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<\/p>\nThe COMMENT
Nightlife \u2013\u2013\u2013 Eastern Europe
Missing a beat<\/p>\n
Matt Unicomb on how he world\u2019s electronic-music scenes are organising against Russian aggression.<\/p>\n
In March, while companies such as Disney and Netflix were suspending their Russian operations in response to the invasion of Ukraine, similar moves were being made in a less-watched corner of global culture: the electronic-music scene. Some of the world\u2019s biggest DJs, including Swedish House Mafia and Jauz, denounced the invasion, while ravers in cities from London to Los Angeles hit the dance floor to raise funds for Ukrainian refugees and the Red Cross.<\/p>\n
And there were places where the rhetoric went further, particularly in Eastern Europe\u2019s former-Soviet states. \u201cThis is our war too,\u201d declared Bassiani, a popular techno club in Tbilisi, in late March. Earlier that month some Russian clubbers were allegedly turned away from the venue after staff saw their passports. I spoke to two Russian Tbilisi residents who claim that they were denied entry for this reason; one of them, Sasha Diskoteka, is a regular at other Tbilisi clubs and has lived in the city since October. \u201cThey didn\u2019t say anything except, \u2018Sorry, you can\u2019t come in,\u2019\\\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
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Their alleged treatment at Bassiani is in keeping with an open letter from about 90 signatories in Kyiv\u2019s once-flourishing club scene, which calls for a boycott of Russian artists, organisations and promoters who do not \u201cexplicitly take action\u201d against the invasion. Some have applied this to Russian clubbers too. Until February the Russian and Ukrainian club scenes were closely linked but many artists in Kyiv say that they feel betrayed by the silence from Russian counterparts who haven\u2019t condemned the war or even checked in to ask whether they\u2019re OK.<\/p>\n
\u201cI know some DJs from Russia who went to protests and I respect them so much,\u201d says Alisa Mullen, a press officer for several Kyiv nightlife organisations. \u201cBut that\u2019s just 1 per cent of them. This boycott is an answer to ignorance.\u201d The electronic-music community is no stranger to collective action: many artists boycott Israel and campaign against global injustice. With its roots in black and gay communities in the US, the genre has long attracted those with progressive ideals. That extends to scenes in Eastern Europe, where clubs strive to be safe spaces for victims of discrimination and advocate for them in street protests.<\/p>\n
In Tallinn, this music has long helped to connect Estonian speakers with Russian speakers. \u201cOur club was a place where you could feel post-Soviet trauma healing,\u201d says Elena Natale, co-founder of dance mecca Hall. \u201cBut because of this war, what we have achieved over years of uniting young people is crumbling.\u201d Natale points to a renewed hostility towards Russians in wider Estonian society. Leading universities, for instance, have paused future enrolment for Russian and Belarusian nationals.<\/p>\n
Eastern European scenes also fostered connections with those who lived beyond their borders. In the years leading up to the invasion, Kyiv and Tbilisi in particular became popular destinations for \u201ctechno tourists\u201d, who would fly in for weekend-long raves.<\/p>\n
Venues such as Tbilisi\u2019s Bassiani and Kyiv\u2019s Closer, in a former ribbon factory, became symbols of a new kind of youth culture. Georgians and Ukrainians no longer had to look westward for cutting-edge music because now they had their own. And along with the beats came politics. Bassiani mobilises demonstrators for gay pride marches and has supported Georgia\u2019s drug-decriminalisation movement. Many clubbers say that they aren\u2019t surprised by its tough stance on Russia.<\/p>\n
But shutting the doors to Russians, especially those who are outside their home country, is going too far, says Natale. Among the 30-odd people employed by her club are Estonians, Russians and Ukrainians \u2013 an uncommon mix in Estonian society, which, like those of its fellow Baltic states Latvia and Lithuania, is watching its large Russian minority with increased suspicion. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt feels as though we are back in the 1990s,\u201d says Natale. \u201cThere\u2019s so much hate, even in this new generation.\u201d Yet across the region there\u2019s chance for music to bring communities together, just as it has for decades.<\/p>\n
