The Russian musical instrument that infiltrated pop culture and aided espionage – Far Out Magazine

In 1904, Halford John Mackinder submitted his theory on The Geographical Pivot of History. Therein, he would essentially spell out the ingredients a nation needs in its pantry to become a superpower. Inadvertently his recipe for world domination has proved to be an underpinning factor of politics in the modern reckoning ever since, and it includes pop culture.

Aside from a large army, plentiful food supplies, and economic prowess, there is a rather more fiddly element to ruling the world that boils down to how favourably your cultural tenets are viewed. This soft-power seasoning is essential because, in short, it has your enemies munching McDonalds, listening to Elvis Presley and eyeballing Marilyn Monroe, the ultimate rags-to-riches heroine who bedded a rather cool president no less, thinking, Can these really be the baddies? This is known as cultural hegemony.

America were the kings of this global extension of influence during the Cold War and its long-drawn preamble. The notion of freedom, fast food, fast cars, fast fun, and a fast track to the American Dream for anyone who had the cajones to clutch it was a romantic ideal that the shrinking globe bought into. However, the sort of bougie, classical lifestyle of Russia didnt really catch on as a cultural boom. Simply put, stoicism and stark winters have never really beguiled the imagination with the same joyous immediacy of The Beach Boys.

Russia rolled out literary masterpieces aplenty and was brimming with wonderful absurdism and oddities but stifled by censors and served up in a rapidly changing zeitgeist that didnt seem to suit it, it stalled and seemed stilted while American culture was dropping Golden arches all over the globe. The Russians struggled to spread hegemony beyond its sizeable borders, but the Red, White and Blue of the Land of the Free was cropping up in every fridge, on every high street, and in the dreamy minds of millions as progress dawned.

However, it is not without irony that technological progress and ingenuity were where the Soviet Union excelled. In the 1920s, as powers vied from prominence, they invented the worlds first electronic instrument purely by chance. They might not seem like the masters of modern pop music, but without one obscure instrument, the notion of swinging in the nuddy on a wrecking ball or songs written on laptops about the latest TikTok trend might never have happened. Welcome to the wonderful, weird world of the Theremin.

The Theremin might not have had the sex appeal of a crooning Ol Blue Eyes, but making music magically appear from thin air is always going to titillate the inner nerd in all of us. The 1920s were a time when we were interested in anything alien. Europe had just suffered the bloody scourge of a war that claimed tens of millions of lives. Technology was paradoxically behind this death toll, but surely it could also illuminate a brighter future. In other words, technology was a curse if it was used badly, but if it was applied with ethics, then it could propel us to a bright new utopia. A ground-breaking musical contraption was surely a harmless sign of the latter.

It was invented by Lev Sergeyevich Termen, or as he is known, your friend and mine, Lon Theremin. In the early 1920s, this young engineer was hoping to measure the properties of gasses. However, when his two antennas were up and running, he found that his machine made a peculiar sound. As a trained cellist, this sound startled his ear, and suddenly the idea of gasses went out of the window. The first electronic instrument was born, and it would escape the boundaries of our mechanical way of life.

He proudly toured his invention around Europe. After a show at the Royal Albert Hall in London, the Musical Standard wrote: The human voice, the violin, viola, cello, bass and double-bass, the cornet, horn, trombone, saxophone, organ, and almost every instrument you can think of, are all beaten at their own game by this one simple little apparatus. The Russians had won the musical space racea huge boost to their cultural stock. They were geniuses rendering the dastardly trombone old hat.

The Americans simply couldnt keep it at baythat would be, frankly, very un-American. Thus, it made its way to New York City, where musicians and scientists alike marvelled at its magic and the master behind it. It was a perfect example of the progressive technological age that they aimed to bring to the world. Art and electronics had collidedoh, the joys!

However, like all pioneering technologies, the Theremin had teething problems. In fact, its Achilles heel is the same one it still suffers from: its exceptionally hard to play well. For Theremin himself, this meant that, sadly, his great post-modernist moment before the fact was never going to prove overly profitable. This left him open to advances of alternative income. His creations place in the USA was no longer just a show of Soviet technology and a tool of cultural hegemony, but seeing as though it was a marvel among great and good of art and science, it was the perfect weapon for espionage.

During his time in the States alongside his machine, Theremin would report on other pending industrial patents. He spent 11 years and reportedly unofficially informed soft knowledge throughout. However, he was never fully behind the cause, and eventually, the Soviets recalled Theremin, imprisoned him for being a counterrevolutionary, and sent him off to a special scientific camp where he was instructed to come up with a bugging device.

Thus, he came up with another way to work with radio waves. U.S. Ambassador Averell Harriman was gifted a beautiful ornate carving of the Great Seal of the United States. He hung it proudly on his wall without knowing that Theremin had bugged it with another of his magical antenna. The Americans never uncovered The Thing until seven years later. It had been eavesdropping the whole time. Proving that even harmless signs of progressive advancement can oft go awry. You never know what intent lies beneath an innocuous pop song; the first electronic instrument heralded that from the very start.

Follow Far Out Magazine across our social channels, onFacebook,TwitterandInstagram.

Most popular

More here:

The Russian musical instrument that infiltrated pop culture and aided espionage - Far Out Magazine