east european disco of the 70s?

[Worthwinkel]

Hi everybody,

I wonder if the east european countries had their own disco music during the high time of disco music in the west (second half of the 70s). Does anybody know 70's disco artists from, say, Poland, Yugoslavia, Romania and so forth? (I know two or three artists from the GDR, who recorded a few disco tunes, but that's all.)

Cheers
Thomas

[Bernie]

Hi Worthwinkel,
Welcome to the DiscoMusic.com forums!

Our resident Euro-Disco expert Jussi K will probably see your post and help fill in some blanks as he is well versed in that area. Although I can't recall off the top of my head, there are a few such artists in this site's "Disco Record Vault" at http://www.discomusic.com/records-index/

Here is a Polish entry for Ewa Kuklinska: http://www.discomusic.com/records-more/10844_0_2_0_C/

[JussiK]

From Russia, try Alexander Rybkov, Yuri Antonov's 1980 "I Remember" the first two of the Zodiac albums (check Discoqs), Pavel Ovsyannikov's exceptinally grandiose "Towards The Stars", Vladimir Osinskij's "Safari", Diskoteka ABC (aka Alla Bugatjova's backing group), from Bulgaria various obscure stuff from the Balkanton label, from the former Czechoslovakia Pavel & Petr Orm's weird versions of "Autumn Leaves" and "Magic Fly" plus "Bumerang" and "Vikend", from the DDR the Das Unsichtliche Visier lp, from Poland there's the very good Arp Life lp, from Latvia, Raimonds Pauls "Naksputni" lp for one - he did a lot.

[Worthwinkel]

I knew there had to be something! Thanks, Jussi + Bernie, for your answers, I will see if I can find any of those! Sounds great!

[JussiK]

Glad to be of help - but bear in mind the tracks/acts listed above are of the electronic/cosmic variety, so if you're looking for traditional sounding boogie stuff think before you order anything from the web. But then again, if you've been interested in stuff like that to begin with changes are you're already way past the Bee Gees/Donna Summer/Kool&Gang/Chic phase, right?:-)

[Worthwinkel]

well, Jussi, beside my general interest in that type of music I actually thought about a compilation with tracks by female european disco singers of the seventies and my aim was it to find one singer of each country, well at least 16 tracks/countries or so. The compilation would be a lot more interesting if it would contain east european stuff and not only the well known british, french, german, spanish singers. Anyway that does include Bee Gees/Donna Summer/Chic style :-) Since you are the guy with the expert knowledge: Do you think this project is realisable?

[JussiK]

With trendy packaging, almost anything can be sold and I'd imagine in the wake of stuff that's been coming out like the Funky Frauleins cd, an Eastern Europe comp would sell well. The design is all-important of course. - Check Overfitting Disco for more on the subject.

[InvisibleMan]

nice to see Yuri Antonov's name here :-)

for Soviet Disco in classic 70's style check out:

band Krasnie Maki (1980)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QZoPc4DEGKc

but overall Soviet Union had more of a schlager-type culture in 70's and early 80's, with not much classic disco. In mid 80's Electropop and Eurodisco became mainstream and very popular.

[gvtaylor]

Worthwinkel,

This should be of use to you I guess...

http://www.djhistory.com/forum/showthread.php?t=57641

Mark