Ilmensky Festival of Author's Song

The bards' performance of their own works, despite the simplicity of the melodies and lyrics, touched the Soviet people to the depths of their souls. The author's song, one of the ways of self-expression of creative people who disagree with the realities of socialist society, was heard within the walls of universities and universities, at apartment buildings, in construction brigades and at rallies in shawl camps. Gatherings to the tunes of a guitar around a fire near Tolyatti on the Mastryukov Lakes, in the Chelyabinsk region near Lake Ilmen, near the village of Znamenskoye and on the banks of the Volga in the Samarskaya Luka park were traditional tourist events. Since 1968, for decades, bards from all regions of Russia and fans of art songs have been coming to the Grushinsky Festival. The second largest gathering, in which up to 45,000 people take part, is Ilmensky. At various times, his guests were Yuri Vizbor, Leonid Margolin, Oleg Mityaev, Alexander Gorodnitsky, Sergei Trofimov and other performers. The Ilmensky Art Song Festival is held annually on the second weekend of June. Its rich program includes performing competitions for children and adults, a “Guitar in a Circle” flash mob, sports competitions, master classes and other events. The Ilmens took place for the first time in May 1973 in the vicinity of Miass. The regional competition of tourist song performers brought together more than 600 participants from 7 cities of the Soviet Union. The festival program in the 70s included competitions “Tourists Singing” and art song competitions among adult performers. The plan for the largest gathering of bards has not changed for decades. The luminaries of the genre took part in the tourist and “amateur” song competition - Alexander Dulov, Boris Vakhnyuk, Anatoly Khmel, Yuri Garin, Elena Shchibrikova, Alexey Ivashchenko, Georgy Vasiliev and other performers. In 1978, Oleg Mityaev performed at the rally for the first time and became a laureate with the song “It’s great that we are all gathered here today.” Today this musical composition is considered the unofficial anthem of the bardic movement. Since 2000, O. Mityaev’s charitable foundation has been organizing and holding a song competition in the Chelyabinsk region, which is his small homeland. The Ilmen Festival, a stronghold of free thought and self-expression among art song performers, was banned from 1983 to 1985. The Soviet government decided that the performances of bards at the rally had a negative impact on the minds of the younger generation and ran counter to communist ideals. However, in 1986, on the shore of the lake in the area of ​​​​the Ilmen tourist center, fires lit up again, tents appeared and guitars began to sound. The tradition of performing bard songs in informal settings did not stop even after the collapse of the USSR. Event tourism, trips in which are timed to coincide with a specific event, does not lose its popularity today. Therefore, every year, during 3 days of the first summer month, tens of thousands of people attend the Ilmen Art Song Festival.