The Microphone as a Medium of Authenticity in Soviet Estrada Song

This article focuses on the notion of authenticity as a characteristic of a specific vocal technique that has its own specificity in relation to Estrada song. The significance of vocal authenticity in the Soviet context is shaped by cultural, technological, and ideological factors functioning within specific historical circumstances. As a case study, the article examines debates surrounding the “small” and “whispering” voice in singing practice during the 1950s and 1960s, based on which the changing configuration of relations between voice and text is traced. Despite the aspiration of Soviet institutional criticism to preserve the previous characteristics of the singing voice and its representational function, formed during the period of Socialist Realism, the development of microphone technology and sound-recording practices contributed to the establishment of a different logic of vocal statement, within which authenticity begins to be understood not as a reflection of an already existing reality but as an effect of its constitution. In this context, Estrada song, detaching itself from cinematic plots, operetta narratives, and stable character types, during the Thaw period increasingly articulates the connection between the voice materiality and the stage persona through the category of sincerity. The article is situated at the intersection of voice theory, media studies, and studies of cultural policy and addresses the heterogeneous sources of the origin of the Estrada genre in urban forms of entertainment culture and its subsequent formation as a specific system of late Soviet production, as a result of which song product becomes “popular” not so much through the expansion of audience reach as through the organization of a feedback loop between performers and listeners and a reorientation toward economic value and what could compete with “Western” musical genres during the Cold War.