Les Clodettes / Alamy
Qalam strives to explore the interpenetration of different cultures. To this end, we have decided to launch a series of playlists in which music mediates between different geographical and ideological spaces. Our first playlist is called ‘West to East: One Hundred Best Songs’. It will be updated several times a week, and its curation will focus on how Western pop culture has reflected the realities of the East, whether they are musical, geographical, religious, or political. (The terms ‘West’ and ‘East’ should be taken as broadly and arbitrarily as possible.)
Les Clodettes were a group of backing vocalists and dancers for the French idol Claude François, and they counted a girl with the sonorous name of Béatrice Serguïeff in their number. They did not have much independent value, but they were a reliable consumable fuel during the disco era. Their instrumental bubblegum-style fiddling reflected the interest in kung fu that had been sparked in the West in the 1970s—the reason, of course, being the Bruce Lee movies. The most popular musical hit with this theme was Carl Douglas’s ‘Kung Fu Fighting’, released in 1974. It’s funny that the Soviet Union was about ten years behind in this regard—kung fu and Bruce Lee began to be mentioned in Russian songs in the early eighties due to the general rise of video culture.