“Mozhno!” and the Founding Fathers of a “Freak Scene” in Belarus

The image above shows a group of freezing musicians in December last year getting ready for the painfully long and uncomfortable bus ride from Minsk, Belarus to Moscow. They were preparing to host a mini-festival in the Russian capital, designed to showcase their nation’s new music under the banner of a brief catchphrase: “Mozhno!” That one Russian term – shown below – means, quite literally, “It’s Possible!” – but in the context of these gathered, chilly musicians, something along the lines of “Yes, We Can!” might be better…

…if a certain overseas dignitary hadn’t made excessive use of it in recent months.

In respectful celebration of these long trips between neighboring nations, the Moscow webzine Open Space has just released a compilation CD with the same exclamatory title. It can be downloaded for free from the magazine’s music pages and gives readers a good, balanced overview of the more promising names on Belarus’ current scene. Twelve outfits are on display, but rather than say a word or two about all of them, we have opted for a snapshot of five – in order to make some coherent observations about the CD – and its country of origin.

Perhaps the least willing to advertise themselves are the suitably named Anonimka, although a few of their videos can be found online, either in animated forms or as live footage. Open Space provides a little context:  “This is a rough ‘n’ ready outfit, who told us not to spread the word about their existence. Nonetheless, we will tell you that it’s a side-project of Aleksandr Liberzon (the joker you’ll normally see standing behind the keyboards of the band Cassiopeja) and his wife… who is the sister of Cassiopeja’s vocalist, Il’ia Cherepko-Samokhvalov. As for their songs, Anonimka perform material that’s designed for listeners with a refined aesthetic sense – and a funny bone, too.”

“In other words, these are ideal songs for children, drug addicts, and alcoholics.”

The videos available online show the band leaning heavily on local folk material, played in a knockabout style, with scant respect for any “academic” treatment of ethnography. In a land where President Lukashenko – himself devoid of all humor – is keen to establish high levels of civic pride, Anonimka drag their folk songs – “the heritage of the people” – back into the playground, where they proceed give it a good kicking. The track on offer above, “Uncle Vitia,” is all about a neighbor who cuts the grass of surrounding lawns with a long, traditional scythe. It is sung in a childish register with more enthusiasm than skill. In addition, it’s decorated with a fool-blooded saxophone, an instrument hardly suited to little tales of rustic enterprise.

These people aren’t afraid to experiment.

And what of “Cassiopeja“? The band, already – and unavoidably – mentioned without any introduction, are arguably the most important ensemble on the compilation, since they provide members for several other participants of “Mozhno!” Their name comes from a constellation that was thought to resemble Queen Cassiopeia, renowned – as we see in the blue Japanese image above – for her vanity. This Belarusian outfit certainly has reason to be equally proud today, given the wide influence they have on modern, fashionable music at home. They were recently signed to Moscow label Snegiri (”Bullfinch”), who seem to have developed a recent passion for all things melodic coming from their eastern neighbors.

The Moscow press has been equally kind and supportive. “Cassiopeja are my favorite band at the moment, or at least among those that are brave enough to sing in Russian! There’s the kind of humor here that you’d expect in Gogol’s stories and the romance of [fantasy writer] Aleksandr Grin; it’s all wrapped up in electro-pop that sounds like it was made in London… Sometimes it seems like they’re aliens from another planet. What else can I say?”

Nothing. The loons have landed.

That bizarre, “Gogolian” humor is clear enough before the music has even been heard. The band has a penchant, as we see, for appearing in carnival costumes and homemade masks (which no doubt help to disguise the fact that members of Cassiopeja are simultaneously busy in other groups.) Many of the songs are, conversely, delivered in a deadpan manner, that – if the same numbers were heard before the musicians were seen – would certainly give no indication of the festive spectacle.

The song on offer here, “1 + 1,” runs through a list of famous scientists, as if from a school textbook, whilst noting that the purity or clarity of mathematics has little relation to the oddities of daily life. The band defines themselves as purveyors of an “insane art – made by sane people. This is blazing paranormality[?]. We are the Founding Fathers of a Belarusian freak scene, and a homegrown style we call quasi-trash-moderne.”

The public is well-prepared for such things.

The Russian press adds: “This band writes eccentric, naive, simple, and catchy songs. They perform in Venetian masks, dressed up as interplanetary hares, i.e., in stick-on ears and dark glasses. Their concerts always turn into a kind of New Year’s party for grown-ups. This, in other words, is designed for all the people who remember the sort of music you’d hear in Soviet cartoons, but listen to modern indietronica, too. The kind of people who love to stare at the stars and dream of lofty matters. People who’ve remained a child at heart… The band composes their tunes using elements of kids’ movies, books of logic puzzles, amateur poetry… and Peter Jackson’s movie ‘Brain Dead.’”

Long before he went to Hollywood, Jackson made several horror flicks. “Brain Dead” tells the tale of a “Sumatran Rat-Monkey,” a hellish mutant born of both animals that makes it way from a tropical jungle to the shores of New Zealand, where – needless to say – all hell breaks loose. Especially in places where sharp instruments are kept.

