How to make musical heritage public
Is the April order of the rais of the Republic being fulfilled?
From 1 January 2025, the works of Tatar classic composer Salikh Saydashev will become public property: it will be 70 years since the composer's death — and his music can be performed publicly without the consent of the copyright holders. Will his works appear on streaming services? Perhaps the April order of the rais of the Republic on the digitisation of classical Tatar music works will bring us closer to this event.
70 years without Saydashev
Salikh Saydashev died in Moscow on 16 December 1954, this year it will be 70 years since his death. This means that from next year the composer's music for plays, songs, and marches will become folk music and can be played, recorded and reproduced publicly without the consent of copyright holders or any payments.
What is Saydashev's music? It is classic. The plays Galiyabanu, The Hireman, Blue Shawl, On the Kandre River and many others. For example, the song The Adriatic Sea known to us from the performance of Ilkham Shakirov. This is the March of the Red Army that sounds at the Kazan railway station. By the way, there are currently 27 songs by Saydashev in the register of the Russian Authors' Society.
This April, at a traditional meeting of the Tatar intelligentsia with Rustam Minnikhanov, Director of the Kazan Children's Music School No. 18 named after M. Muzafarov Ilziya Fatkhullina raised the issue of the representation of Tatar classics on the Internet. As the press service of the rais indicated then, it “noted that in order to popularise classical Tatar musical works, it is necessary to digitize the works that are currently stored in music archives. Rustam Minnikhanov issued instructions to organise this work.”
As a result, one of the instructions of the head of the republic appeared: to develop a programme of measures (roadmap) for the digitization and popularisation of musical works of Tatar composers stored in music archives, as well as archival video recordings and to submit proposals for their implementation.
This is not the first approach to the task: the public goals of the Ministry of Culture for 2022 included the digitisation of 500 compositions and making them available on the Internet. Unfortunately, funds for this goal were not found and it remained unachieved.
?si=1wDVWIg05Ksd4fy0What to do now?
Anyone wishing to listen to at least part of the musical heritage stored in the archives of the republic will be able to do so with due diligence. For example, if you can't find the authors you need on streaming services, you can open the website of the State Symphony Orchestra of the Republic of Tatarstan and listen to the Anthology of Music by Tatarstan Composers published on discs by the Sony Music and Red Seal labels and presented in January 2013. Or visit the website of La Primavera orchestra to appreciate a similar anthology of chamber music. Or go to the portal The World of Tatar Music created by the Kazan Conservatory where 256 works are available for review: from a fragment of Zhiganov's Symphony No. 1 to a munajat from the village of Bolshoe Rybushkino in Nizhny Novgorod Region. Moreover, for the latter, the user agreement states that listening is “for the purpose of personal non-commercial use.”
A researcher can also go to the village of Stolbishche and contact the State Archives of the Republic of Tatarstan, which currently houses more than 38,000 units of audio document storage, including composers’ works. Get acquainted with the music on the spot.
Next year, the State Committee of the Republic of Tatarstan for Archival Affairs will implement a project to integrate the catalogue of audio documents with the network of the Russian Centre for the Circulation of Rights to the Results of Creative Activity. This means that by visiting the website of RCIS.RF, this blockchain infrastructure for the use of intellectual rights to the results of creative activity, you can find out who currently owns a specific song and begin working on extracting it to streaming.
The problem of copyright and related rights is the main stumbling block in the development of art. The question is not only who is the heir of the poet and composer but also who owns the rights to performance, and how correctly they understand the rights to use. Of course, no one is going to buy out the authorship from the heirs of Rustem Yakhin, but it is necessary to explain to his relatives what a tiny royalty from streaming is.
Re-record
Another way to resolve the issue of related rights is a new recording. For example, this is what Tatmedia agency is doing in the National Heritage — Future Memory project. The plans are to record 2,000 hours of audio, 20 radio plays, at least 350 examples of musical heritage over five years, and create special websites. In particular, 1,200 hours of audiobooks were created over two years, and another 395 hours will be ready by the end of the year. All of this is transferred to Kitap, Saf, Tatarstan radio studios, SHAYAN TV channel and is freely posted on the Internet.
On the other hand, to record, you need notes, and their condition also leaves much to be desired. In particular, in this In 2015, it became known that the Kamal Theatre Orchestra had actively taken up the study of musical deposits, as a result of which this season it will present a performance based on the ballet Water Spirit by Enver Bakirov and My Shoe comedy based on the play by Tazi Gizzat to the music of Djaudat Fayzi. At the same time, much of this has not been studied, something exists only in the form of a piano score (without orchestration). Let us recall that one of the rais’ orders is also the creation of a large recording studio. It is planned that it will appear in the new building of the Kamal Theatre, which will accumulate all the creative forces of the republic.