Once upon a time in Soviet Estonia: when pop art met pop music
ANIMA POP is a compilation album of mostly instrumental music, written for handdrawn and puppet animation films of the Estonian studio Tallinnfilm. Broadly speaking, it covers music from the 1970s, tracing from the mid1960s to mid 1980s.
At its time, this LP couldn’t have been released, at least not with quite this kind of a thematic emphasis. Why so? It is a collection of pop culture phenomena that officially should not have existed in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR): manifestations of Western youth culture and the spirit of avantgarde, nods to jazzloving hipsters and rocklistening hippies, longhaired lads and girls in mini skirts, loud electric guitars and catchy drum beats, studio experiments and odysseys in electronic soundscapes, etc. In other words, this record is the complete antipode to the percieved official values of Soviet youth of the time.
Many young artists, as well as writers and musicians, were hired for film production. Young creators saw it as a window of opportunity, a rare chance to do „their thing”. Formally, the result had to be a film product aimed at toddlers or preschoolers, but – few exceptions aside – relatively free experimentation was allowed. For authors it was a paid job as well as a channel to present their creative self-realization publicly on the screens.
Just like the names of wellknown composers, rock and pop musicians, such as Arvo Pärt (b. 1935), Rein Rannap (b. 1953), Sven Grünberg (b. 1956), Olav Ehala (b. 1950), Tõnu Aare (1953 –2021) or Tõnu Naissoo (b. 1951) do not need further introduction in today’s Estonia. The commissioned animations of their youth have not necessarily always been individually canonized, but the development stories of the legendary bands Ruja, Mess, Apelsin or Kaseke alone would undoubtedly receive interesting addition through listening to the tracks of this compilation.
ANDREAS TROSSEK
Many young artists, as well as writers and musicians, were hired for film production. Young creators saw it as a window of opportunity, a rare chance to do „their thing”. Formally, the result had to be a film product aimed at toddlers or preschoolers, but – few exceptions aside – relatively free experimentation was allowed. For authors it was a paid job as well as a channel to present their creative self-realization publicly on the screens.
Just like the names of wellknown composers, rock and pop musicians, such as Arvo Pärt (b. 1935), Rein Rannap (b. 1953), Sven Grünberg (b. 1956), Olav Ehala (b. 1950), Tõnu Aare (1953 –2021) or Tõnu Naissoo (b. 1951) do not need further introduction in today’s Estonia. The commissioned animations of their youth have not necessarily always been individually canonized, but the development stories of the legendary bands Ruja, Mess, Apelsin or Kaseke alone would undoubtedly receive interesting addition through listening to the tracks of this compilation.
ANDREAS TROSSEK