Russian Rocks Too (part 3)

Vladimir Vysotsky

What helped Gradsky in his efforts to make a national rock tradition was a parallel movement of so-called ‘singing poets,’ or singers-songwriters, known in Russia merely as ‘bards.’ This genre developed within the late Nineteen Fifties at the juncture of urban folklore traditions, peasant ballads and therefore the ‘criminal’ folklore brought into the cities by thousands of former prisoners getting back from Stalinist labor camps.