Stephen Coates – Bone Music: The Strange Story of Soviet Music on the Bone

Composer and author Stephen Coates tells the story of Bone Music. During the Cold War era, the songs that Soviet citizens could listen to were ruthlessly controlled by the state. But a secret underground subculture of music lovers and bootleggers defied the censors, building recording machines and making their own records of forbidden jazz, rock ‘n’ roll, and Russian music, cut onto used hospital x-ray film.

Who were they? Why did they do it and how was it even possible? Based on years of interviews and oral testimonies, Stephen Coates presents the stories of the original Bone bootleggers, their customers and persecutors, evoking their spirit of resistance to a repressive culture of prohibition and punishment.