a street corner
in Moscow in the 1950s.

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He's on his way to his friend's house
to play music, to share music.

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He's just like us, he's a music fan.

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Those boxes that he's carrying
are his MP3 player.

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In there is all the music that he loves.

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There are gramophone records there
from before the war

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which belonged
to his parents or grandparents,

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which he still loved.

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They'd been bought in
official Soviet record stores.

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But the music on them
had become forbidden.

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He's also got in those boxes,
some outright illegal records,

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but I'm going to talk about that later.

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Why would a nice young man
like Nick Markovich

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be carrying illegal forbidden things?

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How could music be forbidden?

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We have to go back a bit further.

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There'd been a revolution.

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Russia had become the Soviet Union.

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At first, it was a very
exciting time in the culture.

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In music, there were lots
of experimental amazing things happening.

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But as the years went by,

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the states got more and more involved

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with what the products
of culture should be.

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And by 1932, Stalin
and Nikoloy Zadarnov and company,

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decided that all the products of the arts,

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theater, architecture, literature,
ballet, poetry, and music

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would be subject to a censor.

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The censor would decide
if that piece of art,

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if that book, if that song was
in the service of Socialist realism.

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Of course, I'm in Poland.
You have some of this history yourself.

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We know one thing
about dictators, generally.

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They like things big,
and they like things simple.

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They don't like jazz.

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So jazz was one of the musical forms

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that suffered under the Soviet Union
until the Second World War.

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The Second World War
us the British, you the Polish,

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the Russians, and the Americans
were on the same team.

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So, for a while, in Russia, jazz was OK.

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There were Russian jazz bands,
many of them, very popular.

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You could watch American films
with jazz soundtracks in Russia.

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Young people loved it, of course.

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But when that war ended
and a much colder war began,

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then jazz and rock'n'roll
was the music of the enemy,

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and it was completely forbidden.

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Russian jazz stars were arrested
and sent to Russian prison camp

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So you could no longer listen
to music by Ella Fitzgerald

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or buy records by Bill Haley,
who came a bit later.

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But young people wanted
to listen to that music,

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but also you couldn't listen
to music by these people,

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now these were Russians
or Russian speaking.

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They were émigrees,
they were massively popular.

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Pyotr Leshchenko, Ella Belanova,
they'd been big stars.

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But they didn't come back
to the Soviet Union

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to join in the great communist project.

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They became, effectively traitors,

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so their records were,
even if they were singing about love,

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even if they were singing about
the nobility of the working classes,

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became forbidden.

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But also, music by these people
was forbidden.

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And they were Russians
living in the Soviet Union.

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On the right, it's Vadim Kozin,
another huge star.

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But he was arrested,
probably for being homosexual.

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And his records became forbidden.

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On the left, is Arkady Severny

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He came a bit later,

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but he represents a musician
who performed in the Russian prison

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or barred Russian folk styles
that were hugely popular,

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singing about criminals and prostitutes
and the dark side of Socialist realism.

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The authorities
didn't like that stuff at all.

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Also, Arkady Severny sang his own songs.

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It was forbidden to sing and record
your own songs in the Soviet Union.

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You had to be a member
of the Composers' Union.

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And whole rhythms were banned.

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The tango was banned.
The foxtrot was banned.

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It was said that the foxtrot represented
a man and a woman making love.

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If you see me do a foxtrot,

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you will know
that is definitely not the case.

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(Laughter)

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But you have dances banned.
The saxophone was banned.

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Western music's banned.
Jazz music's banned.

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Music by Russian stars
from before the war is banned.

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You have a whole culture
cut off from its culture.

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It's like someone saying to us
you can no longer listen to the Beatles.

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And, of course, the states
completely control the recording industry.

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There was no alternative,

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there was no other way to get this music,

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apart from in
very small quantities at high cost.

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But then, something amazing happened.

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A Polish man arrived in Leningrad in 1946.

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He was called Stanisław Philo,

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and he was carrying with him
a most extraordinary machine.

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It was recording tool
made by telephonkin company.

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He had stolen it - it was a war trophy -
it had come from Germany.

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A recording lathe
is like a gramophone in reverse.

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Instead of a needle, there is a cutter.

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You feed an audio signal
- music, say, or voice - into it,

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and the cutter will cut the groove
onto a record of plastic,

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which can be played back.

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It was probably used
by a journalist during the war

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to make a report from the front.

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Stanisław Philo got permission
to open a shop on Nevsky Prospekt

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and he installed
his machine in the corner.

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For a few rubles, people could come in
and use a microphone

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to make a recording of their voice
onto a plastic disc, like a souvenir.

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His business started to do amazingly well.

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But it wasn't
because of the souvenir recordings.

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It was because in the evenings,
when the shop was closed,

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he was using this machine to copy
forbidden gramophone records.

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He was a bootlegger.
And he was selling these to music lovers.

