"The Russian listener remains alone with the blues"

Vladimir Rusinov, creator of "Bridges," on why a real blues festival is needed and belief in the impossible.

Junior Wells and Buddy Guy grace the stage at Mostov 2019.

The mass stereotypes that arise when Russians hear the word "blues" are so tedious that you don't even want to list them, but there will definitely be mention of a saxophone, which, all things considered, isn't even the worst of it.

In many cases, when a Russian person loves blues, they experience it alone. They put on a record and begin to assess what they hear through their own life experience and conceptual framework.

And since this doesn't align with any environment, with any standards, a person like that can come up with a pretty unique explanation for what they hear.

If Mikhail Mishuris ever publishes a book called "Memories of Papa Blues' Guests" about everything these visitors told him, it would be such a read that Zoshchenko would nervously step aside for a smoke. The most absolutely striking opinions about blues artists and musicians would come together in it.

Sometimes people gather in a group of five to ten and call themselves the "main blues musicians" of their town. Then begins a difficult struggle of vanity and lack of recognition: they conclude that the town simply doesn't love blues.

They feel, in a sense, that they don't belong here, but they genuinely love the music, and this creates a kind of struggle to figure out the rules, the standards. And that struggle leads to some really inspired but very specific opinions—the kind that can even spark conflict—about which of these ten people truly understands what "Chicago blues" really means.

And yet blues really does exist. Not only as an incredibly rich history, tradition, connections with all adjacent genres, its creators, heroes, modest geniuses, an entire recording industry, and so much else. It's just that all of this is very far away and often happened long ago for the listener who suddenly fell in love with this music in Russia.

I'm not talking about the purity of the term. The word "blues" can be slapped on anything — a biker festival, Russian rock, a jazz project, singer-songwriter music, or a major city program. But that doesn't create the music itself. Blues exists independently of the labels.

The "Mostov" team and festival participants in 2019

And our Mostov team really wanted to help all these people. We wanted to personally introduce them to the history. There's Bob Margolin, he comes here, he's one of the genuine ones. Then there are the current active players—John Nemeth and Mike Ledbetter, and many others who are just as authentic—come to the festival—we tried to give real contemporary context to the blues so that a connection between you, all of us, and the world would happen.

Mike Leadbitter and Bob Margolin played together only once, and it was at Mostki 2018

There's plenty of information available now, but people most often draw their conclusions from the community they're part of. In our case, their understanding of blues often becomes isolated and cut off from the living source of this music. Because it's not just about information — it's about the entire context that surrounds us.

The task of "Bridges" was to create an environment where people would hear and understand everything themselves - they wouldn't need anyone to explain who's a legend and who plays well - people actually understand all of this perfectly fine - if you just give them the opportunity to see and hear it all for themselves.

Bob Margolin at "Mosty"

And importantly, the festival wasn't being made just to "pull off a successful event." Our goal was to change something around us.

So that these little islands of joy that we live on—when we perform in small clubs, or just hang out, or bring someone new—so that these islands would expand and pull in new people. And so that these islands themselves would become part of a bigger world.

Also, we need fresh experiences, not an annual parade of everyone we already know perfectly well. And there's no need for 20-30 bands performing at the festival all at once. I think six or seven acts is ideal: each one plays a full, complete set, rather than having someone start at noon and the last band playing at midnight, with nobody really listening to either end of the lineup.

And a full set is not a matter of comfort. An artist needs time to open up and say something to the people. In a short festival slot, a musician is forced to just show their calling card. In a full set, music actually happens, because for a festival like this, music is the center, not decoration.

John Nemeth at Bridges in 2019

For me, and for the whole team, it's extremely important that the content be meaningful—that we're not just repeating the same thing from festival to festival. We needed to engage people, to show them the full beauty of what we ourselves love.

And of course, the festival was operating at a loss—a significant one at that. Ticket sales covered about a third of our expenses. I actually knew how to break even on the festival, but I never even tried over those three years, despite it eating up a third of my annual income. I assumed that once "Mosty" grew larger, it would be able to support itself, but we had to get there gradually. And this wasn't patronage—it was the price of complete independence.

Kid Andersen, Aki Kumar, Vladimir Rusinov, and Ksenia Dubrovskaya at Bridges 2019

Katya Perelygina, our manager for all things, said that the "Bridges" festival, if it had continued, could have done a lot to popularize blues and change how people imagine it. And that's true – that was actually the whole idea – to connect the world we live in with the real big world of deep, living, meaningful music, with all its culture, history, and present.

Of course, you can doubt whether we would have pulled it off – but if you believe in such things, you can make them real.

Rick Estrin and Vladimir Rusinov on stage after the Mosty 2019 festival

Right now we're very far from organizing a festival again. But perhaps that's precisely why it became especially clear to me that our "Mosty" was neither the first nor the last. In Russia and beyond, there were enormous numbers of people who, making no attempt whatsoever to gain fame or make money, worked—and continue to work—to ensure that this music penetrates ever deeper into the fabric of the country and its culture. Many of these events have already been forgotten, but without them there would be neither our history nor many others like it…

That's why we wanted to remember them, record their stories, and inspire ourselves and everyone who, out of pure love for music, is ready to keep building blues bridges in this amazing world. Because if you truly believe in such things, you really can make them real.