Stephen Coates

During the Cold War era, the songs that Soviet citizens could listen to were ruthlessly controlled by the state. But a secret underground subculture of music lovers and bootleggers defied the censors, building recording machines and making their own records of forbidden jazz, rock'n'roll, and Russian music, cut onto used hospital x-ray film. Who were these 'bonecutters'? Why did they do it and how was it even possible ? Based on years of interviews and oral testimonies, Bone Music presents the stories of the original Bone bootleggers, their customers and persecutors, evoking their spirit of resistance to a repressive culture of prohibition and punishment.
Bone Music details how the bootleggers worked, explains their technical processes, and situates their uniques discs in a revised history of recorded media with a wealth of compelling new detail.