Sweet Melodies of the Catacombs – Richard Gunderman

The story of Soviet-era “bone music” provides inspiring testimony to the human spirit’s courage and ingenuity in resisting oppression.

The Soviet Union sought to extol communist values such as the emancipation of the Proletariat while vigorously repressing opposing views.

Inevitably, efforts to circumvent the censors, undertaken at great personal risk, sprang up.

In the 1960s , magnetic reel-to-reel tapes, known as magnitizdat, began to replace x-ray film.

The rise of once-forgotten analog vinyl recordings is being paralleled by a resurgence of interest in bone music.

In one sense, bone music has no future, but in another sense, it must not be allowed to fade from memory.

Socrates was not defending totalitarianism but seeking to rouse a deeper appreciation for the power of the arts to engage and draw out what is best in human beings.

The greatest threat to democracy is not foreign conquest but internal complacency, a failure on the part of citizens to jealously guard civil rights.