37 Bone Music: A Collaboration with 99% Invisible

Published: Dec. 22, 2015, 6:43 p.m.

Before the availability of the tape recorder and during the 1950s, when vinyl was scarce, ingenious Russians began recording banned bootlegged jazz, boogie woogie and rock \u2018n\u2019 roll on exposed X-ray film salvaged from hospital waste bins and archives.

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\u201cUsually it was the Western music they wanted to copy,\u201d says Sergei Khrushchev, son of former Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev. \u201cBefore the tape recorders they used the X-ray film of bones and recorded music on the bones, bone music.\u201d

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\u201cThey would cut the X-ray into a crude circle with manicure scissors and use a cigarette to burn a hole,\u201d says author Anya von Bremzen. \u201cYou\u2019d have Elvis on the lungs, Duke Ellington on Aunt Masha\u2019s brain scan \u2014 forbidden Western music captured on the interiors of Soviet citizens.\u201d

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And we follow the making of X-ray recordings into the 21st century at Jack White\u2019s Third Man Records in Nashville TN.

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Produced by The Kitchen Sisters and Roman Mars\u2019 99% Invisible