While from time to time the passions about the hit – as a good or bad phenomenon – and the love of Latvian music are even divided into two hostile camps – hit supporters and detractors, in the world of music scientists, serious research, dissections and discussions are devoted to this genre of popular music. Speaking of history and the good old golden days, when Latvia supplied the world with its bacon, butter, matches, paper and wood in the 1930s, we can add one more of our export “goods” that conquered France, Germany, China, Japan, Singapore and Jamaica – Daugavpils-born tango legend Oskars Strokas.

The musician known as Riga’s tango king (whose famous melodies are also well known to LR2 listeners) and the year of his 130th birthday inspired the international scientific conference “Schlägeris and popular (entertainment) music culture of the 20s-30s of the 20th century” held at the Academy of Music a few weeks ago. years”. In it, researchers from Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Austria, Germany, Serbia and Hong Kong presented papers on various issues of the history and aesthetics of hit songs and popular music of the first half of the 20th century. The author of the idea, professor of the Music Academy, musicologist Dr. Art. Janis Kudins. A few years ago, his research on the life, fate and musical creation of his native Strok culminated in an ambitious monograph “Oskar Strok. Legacy of the King of Tango”.

Jānis Kudiņš works at the Scientific Research Center of the Academy of Music, he was also its head at one time. The musicologist is interested in the 20th century modernism and postmodernism period in the history of Latvian music, especially extensive research has been devoted to the genre of Latvian opera music, its facts and chronology, starting with the first examples of composers of German origin at the former court of the Duke of Kurzeme-Zemgale in the 18th century and ending with Jānis Lūsens and Zigmars Liepiņš’s rock operas. In addition, in one of the study courses conducted by his MA, the professor pays special attention to the music of feature films of the Riga Film Studio, because he himself is said to have been interested in the “side steps” of certain Latvian academic genre composers in the genre of popular or pop music of his time.