Magnetic Band
Encyclopedia
History
Magnetic Band was formed in 1976 by Gunnar GrapsGunnar Graps
Gunnar Graps-Grafs was a popular Estonian musician and one of the pioneers of hard rock in Estonia and Soviet Union. He has sold hundreds of thousands of records all over the world and in 2004 Graps was given a lifetime award at Estonian Music Awards...
. They played jazz-rock, which had influences of reggae
Reggae
Reggae is a music genre first developed in Jamaica in the late 1960s. While sometimes used in a broader sense to refer to most types of Jamaican music, the term reggae more properly denotes a particular music style that originated following on the development of ska and rocksteady.Reggae is based...
and funk
Funk
Funk is a music genre that originated in the mid-late 1960s when African American musicians blended soul music, jazz and R&B into a rhythmic, danceable new form of music. Funk de-emphasizes melody and harmony and brings a strong rhythmic groove of electric bass and drums to the foreground...
-soul
Soul music
Soul music is a music genre originating in the United States combining elements of gospel music and rhythm and blues. According to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, soul is "music that arose out of the black experience in America through the transmutation of gospel and rhythm & blues into a form of...
. Later, after Graps graduated from Tallinn
Tallinn
Tallinn is the capital and largest city of Estonia. It occupies an area of with a population of 414,940. It is situated on the northern coast of the country, on the banks of the Gulf of Finland, south of Helsinki, east of Stockholm and west of Saint Petersburg. Tallinn's Old Town is in the list...
music school (in 1977), Magnetic Band was reformed and started to play metal-rock as well. Magnetic Band soon became one of the most popular heavy-music bands in Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
.
In 1980 Magnetic Band got first prize in the Tbilisi Rock Festival (1980)
Tbilisi Rock Festival (1980)
The Spring Rhythms. Tbilisi-80 was a musical event held in Tbilisi, capital of the Georgian SSR, Soviet Union, from March 8 to March 16, 1980. It was the first official rock festival in the Soviet Union and is frequently considered the turning point in the history of Soviet and Russian rock...
. They performed a mixture of jazz-rock, blues and funk and was noted for their instrumental mastership.
In 1982 Washington Post dedicated a whole page to Gunnar Graps and the Magnetic Band. In 1983 Magnetic Band got banned by Soviet authorities and was renamed to Gunnar Graps Group
Gunnar Graps Group
The Gunnar Graps Group was an Estonian rock group formed by Gunnar Graps in January, 1984 in Tallinn after his previous Magnetic Band was banned by Soviet authorities. In 1980s the GGG achieved popularity also in Russia....
(GGG). GGG performed in Estonia and Soviet Union and was very popular until the end of decade.
They performed until 1989. In 1997 the GGG reunited, although they performed only about once a month.