Probably the most consequential offshoot of Cassiopeja is Petlia pristrastiia, whose name we have yet to come across in English, but translated literally it means Pleasure Loop – among other possibilities. Starring Cassiopeja’s vocalist Il’ia Cherepko-Samokhvalov – above, in glasses – they play what Open Space has called “blazing rock ‘n’ roll, so the singer can dance in strange ways around the mic.”

As the recent picture below shows nicely, Cherepko-Samokhvalov still manages to keep busy when the hare costumes are at the dry cleaners.

Left to their own devices, other publications in Moscow are also enthusiastic. “These guys play smart, catchy, and melancholy post-punk stuff – kinda in the style of Joy Division or [late Soviet rockers] Kino. There has been a terrible lack of that music lately, especially when you take a look at our surrounding reality.” The same magazine – Afisha – went on to claim that the band’s most recent album was a possible contender for CD of the Year, due to “the clean-cut melodies, furious sound, and well-chosen, almost despairing intonation in the vocals. The band has already produced what may well be the best diagnosis of miserable guitar music on today’s scene: ‘It’s awkward being wounded in the butt, if you’re surrounded by people dancing…’”

The group members themselves are inclined to see this “furious” music in slightly sadder terms, colored by “a lyricism born of failures. These are songs of modest hope…” That same sense of loss underscores the style of the fourth band on display, Silver Wedding (Serebrianaia svad’ba), of whom we’ve written in the past. Their MySpace URL uses the phrase “Freak Cabaret,” and – as with Kassopeiia or “PP” – the carnival or circus elements of their show are tied to something that lies, sadly, in the past.

They combine what the Moscow press has defined as elements of “modern theater, performance art, puppet shows, and flea markets” in ways that recall the eternal Soviet yearning for French cafe culture. A never-ending Francophilia stood in for all manner of absent objects of desire, including the (supposed) validation in France of culture over commerce.

This roadside, ragged search for penniless, poignant lyricism can become very busy indeed. Here are the instruments, references, and influences needed for Silver Wedding to do full justice to their thespian bent. (We’ve altered the English a little, since that, too, was a tad wayward.) “The freak cabaret band Silver Wedding was formed in 2005. It’s a sprightly combination of banjos, double bass, trumpet, violin, concertina, washboard, and drums – all under the command of a tuba. What results is an astonishing cocktail of French cabaret songs, dixieland, country, Russian folk music and Latin-American rhythms – played by a street orchestra.”

“In all of the band’s concerts, various adventures unfold, involving countless suitcases that are full of church-related or kitchen stuff, all kinds of bottles, lingerie, a pitiless hound of the Baskervilles with sparkling eyes, a greedy woman who’ll cheat of men out of their last penny, an inhabitant of the Parisian catacombs, an albino rat called Emmanuel Kant… and that well-known lover of cleavage, ‘Monsieur Rook.’ The repertoire of Silver Wedding is made of songs in Russian and French that are ironic, paradoxical, and vital, too… all with elements of clowning, puppetry, and French cabaret.”

Phew.

Standing somewhat to one side are the instrumental trio Port Mone (i.e., “Purse/Wallet”), made also of three core elements: an accordion, bass guitar, and percussion. Immediately, however, complications emerge in this deceptively simple lineup as the musicians ask us to reconsider the meaning of their name.”There are two words here. A ‘Port’ is always a place that’s beautiful, and perhaps even tragic. It’s a place where people meet, say farewell, and never remain for long. ‘Mone‘ [i.e., Monet in Russian] – is the founding father of impressionism. Our artistic goals are somewhat similar to the programmatic statements made by those painters.”

Just as the impressionists were concerned with the relationship between static depiction and transient actuality, so the members of Port Mone often speak of turning reality’s constant flux into fixed notes: “Any event [in our music] can become the starting point for a new theme, or the origin of a song. It’s always possible to hear or to feel the sonic chaos that surrounds you and then to [re]organize it in a musical context.”

This notion stands instructively side-by-side with the work of Cassiopeja, and all its offshoots. There is much in that latter group that comes from a Soviet “underground” view of originality: the use of performance in a carnivalesque way; the “reclaiming” of intellectual reference-points from the canon (such as “ground-breaking,” revolutionary scientists); the related battles over children’s animation as an “adult” genre; the role of saxophones as subversively “alien”; and so on. At a time when commerce has erased much local specificity from national art(s), it’s interesting to see several performers, especially under a “retro-regime” like that of Lukashenko, go back to the performative modus operandi of a few decades prior. The late Soviet intelligentsia is back on guard.

What might have looked as if it were slipping woefully out of fashion ten to fifteen years ago now looks vital. This is the kind of social ebb and flow that leads Port Mone to foreground metaphors of flux. Rather than battling over ownership of the canon and its venerated representatives, it seems better to grab an accordion, head off to the port and write music to accompany the ships.

That seems enough celebration of constant change to worry any politician. Especially the ones that won’t leave office.

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