User:XXxJediKnightxXx/Comrades Delight

"XXxJediKnightxXx/Comrades Delight"
Song

Comrades Delight is the NATO designation given to an unnamed hip-hop single put out by leaders of the Warsaw Pact in early 1980. It is considered a groundbreaking work of the Marxist-Leninist rap scene, while its influence on western music is widely debated.

Background

The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in December 1979 led to widespread international condemnation, leaving the Soviet Union reeling to restore its reputation in the world. At a Politburo meeting convened to discuss the issue, KGB chief Yuri Andropov suggested recording a rap single, with the intention of showing young people in the West that "the Soviet Bloc was still cool".

The idea was quickly endorsed by Leonid Brezhnev, who agreed that targetting the youth would have the potential to turn a typically apathetic group into a significant pro-Soviet force in Western politics. After the idea was approved, Foreign Minister Andrey Gromyko immediately contacted other Warsaw Pact members. Polish leader Edward Gierek and Hungarian party chief Janos Kadar, two early adopters of the hip-hop lifestyle, immediately agreed to participate. Czechoslovakian leader Gustav Husak, though skeptical about the project, agreed a short while later. However, East German leader Eric Honecker and Bulgarian dictator Todor Zhivkov refused, on the grounds that they believed a techno or disco single would be more effective. Romanian Nicolae Ceausescu, who was fueding with Soviet leadership at the time, was not informed of the project.

Content

The song, recorded in thickly accented English, can be divided into three distinct parts. First, the three non-Soviet participants adopted archetypical roles from the Western hip-hop subculture, taking turns singing about their respective prowess. Gierek adopted the persona of the high roller, rapping about taking out international developmental loans and building public works projects. Husak presented himself as a ladies man, laying down rhymes stressing his desirability to females and his sexual prowess (noting, for instance "the babushkas stand in line to get a ration of me"). Kadar took on the image of a gangster and begins by stating "Hip hop hurray / I'm the thug of the East / you know I rap to the Marxist worker-peasant beat / because I represent the motherfucking Szeged streets".

Following Kadar, the song goes into an interlude where only the backbeat can be heard, along with a turntable being scratched. This is followed by Brezhnev's solo, in which he stresses the overwhelming military power and geopolitical influence of the Warsaw Pact, contrasting it favorably with NATO, China, and the Non-Aligned Movement. He also personally disses Albanian leader Enver Hoxha.

Video

Sukhoi produced a pimped-out Su-25 for the video.

The Music Video for the song, featuring all four leaders, is set in a variety of locations. Gierek is shown rapping in a Polish public housing project, while Husak and Kadar are filmed prowling the streets of an unidentified Eastern European city. Brezhnev speaks his lines from a military installation of some kind.

Vehicles seen in the video include:

• a Su-25 fighter jet (with chromed-up wings)
• a Lada sedan
• a T-80 tank
• a Kiev class aircraft carrier

Places name checked in the video include:

• Ruthenia
• Prague
• Szeged
• Red Square
• Upper Silesian Industrial Region

Release

The finished video was released on Soviet, Polish, Hungarian, and Czechoslovakian state television in January of 1980; a second broadcast followed in East Germany and Bulgaria the next day . Such broad play in the Soviet Bloc was previously unheard of for an English-language music video. Copies of the single were made available for purchase in all Comecon nations, and were distributed for international dissemination to Soviet embassies across the world.

Influence

In the Soviet Bloc, the song immediately became a bedrock for future Marxist-Leninist rap. Communist musicologists presented it as an example of how the scientific principles of dialectical materialism can be successfully integrated with new musical genres, even those of western origin.

In the West, the song enjoyed a strong underground following, but its influence is controversial. Many cite the fact that for much of early 1980, the phrase "to Gierek it up" became frequently used in the lingo of the New York City underground rap scene. In his Ph.D dissertation, Petey Pablo argued that Janos Kadar set the stage for future American gangster rap. However, others refute these points by noting that "to Gierek it up" quickly fell out of favor and held a negative connotation, as well as the fact that no major gangster rapper actually cites Kadar as an influence. Many critics also state that the style of the song and video was largely derivative from existing Western artists.

Criticism

In the West, the song and video were widely panned as Communist Propaganda, especially by conservative politicians. In the United States, several local governments, including Forks, WA, banned it from local libraries.

The video was also criticized in the Marxist camp. Adherents of Eurocommunism denounced what they saw as the video's focus on violence rather than cooperation, while members of the Frankfurt School condemned its Western-style, archetypical hip-hop approach for being conformist and uncreative.

Follow-Ups

Wojciech Jaruzelski, the proposed star of the second, never-completed single

Plans for additional singles were put on hold in late 1980 after the replacement of Edward Gierek by Stanislaw Kania, who had the reputation of being unable to carry a rhyme. Talks of a second song did not begin again until Kania was himself replaced by Wojciech Jaruzelski; according to a dossier by Andropov, the new Polish dictator knew how to "keep it real, yo" and was therefore well suited for the task.

The second video, code-named "Fuck Tha Pope", would have stressed the scientific and secular qualities of life in the Eastern Bloc, contrasting it with the religion and superstition of the West. Jaruzelski, Husak, Kadar, and Brezhnev were scheduled to appear. However, the song's production was held up at several points.

First, Soviet industry proved unable to produce an effective pimp cane, which the proposed video called for. There was disagreement in the Politburo over whether importing a pimp cane from the West would prove counter-productive for the song's intended message. By the time that this issue was resolved, Brezhnev's increasing senility slowed the project; plans were made for Andropov to represent the Soviet Union on the single instead, but these were cancelled upon Andropov's accession to the post of Secretary General of the CPSU, as the confrontational nature of the song clashed with the "kindler, gentler" image that Andropov wished to give off as leader. Even before this, however, an internal dispute had arisen between Jaruzelski, who wanted to take over the gangster image, and Kadar, who refused to give it up. After Konstantin Chernenko was unable to resolve this dispute, new Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev cancelled the project.

See also

• Cold War
• Propaganda
• Superbowl Shuffle a similar video

Notes

Category:1980 singles