Estrada: what is it in the general sense of the term?

2024 Author: Leah Sherlock | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 05:25

In our minds, such a concept as "stage" is firmly rooted. What is this? Many associate this term with pop music, although in fact these concepts should not be confused. Pop music is one of the components, and the concept itself includes quite a lot of genres.

Standard: what is it in the general sense?

In general, if you follow some sources, it is very easy to define the concept of stage. For example, the same "Wikipedia" claims that the stage is a kind of stage art, mainly an entertainment genre, although in fact this concept is much broader. Here's why.

A more extended interpretation explains that the stage is a kind of elevation of the performer when entering the stage and performing a short number, which includes completely different directions and is accompanied by an entertainer (representation of the artist on stage). To date, pop music includes several main genres:

song;
dance (choreography);
circus art;
illusion;
clownery;
colloquial genre;
parody;
pantomime etc.

As you can see, the concept of stage is quite broad. However, in our understanding of the stage, for some reason, it is associated with music. It shouldn't be like this.

Soviet stage

Of course, the song has always occupied one of the most important places in a person's life. At that very Soviet time, when the concept of variety art arose, there were also a lot of pioneers. These are Muslim Magomayev, Eduard Khil, Edita Piekha, Lev Leshchenko, Iosif Kobzon, Alla Pugacheva, finally. All of them are pop stars of their time.

Of course, you can not ignore the circus. What a noticeable mark in the history of variety and circus art was left by such stars as Oleg Popov and Yuri Nikulin, who made more than one generation laugh in the arena!

At that time, Tarapunka and Shtepsel dominated the conversational genre, not to mention such a master as Arkady Raikin. It was only later that Petrosyan, Zadornov, Zhvanetsky and many others appeared. And what about the Obraztsov Theatre?

The then VIA (vocal-instrumental ensembles) occupied a special place. What are only "Pesnyary", "Syabry", "Verasy", "Flame", etc. The same "Earthlings" are also pop music, although for some reason they are classified as rock bands.

Foreign stage

Abroad, variety art also did not go unnoticed, however, it was subordinated to making money (show business).

For our listener at that time, the stage was two world-famous bands - Boney M and ABBA. Sometimes Eruption is also referred to this pair,but this is purely the brainchild of Frank Farian (founder of Boney M), who wrote the most famous hits for the group.

By the way, such a popular program as "The Benny Hill Show" can also be equally attributed to the standard variety genre, despite the fact that this program is television. And if you remember the festivals in Sanremo, which were once very popular all over the world, it will immediately become clear that the stage is not only music or any other kind of performing arts, but a real show.

It is interesting that the beginnings of variety art could be found in Russia with its buffoons, and in the West - with court jesters.

By the way, we can add that today on Western television you can find a lot of parody programs. In Germany, for example, RTL2 is leading the way in this respect. In terms of circus art, the undisputed superiority here belongs to the Du Soleil troupe, in which quite a lot of our compatriots and artists from other countries perform, performing completely unthinkable numbers and tricks that are simply breathtaking.

Instead of total

Of course, far from all aspects related to the concept of variety art are considered here, however, it should be clear that this concept includes a lot of genres and it is completely wrong to talk about it exclusively from the point of view of music. There are so many directions here that it simply does not fit in the head. And it is not for nothing that most of the educational institutions at one time were called circus-variety schools. Apparently, there is a certainreason.

It goes without saying that it will not be possible to describe all the genres in detail (it would take too much time). But even so it is clear that the stage is something more than just pop culture. And the list of genres available in this sense can be very, very long. On the other hand, even such a brief digression into history will help to understand what the variety genre really is.