I've been thinking a lot about the Leningrad Cowboys recently. I've always loved their performance of Gimme All Your Lovin' with the Red Army Choir, and after looking that up on YouTube last year, The algorithm eventually started feeding me more of their songs, some of which I vaguely recognized, others were totally new to me, but I learned a lot about them.

Mostly that they've got no respect for genre boundaries. They play a lot of American rock and pop with Russian folk influences, but also the other way around, and later started mixing in even more genres. And they're always funny and irreverent.

A personal favourite is their interpretation of Eloise, which includes the weird shout "Kozachok!", which is the name of a Ukrainian dance, but is also used (in exactly the same rhythm, though a lot more repetitive) in a French or Romanian cover of a Russian or Ukrainian song (I momentarily forgot which one or who the singer of that cover is). Anyway, complex references that are nearly impossible to get.

Also, having the Red Army Choir perform parodies of American pop and rock songs seems like something that was only possible in the early 1990s, after east-west tensions had softened, the Cold War ended, and we got closer together. And the Leningrad Cowboys definitely did their part to bring us together. Sometimes I wonder if maybe we need them again.

To my taste, a lot of great Americana music comes from Canadian musicians.

Perhaps because Canada has english, a east coast, a west, and the great plains.

Americana/Roots music is a vehicle for people across the world to express themselves in a shared musical language of common people.

For many cultures of the world, the most prominent musical genres are either highly parochial or highly corporatized (the latter also being the case in the USA).

Americana/Roots music still sits in place apart from those other genres, and while this probably limits the possible financial success of its practitioners, it preserves its authenticity and therefore it's broad appeal.

That raises the question, why doesn't every other form of authentic folk music around the world have the same broad appeal? Why aren't musicians all over the world taken up, say, Indian or Chinese folk music in total (vs borrowing themes or instruments)?

Because even Americana/Roots music has been a major source of the waves of US cultural and economic imperialism that have flowed over the world, from at least the early days of jazz and and definitely in the days of blues, rock, r&b, and rap.

I was absolutely impressed/puzzled by the Leningrad Cowboys as a kid.

In the mid-2000s, J. Karjalainen (a Finnish musician) put out a concept album called Lännen-Jukka. If you like Blues, it's worth checking out. YLE, the Finnish media network, put out a documentary on it. Karjalainen travels through the US including significant time in Upper Michigan, where many Finns settled a hundred years ago (and more recently).

Another thing I remember is that while here, Karjalainen & his bandmates were detained by the TSA at Minneapolis St Paul airport and treated rather poorly. Apparently TSA thought they were gonna overstay their visas in the US and try to "make it big in music". It was very bizarre.

Recent events made me think of that again.

TIAMS (mentioned in article) stopped broadcasting I thought. RNEI and Radio Carptha took over. You can hear it on WRMI out of Florida every week.

https://swling.com/blog/2023/08/radio-carpathia-and-rnei-to-...

Bob Catface (https://bsky.app/profile/bobcatface.bsky.social) has a Discord (Mostly Shortwave Discord: discord.gg/fr4Uuw4z5h) where you can receive notices when these come on the air. If you are a ham radio operator or SWL, you can decode MSFK usually with these shows.