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One day, into his store, came the guy
on the right, Ruslan Bogoslowski.

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He was a music lover.

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And while he was in the shop,
he heard a tango playing.

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He loved tango.

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But he knew it was forbidden.

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He said to Stanisław Philo,
"Can I buy that?"

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And Philo said, "No,

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but come back when the shop is closed,
and I'll see what I can do."

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Bogoslowski came back, and Stanisław Philo
sold him a bootleg copy of the tango.

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He decided to hang around
the shop a bit more.

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There he met the guy
on the left, Boris Taigin.

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They became good friends.
They bonded over music.

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They were music lovers.

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On one day, Bogoslowski said to Taigin,
"Wouldn't it be amazing

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if apart from just buying these bootleg
records, we could make our own?"

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And Taigin said, "It would be amazing,

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but where are we going to get
a machine, a recording lathe,

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to do that in the Soviet Union?

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Even if we could find one,

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it would be so incredibly expensive
on the black market."

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Then Bogoslowski takes out
his notebook and shows him.

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For weeks, he's secretly been making
drawings and measurements

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of Stanisław Philo's recording lathe.

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And he now believes he can build his own.

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They go to his father's country house.

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His father was a celebrated engineer
and had a workshop.

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They'd go to the workshop,

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and they repurposed and recycled bits

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from gramophones, from tools,
from all over the place.

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And Bogoslowski manages
to make a recording machine.

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And they make their first recording.

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But I've missed something out!

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This is the Soviet Union,
what were they recording on to?

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You can't buy this stuff in the shops.
It's impossible to get.

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We have to go back
to the beginning of my story.

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Because when I was walking
in that market, in St. Petersburg,

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and I bought something, it was this.

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This is a record.

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You can put it on a turntable

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and you can put a needle in,
and it will play music.

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But, as you can see, it is also an X-ray.

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You can record music
on to various types of plastic.

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But human beings as we know,

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are incredibly ingenious,
particularly in times of oppression.

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Some, very clever resourceful person,
had come up with the idea

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of repurposing, recycling used X-rays

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as a base for making bootleg records.

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This is what Boris Taigin
and Bogoslowski were doing.

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And it was a very good idea, why?

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Because in the Soviet Union,

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the government had issued an order
that all hospitals had to get rid of

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their X-rays after a year,
because they were a fire risk.

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So these guys could go to a hospital,
around the back,

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with a few rubles, or some bottles
of vodka and make an exchange.

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The hospital staff
would get rid of a difficult job,

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and they would get plenty of resources
to make records with.

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The records that they were
making sounded so good

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that poor old Stanisław Philo
started to lose his customers.

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They moved over to these guys.

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They became so busy
they got a friend involved.

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They called themselves,
"The Golden Dog Gang."

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They were the first underground X-ray
bootleg record label

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in the Soviet Union.

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Bogoslowski was so clever
that he started to copy his own machine.

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He gave one to somebody else.

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The secret got out:
how to record onto X-rays.

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This started to spread.

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Other people in Leningrad
started to do it, too.

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It went to Moscow, Kiev, Odessa.

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Of course, the authorities
got very interested.

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And in 1950, they swooped,

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they arrested everybody involved
in this business in Leningrad.

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Bogoslowski was taken to court.

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There was a trial, he was given
five years in the gulag for copying music.

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Boris Taigin was given seven years.

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He was given an extra two years

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because he had been writing
and recording his own songs.

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Fortunately for them,
two years later, Stalin died.

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There was a general amnesty.

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A million prisoners
were released from the gulag.

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The Golden Dog Gang
came back to Leningrad.

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What do you think they started
to do when they got there?

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They immediately started to make
X-ray records again!

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We should maybe have
a listen and a look.

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(Music)

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They are images of pain and damage
inscribed with the sounds of pleasure.

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They are pictures
of the interior of Soviet citizens,

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impressed with the music
they secretly loved.

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They were sold on street corners,
in parks, in dark secret places

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a bit like drugs are.

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They cost a few rubles,
they wouldn't last for very long.

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But you could replace them.

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They often didn't sound very good,

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the song title that was written
on them was often wrong.

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But it didn't matter in a way.

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They were precious objects

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because they allowed people to listen
to what they wanted, when they wanted.

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Unfortunately for Bogoslowski,
he was caught again.

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And he spent another prison
for two years.

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When he came back,
what do you think he did?

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He started again.

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He'd used his time
in the gulag incredibly well.

00:14:42.543 --> 00:14:46.168
He'd been perfecting his technique,
thinking of how to do it better.

00:14:46.209 --> 00:14:50.168
And he did; he did it better and bigger,
with more and different types of bootlegs.

00:14:50.169 --> 00:14:51.584
This was a very unusual man.

00:14:51.709 --> 00:14:53.918
He was an audiophile,
he was a music lover.

00:14:53.918 --> 00:14:57.043
He was not a dissident,
he didn't want to bring the system down,

00:14:57.083 --> 00:14:58.625
or corrupt Soviet youth.

