An odd story out of the Russian Duma, or Parliament, by the the BBC about a piano player banned after playing music with (gasp!) criminal undertones.

Pianist punished for prison song

Chopin 'was not conducive to Russian MPs' digestion' The Russian parliament's lower chamber, the Duma, has barred a pianist from performing in the canteen after she played a tune with criminal undertones. Pianist Olga Skiba was initially hired to delight MPs with the sounds of Mozart and Chopin - but was flooded with requests for popular melodies. She was suspended for three weeks after she played the 80-year-old tune Murka. It tells a story of a gangster killing his girlfriend for being an undercover agent of the Bolshevik secret police. Murka is considered a classic example of the prison chanson-style which originated in Odessa in the 1920s. The style came into fashion again after the collapse of the USSR. Prison chanson is still immensely popular, and there is even the countrywide Chanson-FM radio station entirely dedicated to it. But it seldom appears on other radio stations or television. Many Russian intellectuals have expressed alarm about the spread of the gangster culture.