The Memorial Day of Viktor Tsoi (1962–1990), legend of rock music, idol of millions of people and musician whose songs have not lost their relevance to this day, is celebrated on August 15th.
Viktor Tsoi was born on in Leningrad 21 June 1962. The future musician started to show his talents in kindergarten: he drew well and could easily repeat any, even the most complex, melody, tapping the beat with his palm. However, Tsoi began to study drawing only at the age of 12. In the 1970s, he first participated in a rock project, the Chamber No.6 band, where he played the bass guitar.
Four years later, Viktor Tsoi enrolled in Serov Art School, from where he was expelled for poor performance. Then he enrolled in an evening school, got a job at a plant, and studied at a vocational school in the Woodcarving programme. Here is an interesting fact about Tsoi: starting from his student years and for the rest of his life, he got a habit of carving wooden Japanese netsuke figures.
In the 1970s and 1980s, Viktor Tsoi played in several Moscow bands. In the summer of 1981, he first performed on stage of the Tryum Leningrad cafe. It is generally accepted that after these concerts, the Garin and Hyperboloids band, the name of which appeared due to the analogy with the Hyperboloid of Engineer Garin novel by Alexei Tolstoy, was formed. The band included Viktor Tsoi, Alexei Rybin and Oleg Valinskiy. Soon Valinskiy was recruited for military service, so the band changed its name to Kino.
In 1982, they released their debut album, called 45: namely 45 minutes was the total duration of all the songs on the album.
Around that time, the guitarist was changed in the group: Yuriy Kasparyan replaced Alexei Rybin.
After the 1985 rock festival, Kino and the name of Viktor Tsoi became a famous band throughout the Soviet Union, especially among young people.
In addition to his activities in music, Tsoi also acted in films. His film debut was the Rock documentary directed by Alexei Uchitel. Oleg Garkusha, Boris Grebenshchikov, Anton Adasinsky and popular bands of those years, such as Aquarium, AVIA, Auction, DDT and Kino starred in it. Later, Tsoi was invited to shoot more often. He starred in the Yah hha! (1986) and the Needle (1988) films by Rashid Nugmanov, Assa (1986) by Sergei Solovyov. Tsoi became the best actor in 1989, according to the Soviet Screen magazine.
Besides music and acting, Viktor Tsoi continued to draw. He was part of the New Artists team, who was engaged in the heritage of the avant-garde of the 1920s and foreign projects, such as pop art, comics, graffiti by American artists. This also influenced the bright and expressive works of Tsoi. He did not have his own workshop, so he drew wherever he could, often on pieces of paper, cardboard and even polyethylene. He participated in exhibitions of his creative association and even in the New York exhibition of Leningrad artist: a total of 10 of his paintings were presented in America.
Nevertheless, for Soviet youth, Viktor Tsoi is primarily a rock musician. After the release of the Blood Type album, Tsoi's songs could be heard everywhere: on the radio, in every yard and every home concert. Many young people imitated the frontman of the Kino band in demeanour and appearance: they began to dress like Tsoi.
In the spring of 1989, the A Star Called the Sun album, the only vinyl that the musicians of the Kino band recorded in a professional studio, was released.
In 1988-1990, Tsoi held dozens of concerts throughout our country. He toured in Denmark, performed at the largest rock festival in France in Bourges and at the Back In the USSR Soviet-Italian rock festival in Melpignano.
On August 15, 1990, on a highway in Latvia, a Moskvich car driven by Viktor Tsoi crashed into a bus at high speed. Later it was discovered that the musician fell asleep while driving. He was buried at the Bogoslovsky cemetery in Leningrad. The last Kino vinyl called Black Album was released after the death of the band's frontman, and soon the band split up.
In celebration of the Memorial Day of Viktor Tsoi, the SUSU Scientific Library prepared a selection of books about the artist’s biography and work.
