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Joanna Stingray is an author and musician from Los Angeles, California, who lived for many years in Russia. She became the first American producer of underground Russian rock n' roll when she released the double album Red Wave - 4 Underground Bands from the USSR - a compilation of music smuggled out of the USSR by Joanna in 1985. A frequent traveler in and out of Russia, Joanna was interrogated by the KGB and FBI (both thought she was a spy) and in 1987, she became an enemy of the State - her visa blocked to keep her from entering the Soviet Union to marry Kino guitarist Yuri Kasparyan. After months of intervention by the U.S. State Department, she returned to Russia, married Yuri and in the early '90s became a television host, a recording artist, and well known rock personality throughout Russia. She has published several books in Russia about her time in the music scene as well as much of her photo collection. Her video diaries and interviews of bands and their musicians is the only archive of this clandestine, bygone world. ""FREE TO ROCK,"" the 2017 documentary expose directed by Jim Brown and narrated by Kiefer Sutherland, features interviews with Joanna Stingray, prominent American musicians who toured the Soviet Union, and several important Russian musicians. It reveals to the world the dismantling socio-political effect of ""soft power,"" and discovers how American rock n' roll and the release of Red Wave during glasnost contributed to the ending of the Cold War. Madison Stingray is the author of two books as well as songs, poems, and short stories, the common theme of all being a strong female narrative and an attempt at human solidarity. She graduated from Georgetown University magna cum laude and received her Master's degree in Archaeology from the University of Cambridge in England. Growing up, the Leningrad Underground Rock days were stories that became her fairytales, and her contribution to putting those adventures in print is to inspire others that extraordinary things can happen to anyone who fights for something.
That the lyrics are in Russian and the production quality is primitive detracts little from the music's power and appeal. For Joanna, rock 'n' roll is a universal language that transcends cultural boundaries and borders between nations. -L.A. Reader Eight trips later she had 'smuggled' enough tapes of Kino and other groups out of the Soviet Union to produce an album, Red Wave-a kind of Greatest Hits of Socialist Rock. At first the Soviet press denigrated Stingray's tales of the brave little American miss helping the oppressed Soviet musicians as a self-serving fantasy. Now, though, inspired by glasnost if not by greed, Soviet officialdom has cut a deal with her to produce 10 albums of unofficial music for consumption in the U.S. -People Magazine Joanna flew the Los Angeles-Leningrad route nine times in two years. Armed with the support of David Bowie, who had become interested Aquarium's work, Stingray signed a contract with the American recording company Big Time Records. Joanna smuggled out contraband audio recordings of Leningrad rock groups in the guise of new cassettes, releasing them in America as a split double album called Red Wave: 4 Underground Bands from the USSR. It was very hard to produce that record, Stingray recalled later, because Americans were afraid of Russia; they were afraid of the Soviet Union. And when I tried to get help from people, they reacted with an uncanny fear. So I had to do practically everything myself. For 1986, the appearance of 15,000 vinyl Red Wave albums was a cultural revolution. In reality, it turned out to be the first legitimate compilation of Russian rock that people in different countries could listen to. American record stores were filled with the sounds of Aquarium, Kino, Alisa and Strannye Igry, and Soviet cooperators began selling the collection in music kiosks. [...] It is hard to overestimate the benefit of Stingray's public awareness efforts for the international promotion of Soviet rock at the time. -Russia Beyond, Red Wave: How Soviet rock made it to the US The music on Red Wave - which ranges from the ska-tinged pop of Kino to the brooding, introspective songwriting of Grebenshchikov - was recorded mostly in cramped living rooms transformed into home studios with borrowed two-track and eight-track equipment. The lyrics, sung in Russian (a translated lyric sheet is provided), are not overtly political. But veiled reference to politics shine through, as does a keen awareness of progressive Western rock. -Rolling Stone Some rare footage, however, was gathered by Joanna Stingray, an American musician and producer who traveled to the Soviet Union in 1984 and ensconced herself in the world of Leningrad's most popular rock musicians. Stingray would go on to befriend artists at the vanguard of the Leningrad scene, including Boris Grebenshchikov, the front man for the band Akvarium, and Victor Tsoi, the late Soviet rock icon accused recently by Russian State Duma member Yevgeny Fyodorov of collaborating with the CIA. -The Atlantic Rock 'n' roll through the Iron Curtain Joanna Fields was born in California brought up to mistrust Communism, so as soon as she could, in 1984 she went to the Soviet Union. She met underground rock musicians like Boris Grebenshchikov and his band Akvarium, banned from releasing music or playing official concerts and thought someone should get their music out to the West. Joanna has now written an account of her tape smuggling years as she shuttled across the Iron Curtain and released a groundbreaking double LP called Red Wave, featuring four underground bands and music that many in the West simply thought didn't exist. Of course she needed a code name. She chose Stingray. -BBC Newsday Rock in a Hard Place? It's hard to find a more drab and yet more romantic period in the history of the Soviet Union than in the 1980s. Life as people knew it was falling apart and yet there was also a growing hope that something new and exciting would rise in its place. That sense of cognitive and emotional dissonance was perfectly captured by the underground music of that time, produced by young non-conformist musicians in what was then the city of Leningrad. What was it like to live and make music in that period of hopeful despair? To discuss this, Oksana is joined by Joanna Stingray, American musician and avid chronicler of the Leningrad rock scene. -RT Thanks to a resourceful Los Angeles Singer and songwriter who heard-and liked-their brand of Russian rock, the bands are now playing to a faraway audience. [...] The album is the brainchild of Joanna Stingray a.k.a. Joanna Fields, 25, who has been exploring the Soviet Union's unofficial and unheralded rock world since 1984. -Newsweek At home in California, Joanna Stingray is a real estate agent with two additional jobs. But in Russia, the 58-year-old American is a near-legend, feted by rock fans and musicians for her fearless championing of Soviet underground music during the Cold War. You are the mother of Russian rock! a fan shouted as Stingray promoted her new autobiography at a Moscow bookstore. ... The California musician aroused the suspicions of the KGB and the FBI as she bravely championed the Soviet underground in the 1980s. The Red Wave LP, released in America in 1986, introduced western audiences to Russian rock and helped end the Kremlin's censorship of homegrown groups. -The Guardian, Joanna Stingray - the woman who smuggled punk rock out of the USSR
