August 26th

August 26, in the Aparaaditehas’ greenhouse at 6 pm

An exhibition by Akira Yamanaka (JP) and Psühhoteek: 

“Vinyl Records from behind the Iron Curtain: “Soviet Groove Disc Guide”"

Concurrently with the birth of the pop music of the 20th century a strong dividing line occurred between the cultural spaces of Western and Eastern Europe. Whereas many mappings have been made about the vinyl records of the free world, any pivotal overviews of the musical publications of the Eastern Europe are still lacking. A first step towards this was made in the beginning of the 2022 by Akira Yamanaka, a salesman of the Disk Union record store chain, a manga master and a melomaniac. He compiled a Japanese language catalogue of Melodia, the monopolistic record company of the Soviet Union. In order to find out what is put into this Japanese book and why Akira took on this vast undertaking, we brought Akira to Tartu from Tokyo. On August 26, during the Galleries Night in the Aparaaditehas, we are opening an exhibition “Vinyl Records from behind the Iron Curtain: “Soviet Groove Disc Guide””. For this exhibition we have translated parts of the book into Estonian and English. It is the first presentation of the book “Red Funk: Soviet Groove Disc Guide” outside of Japan.

The exhibition opening is at 6 pm and Akira, the author of “Red Funk: Soviet Groove Disc Guide” will give an overview of the reasons why he published such a catalogue, how he found the material, how the Japanese have reacted to it and what is his relationship with Estonian music. There will be Q&A round and the sale of the Japanese catalogue. After the opening, Akira Yamanaka and Andreas McKeough (Psühhodisko Vennaskond) will play records in front of the exhibition.

The exhibition is open until September 24.