A graphic encyclopedia about Viktor Tsoi and the Kino group has been published

The authors of the book “Tsoi. The story of a rock star in letters and pictures” Denis Boyarinov and Masha Shishova talk about Viktor Tsoi in the language of both a history textbook and a graphic novel. I have read the publication Igor Gavrilov.

The subtitle “The Story of a Rock Star in Letters and Pictures” immediately determines the audience of the new book. This is the first experiment of its kind. Despite the fact that many biographical books about Tsoi have been published, many memoirs of his contemporaries and works with an emphasis on illustrations, despite the fact that fictitious stories have been published about what would have happened if Tsoi had not been in a car accident in Latvia, books addressed to youth, has not yet happened, and this is the absolute innovation of the book by Denis Boyarinov and Masha Shishova “Tsoi”.

The basis of the book is illustrations. Masha Shishova, a wonderful portrait painter, as well as a sculptor and ceramicist with a special sense of form, defines the target audience of “Tsoi” as “not super-small children.” This is the artist’s first big experience in book illustration. Moreover, she considers the genre of the book to be closer to the alphabet than to a graphic novel or comic book.

True, the organization of the material in the book does not resemble the alphabet. These are short stories describing a character, object, concept or event from the “world of Tsoi”, arranged not in chronological order, but randomly, in such a way that you can read or leaf through it from anywhere. And if you want to find a pattern in the arrangement of texts and images, you can turn to the diagram that opens the book, which is similar to a board game or a subway map.

Masha Shishova is not a Kino fan to the core; she supplemented her idea of ​​the Kino group and its music with a lot of new information for herself right along the way. For example, the fact that after Maryana Tsoi the leader of the group had another beloved woman, Natalya Razlogova, was a revelation for her, and it struck the artist so much that she created an entire chapter, “A Silver Fox Fur Coat,” telling about the expensive gift she gave Razlogovoy Viktor Tsoi. For a Kino fan, this may be a minor, “tabloid” fact, but for a girl writing her Kino story, it turned out to be important.

It’s always interesting to find a new angle on a phenomenon that everyone seems to be familiar with. Examples are recent works about women in the life of The Beatles or about The Beatles through the prism of the biography of their assistant (“Kommersant” wrote in detail about these books).

“Choi. The Story of a Rock Star in Letters and Pictures” is a search for a language to speak with those who know nothing at all about the artist, his music and the era in which he lived.

Here, Shishova’s “non-fan” view is useful in its own way, while her illustrations use the entire range of signs and artifacts characteristic of this “Tsoi’s world.” Many details echo the exhibition “Viktor Tsoi. The Hero’s Path,” and with the “Kino 2020” concert program, and with a series of reissues of “Kino” albums, which was handled by Mashina Records. The book fits into a number of projects approved by the Kino group and the heirs of Viktor Tsoi, and, unlike the films “Summer” by Kirill Serebrennikov and “Tsoi” by Alexei Uchitel, it does not deviate from the canon. It’s easy to imagine this edition on the souvenir table at today’s Kino concert, next to T-shirts and vinyl records.

Music journalist Denis Boyarinov, a long-time author and editor of various publications, from OM to Colta.ru, was responsible for the texts in the book. His texts exist on equal terms with the pictures of Masha Shishova. Here I would like to avoid the term “illustrations”, because illustrations are usually something accompanying the text, but here both “articles” in the spirit of Parfenov’s “The Other Day” and pictures live a full life and help each other.

Boyarinov, however, faced a difficult task. First, he had to deliberately simplify his musicological language, making it accessible to teenagers. “This book is a graphic encyclopedia, where the history of Viktor Tsoi, the Kino group and the turbulent era in which they appeared is presented concisely and clearly,” writes the journalist.

But it’s even harder to explain concepts to readers that they’re not familiar with. If they can still imagine a silver fox fur coat or the Olympic flame, then such concepts as “censorship,” “parasitism,” “perestroika” or “black list,” at first glance, are more difficult to explain, because people born in the post- USSR, they were not caught. Denis Boyarinov describes them as if from afar, from a time period in which these concepts are in the past and require clarification. Although, if he wanted, he could easily use transcripts of today’s Internet discussions and television shows. These topics are often touched upon there, and Viktor Tsoi would be very surprised to learn that with the “changes” everything in the end turned out not to be as he thought. Although on the pages of the book, Tsoi speaks somewhat ambivalently about reforms in the USSR: “I, as a normal person, believe that now is much better than it was before. But sometimes I’m not sure how long it will last. And I’m not sure that everything that is being done is being done correctly. However, I am not a political figure.”

It’s interesting that almost simultaneously with the book “Tsoi. The story of a rock star in letters and pictures”, the solo album of Viktor Tsoi’s son Alexander, “Based on real events,” was released. At the current stage of his own musical career, Tsoi Jr. does not hesitate to use his father’s musical discoveries, especially since he works closely with his father’s colleagues in the group both in the studio and in the “Cinema 2020” concert project. In a sense, his album is also a new look at Kino. Both the guitar riffs and chanting refrains leave no doubt about the source of inspiration, but at the same time, Tsoi-son demonstrates a fair knowledge of modern stadium sound and the intricacies of arrangement. Viktor Tsoi’s later works are often called anthems, but we can say that Alexander Tsoi’s song “Arrows” with the chorus “Just be next to me while I’m being torn apart!” – This is also an anthem, only from a completely different time.

Denis Boyarinov, Maria Shishova. Tsoi. The story of a rock star in letters and pictures. M.: Alpina, 2023.