Articles
27.01.2021
Volgograd’s twin and partner-cities: Cleveland, the home of rock and roll
By this article, we are starting a series of publications dedicated to Volgograd’s twin-cities, the most interesting aspects of their life and… their immediate presence in our city’s territory. As it turns out, the fruit of twinning are more widely spread and prominent than we ever thought!
In honor of the online meeting of the online meeting with the US colleagues, the article will be dedicated to Cleveland, Ohio – in the 1980s, it made itself known as home of rock and roll itself!
It was at that time that the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Foundation, established by the legendary founder of the “Atlantic Records” record label Ahmet Ertegun, announced a national competition to choose a US city to host the Hall of Fame itself.
The nominees were Philadelphia (home of Bill Haley and American Bandstand), Memphis (home of Sun Studios and Stax Records), Detroit (home of Motown Records), Cincinnati (home of King Records), the formidable New York City, and Cleveland.
Cleveland offered a whole battery of arguments:
- it is in its territory that the famous WMMS radio station broadcasted, which brought fame to Bruce Springsteen and David Bowie,
- and it was at this radio station that the famous DJ Alan Freed worked, who coined the very term of “rock and roll” in the 1950s.
600 000 people from all North-eastern Ohio rooted for Cleveland and signed the respective petition, while civic leaders and investors raised the record 65 million dollars to finance the construction.
On the 5th of May 1986, Cleveland was declared the winner.
Today, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame functions as a museum, lecture platform and concert hall at the same time and doesn’t slow down even during the pandemical year 2020. On the contrary, it was recently awarded the Webby Award — an international professional internet award for web-projects.
To Volgograd citizens, though, Cleveland offered an artistic encounter of a different music genre – see our report about a series of concerts by the pianist Mark Damish.