00:14:58.626 --> 00:15:02.876
He was a music lover, and he believed
that you should be able to share music.

00:15:03.667 --> 00:15:06.126
Unfortunately, he was caught again.

00:15:06.459 --> 00:15:08.542
When he came out for the third time,

00:15:08.667 --> 00:15:12.041
you'll be relieved to know,
he stopped doing it.

00:15:12.042 --> 00:15:16.417
But, that wasn't because he'd changed,
it was because the world had changed.

00:15:16.418 --> 00:15:18.027
That's another story.

00:15:18.042 --> 00:15:20.999
But I set up The X-ray Audio Project,

00:15:21.000 --> 00:15:24.501
to tell the story of people
like Bogoslowski and Taigin,

00:15:24.521 --> 00:15:25.871
the other bootleggers.

00:15:25.876 --> 00:15:29.959
And with my friend Paul Hartfield,
to record, to take photographs

00:15:29.960 --> 00:15:32.751
of as many of these records
as we could find.

00:15:33.501 --> 00:15:37.750
Last year, when we were in Moscow,
we met up with this guy.

00:15:37.751 --> 00:15:39.502
Do you know who this is?

00:15:39.959 --> 00:15:43.293
This is the young man
who was standing on the street corner

00:15:43.334 --> 00:15:45.085
at the beginning of this story;

00:15:45.086 --> 00:15:46.292
Nick Markovich.

00:15:47.125 --> 00:15:49.292
He came to see us
in an apartment in Moscow,

00:15:49.292 --> 00:15:52.291
and he brought with him
his portable music player.

00:15:52.292 --> 00:15:56.043
And he took out an X-ray record,
and he wound the gramophone up.

00:15:56.959 --> 00:16:00.710
And he put it on, and he dropped
the needle on, and it started to play.

00:16:01.375 --> 00:16:05.834
And it sounded absolutely awful!

00:16:05.876 --> 00:16:06.958
(Laugher)

00:16:06.959 --> 00:16:11.626
But through the noise
and hiss and crackle and static,

00:16:11.627 --> 00:16:14.082
there was a thin ribbon of melody.

00:16:14.083 --> 00:16:18.875
And that thin ribbon of melody
was snaking back to his youth.

00:16:18.876 --> 00:16:22.500
It was connecting the dots,
if you like, to his youth

00:16:22.501 --> 00:16:27.917
to a time when he loved music so much,
to a time when music mattered so much,

00:16:27.918 --> 00:16:30.960
that people went to prison for it.

00:16:32.167 --> 00:16:35.376
Can it ever matter so much to us?

00:16:36.375 --> 00:16:39.209
Another thing that we do
with the X-ray Audio Project,

00:16:39.210 --> 00:16:45.177
we have live events, when we cut
new X-ray records, in front of your eyes,

00:16:45.178 --> 00:16:46.788
from live performances.

00:16:46.792 --> 00:16:51.126
Here's my colleague, Alex Kulkowski,
doing that on a recording lathe.

00:16:51.127 --> 00:16:51.999
Why?

00:16:52.000 --> 00:16:53.042
I'm a musician.

00:16:53.167 --> 00:16:56.584
I, too, have thousands
of songs on my computer.

00:16:57.083 --> 00:16:58.542
And I love it.

00:16:58.626 --> 00:17:00.544
It's amazing to have so much abundance.

00:17:00.709 --> 00:17:05.834
I would not give it up.
I hear music every day.

00:17:06.483 --> 00:17:10.900
But sometimes, I worry that
I've stopped listening.

00:17:10.917 --> 00:17:15.415
I'm sure we've all got songs that meant
an awful lot to us; Maybe we still do.

00:17:15.416 --> 00:17:18.416
But, why not, next time we're
flicking through our MP3 player,

00:17:18.417 --> 00:17:21.251
looking at all the thousands of songs
we've got, thinking,

00:17:21.252 --> 00:17:23.374
"Ah, what shall I listen to?"

00:17:23.375 --> 00:17:25.416
Maybe think back to a time

00:17:25.541 --> 00:17:30.209
when the only way to enjoy and share
the music that you loved

00:17:31.044 --> 00:17:32.524
was on an X-ray.

00:17:33.284 --> 00:17:34.604
We could ask ourselves,

00:17:36.626 --> 00:17:40.835
"What would happen if somebody
just took it all away?

00:17:42.083 --> 00:17:44.042
What would I be losing?

00:17:45.292 --> 00:17:48.251
What would I risk to get it back?

00:17:50.834 --> 00:17:56.209
Can music still cause
a revolution in my blood?

00:17:57.834 --> 00:17:59.752
In my bone?"

00:18:00.334 --> 00:18:03.126
Thanks for listening.
Let's keep listening!

00:18:03.127 --> 00:18:04.167
(Applause)