RABIZ: THE UNINTENDED CHILD OF 1960S' URBAN CULTURE

The article discusses the ideological, social and cultural conditions that made possible the formation and development of "rabiz," a form of ur- ban musical folklore, in the 1960s. Rabiz is described as an undesired result of the Socialist modernization process. It had received certain im- portant aspects from the preserved forms of pre-Soviet urban culture but for some of its key features owes to the soviet cultural policy of the 1930s and the socio-cultural tendencies of the Soviet Armenia of the 1960s and 1970s. Rabiz was a side effect of the industrialization and urbanization of the 60s and was then radically transformed and degraded during the process of post-Soviet deindustrialization.