The story of X-Ray audio: what would you risk for the sake of music? | Stephen Coates | TEDxKraków

This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at http://ted.com/tedx

Stephen presents an incredible story of bootleg technology, Cold War culture and human endeavor with images and sounds drawn from the X-Ray Audio project.

Stephen is a composer and music producer. He came across the subject of the X-Ray recordings when travelling to Russia to perform as The Real Tuesday Weld. A graduate of the Royal College of Art, he is particularly interested in the interaction between music and culture.

This is a story about
how much music can matter.

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

We'd been playing some concerts,

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

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

and on the store
were many strange objects,

but, one thing in particular
caught my attention.

My Russian friends
didn't know what it was,

and the guy whose store it was
was rather dismissive.

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

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

That research led to a story,

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

and that is why I am here.

But I'm going to start with a question.

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

Everybody, right?

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

on that device or on their laptop?

Ten thousand?

Twenty thousand? It's like an auction.

Twenty thousand.

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

to whatever we want, when we want.

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

Have you got anything
illegal on your computer?

(Laughter)

OK, well, we'll trust you.

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

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

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

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

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

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

It's inconceivable, isn't it?

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

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

You go home after today's TEDx.

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

There's a tremendous
banging and crashing.

You go out to the front door.

Police rush in,
and they go through your things.

They examine your computer.
They check your emails.

They say you've been
sending music to people.

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

It's pretty inconceivable, right?

But, if we go back 70 years to Russia,

things were very very different.

This is Nick Markovich.

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

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

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

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

In there is all the music that he loves.

There are gramophone records there
from before the war

which belonged
to his parents or grandparents,

which he still loved.

They'd been bought in
official Soviet record stores.

But the music on them
had become forbidden.

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

but I'm going to talk about that later.

Why would a nice young man
like Nick Markovich

be carrying illegal forbidden things?

How could music be forbidden?

We have to go back a bit further.

There'd been a revolution.

Russia had become the Soviet Union.

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

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

But as the years went by,

the states got more and more involved

with what the products
of culture should be.

And by 1932, Stalin
and Nikoloy Zadarnov and company,

decided that all the products of the arts,

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

would be subject to a censor.

The censor would decide
if that piece of art,

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

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

We know one thing
about dictators, generally.

They like things big,
and they like things simple.

They don't like jazz.

So jazz was one of the musical forms

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

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

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

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

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

You could watch American films
with jazz soundtracks in Russia.

Young people loved it, of course.

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

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

and it was completely forbidden.

Russian jazz stars were arrested
and sent to Russian prison camp

So you could no longer listen
to music by Ella Fitzgerald

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

But young people wanted
to listen to that music,

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

now these were Russians
or Russian speaking.

They were émigrees,
they were massively popular.

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

But they didn't come back
to the Soviet Union

to join in the great communist project.

They became, effectively traitors,

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

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

became forbidden.

But also, music by these people
was forbidden.

And they were Russians
living in the Soviet Union.

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

But he was arrested,
probably for being homosexual.

And his records became forbidden.

On the left, is Arkady Severny

He came a bit later,

but he represents a musician
who performed in the Russian prison

or barred Russian folk styles
that were hugely popular,

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

The authorities
didn't like that stuff at all.

Also, Arkady Severny sang his own songs.

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

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

And whole rhythms were banned.

The tango was banned.
The foxtrot was banned.

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

If you see me do a foxtrot,

you will know
that is definitely not the case.

(Laughter)

But you have dances banned.
The saxophone was banned.

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

Music by Russian stars
from before the war is banned.

You have a whole culture
cut off from its culture.

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

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

There was no alternative,

there was no other way to get this music,

apart from in
very small quantities at high cost.

But then, something amazing happened.

A Polish man arrived in Leningrad in 1946.

He was called Stanisław Philo,

and he was carrying with him
a most extraordinary machine.

It was recording tool
made by telephonkin company.

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

A recording lathe
is like a gramophone in reverse.

Instead of a needle, there is a cutter.

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

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

which can be played back.

It was probably used
by a journalist during the war

to make a report from the front.

Stanisław Philo got permission
to open a shop on Nevsky Prospekt

and he installed
his machine in the corner.

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

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

His business started to do amazingly well.

But it wasn't
because of the souvenir recordings.

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

he was using this machine to copy
forbidden gramophone records.

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

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

He was a music lover.

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

He loved tango.

But he knew it was forbidden.

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

And Philo said, "No,

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

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

He decided to hang around
the shop a bit more.

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

They became good friends.
They bonded over music.

They were music lovers.

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

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

And Taigin said, "It would be amazing,

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

to do that in the Soviet Union?