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Television \u2013\u2013\u2013 Saudi Arabia
Playing with time<\/p>\n
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Jameel is gazing out the backseat window of her taxi when she spots a glamorous brunette cruising along in a roofless mustard-yellow sports car. \u201cWow. Even women can drive now?\u201d she says to herself, looking on in amazement. <\/p>\n
Jameel is the main character in Jameel Jeddan, a new, critically acclaimed Saudi TV series about a young woman who wakes up after five years in a coma to a transformed kingdom, where the power of ultra-conservative clerics has waned. The comedy-drama is the first Saudi TV show to be written by and star a Saudi woman. <\/p>\n
\u201cI wanted to write about this girl who comes back to a society that she\u2019s so not familiar with,\u201d says Sarah Taibah (pictured), who plays Jameel. The series follows her return to high school alongside her quest to track down her father, Asem, whose whereabouts her mother, Afaf, refuses to disclose. During the six-episode run, Jameel breaks a number of taboos in Saudi Arabia: she leaves home without telling her family where she\u2019s going, hectors a boy named Nour into a quasi-romance and strikes her harassing stepbrother Fouad with a chair. <\/p>\n
\u201cI wanted to break all these stereotypes because I became very sick of how women are portrayed on television,\u201d says Taibah. \u201cI hadn\u2019t done a badass role until Jameel.\u201d<\/p>\n
That boundary-pushing extends to the lead characters\u2019 names. Jameel is the masculine version of Jameela \u2013 the result of a typo on her birth certificate. Nour, which means \u201clight\u201d in Arabic, is used among men and women. <\/p>\n
\u201cI wanted both main characters to be very alike in the most Saudi-appropriate way,\u201d says Taibah. \u201cShe is not the typical, sensitive, cute kind of girl. And he is not the typical masculine boy. He is very sensitive and very open to his feelings and she is very suppressing of hers.\u201d<\/p>\n
Taibah says that there has been no backlash to the show from conservatives. The series airs on Shahid, a streaming service owned by Saudi Arabia\u2019s state broadcaster mbc.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe fact that it did really well on Shahid is just a nice reminder that there is hope, you know?\u201d says Taibah. Although the kingdom\u2019s authorities have increasingly clamped down on dissent, they have also liberalised social mores \u2013 moves that have been popular with many Saudis.<\/p>\n
Politics aside, much of the show\u2019s success is down to how it plugs into the cultural interests of younger Saudis. The series, for example, is dotted with references and cut sequences to Japanese anime, which Taibah says is because \u201cthe younger generation has this crazy obsession with anime and Japanese stuff\u201d.<\/p>\n
The lingering question is whether Jameel Jeddan will return for another season \u2013 and how many more taboos can be prodded. Taibah says that she has an idea where the show would go from here \u2013 and there\u2019s certainly an appetite from fans. When Taibah announces anything online about the show, she jokes that \u201call the comments, non-stop, to an annoying extent, are, \u2018We want season two. Shut up. We want season two.\u2019\\\u201d It\u2019s hard to imagine Taibah keeping quiet after this.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The COMMENTNightlife \u2013\u2013\u2013 Eastern EuropeMissing a beat Matt Unicomb on how he world\u2019s electronic-music scenes are organising against…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":11614,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[5453,5454,956,5455,5456,158,5457,25,5458,5459,5460,5461,26],"class_list":["post-11613","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news","tag-bassiani","tag-cultural-boycotts","tag-eastern-europe","tag-electronic-music","tag-jameel-jeddan","tag-kyiv","tag-nightlife","tag-russia","tag-sarah-taibah","tag-saudi-arabia","tag-tbilisi","tag-techno","tag-ukraine"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11613","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11613"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11613\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11614"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11613"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11613"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11613"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}