Even if we could find one,

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

Then Bogoslowski takes out
his notebook and shows him.

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

of Stanisław Philo's recording lathe.

And he now believes he can build his own.

They go to his father's country house.

His father was a celebrated engineer
and had a workshop.

They'd go to the workshop,

and they repurposed and recycled bits

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

And Bogoslowski manages
to make a recording machine.

And they make their first recording.

But I've missed something out!

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

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

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

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

and I bought something, it was this.

This is a record.

You can put it on a turntable

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

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

You can record music
on to various types of plastic.

But human beings as we know,

are incredibly ingenious,
particularly in times of oppression.

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

of repurposing, recycling used X-rays

as a base for making bootleg records.

This is what Boris Taigin
and Bogoslowski were doing.

And it was a very good idea, why?

Because in the Soviet Union,

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

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

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

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

The hospital staff
would get rid of a difficult job,

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

The records that they were
making sounded so good

that poor old Stanisław Philo
started to lose his customers.

They moved over to these guys.

They became so busy
they got a friend involved.

They called themselves,
"The Golden Dog Gang."

They were the first underground X-ray
bootleg record label

in the Soviet Union.

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

He gave one to somebody else.

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

This started to spread.

Other people in Leningrad
started to do it, too.

It went to Moscow, Kiev, Odessa.

Of course, the authorities
got very interested.

And in 1950, they swooped,

they arrested everybody involved
in this business in Leningrad.

Bogoslowski was taken to court.

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

Boris Taigin was given seven years.

He was given an extra two years

because he had been writing
and recording his own songs.

Fortunately for them,
two years later, Stalin died.

There was a general amnesty.

A million prisoners
were released from the gulag.

The Golden Dog Gang
came back to Leningrad.

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

They immediately started to make
X-ray records again!

We should maybe have
a listen and a look.

(Music)

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

They are pictures
of the interior of Soviet citizens,

impressed with the music
they secretly loved.

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

a bit like drugs are.

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

But you could replace them.

They often didn't sound very good,

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

But it didn't matter in a way.

They were precious objects

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

Unfortunately for Bogoslowski,
he was caught again.

And he spent another prison
for two years.

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

He started again.

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

He'd been perfecting his technique,
thinking of how to do it better.

And he did; he did it better and bigger,
with more and different types of bootlegs.

This was a very unusual man.

He was an audiophile,
he was a music lover.

He was not a dissident,
he didn't want to bring the system down,

or corrupt Soviet youth.

He was a music lover, and he believed
that you should be able to share music.

Unfortunately, he was caught again.

When he came out for the third time,

you'll be relieved to know,
he stopped doing it.

But, that wasn't because he'd changed,
it was because the world had changed.

That's another story.

But I set up The X-ray Audio Project,

to tell the story of people
like Bogoslowski and Taigin,

the other bootleggers.

And with my friend Paul Hartfield,
to record, to take photographs

of as many of these records
as we could find.

Last year, when we were in Moscow,
we met up with this guy.

Do you know who this is?

This is the young man
who was standing on the street corner

at the beginning of this story;

Nick Markovich.

He came to see us
in an apartment in Moscow,

and he brought with him
his portable music player.

And he took out an X-ray record,
and he wound the gramophone up.

And he put it on, and he dropped
the needle on, and it started to play.

And it sounded absolutely awful!

(Laugher)

But through the noise
and hiss and crackle and static,

there was a thin ribbon of melody.

And that thin ribbon of melody
was snaking back to his youth.

It was connecting the dots,
if you like, to his youth

to a time when he loved music so much,
to a time when music mattered so much,

that people went to prison for it.

Can it ever matter so much to us?

Another thing that we do
with the X-ray Audio Project,

we have live events, when we cut
new X-ray records, in front of your eyes,

from live performances.

Here's my colleague, Alex Kulkowski,
doing that on a recording lathe.

Why?

I'm a musician.

I, too, have thousands
of songs on my computer.

And I love it.

It's amazing to have so much abundance.

I would not give it up.
I hear music every day.

But sometimes, I worry that
I've stopped listening.

I'm sure we've all got songs that meant
an awful lot to us; Maybe we still do.

But, why not, next time we're
flicking through our MP3 player,

looking at all the thousands of songs
we've got, thinking,

"Ah, what shall I listen to?"

Maybe think back to a time

when the only way to enjoy and share
the music that you loved

was on an X-ray.

We could ask ourselves,

"What would happen if somebody
just took it all away?

What would I be losing?

What would I risk to get it back?

Can music still cause
a revolution in my blood?

In my bone?"

Thanks for listening.
Let's keep listening!

(Applause)