Yuma: ‘It’s amazing how they find something of their own in the Chuvash culture’
Tatar laboratories, Udmurt design and Slavic dark folk were discussed at the Itil festival
The fourth festival of the new ethnic culture of the peoples of the Volga Region Itil went through the trials of nature, losing a significant part of the audience in the middle, which cannot be said about the artists — the downpour only added epicness to their performances. In the lecture hall, closed from the rain, representatives of music and design discussed their projects — a correspondent of Realnoe Vremya listened to them.
There are heroes in Atna
On Saturday, the organisers of some festivals (and there were many of them in different parts of Kazan), after looking at the gloomy sky and the weather forecast, decided not to hold their events. But there's no other choice for Itil — they have artists gathered from different regions. At the first performances, everything looked quite optimistic, but after the set of the Internet star from Ufa, Hanqyzy (TV sound engineer Leyla Vladimirova is behind this name), it began to rain heavily. Looking at the jokes of nature in the pavilion exactly opposite the stage, musicians and designers discussed projects.
Ilyas Gafarov, the general producer of the Kazan Yummy Music label, spoke about artists, festivals (DartFest is due to take place again on August 30, the auction for its holding was again won by a Moscow company), laboratories. Gafarov also mentioned a new phenomenon — the Atninsk rap scene:
“The folk live in the village and with friends from neighbouring villages they write modern rap, lyrics, how they scrap metal, how they live with dreams and hopes.”
Pityran from the village of Igra
Vasilika Kasatkina, the co-founder of the Pityran family workshop, said that their family business (headed by her father and mother) is still based in the village of Igra (19,000 inhabitants).
“Nothing would have happened if it wasn't for my mom," Kasatkina noted. It was my mother who started sewing costumes, studying traditions. “She realised that every nation has connections with other nations," Vasilika noted the feature of the workshop.
Kasatkina pointed out that the knowledge of Tatarstan residents is connected with the south of Udmurtia. While “Piteran” promotes less familiar northern traditions, interesting for their conciseness.
“In our latest collections, we make the video sequence ourselves, we create jewelry ourselves, we wrote the music for the last two collections ourselves," Kasatkina said.
She studied to be a jeweler in Kazan, where her first experiments with design provoked protests from teachers. What was happening in Tatar youth culture inspired Kasatkina to return home. Now she and her parents have a family workshop, a fashion theatre and Pityran ANO (that is, “a wheel”).
“And when someone asks where they can buy national clothes, they immediately recommend to go to Pityran,". Kasatkina summarised: everything that is sewn for shows, and this is more than 33 collections, is then sold out.
Kruzhevo: what is proper marketing?
Igor Bazhan, the vocalist of the Kruzhevo project, as specified by the moderator, choreographer Venera Galimova, continues to work as marketing director of the RIM media group. He presented his group as a brand, describing both the identity, the message, the audience, and so on, because “now is the time when form prevails over content," therefore — visual form is at the heart of creativity. And since many people do not have enough knowledge, the visual embodiment sometimes does not coincide with the musical one, the vocalist claimed.
Bazhan has an academic vocal education, he sang in a church choir, then took up rock music. Kruzhevo combines heavy guitar music, electronics and Slavic traditions.
“The key word: “longing”. Because existential longing is the cultural code of any Russian person. . . In this, it is an absolutely Russian person. He is often melancholic, he reflects, he can look at some blade of grass, a path for a long time and experience absolutely incomprehensible things.
The newest track of the Kruzhevo project (which is only six months old) is the old song “When we were at war”.
From games to headscarves
The Chuvash artist Yuma presented her brand Тӑнӑҫ (peace, tranquility) as “a project about me and some of my desires and pains”. Its presentation includes costumes, paintings, and even the Вупӑр card game (an analogue of Mafia, but with dark forces).
“First, I get inspiration from mythology, and then reincarnation takes place in the physical plane," Yuma described her work. “It's amazing how they find something of their own in the Chuvash culture!”
She thought that choosing an ethnic direction would not allow her to become widely known, but it turned out otherwise.
And confirmations followed at once. Svetlana Ruchkina (Ladi Sveti) noted that Udmurt influencer Darali Leli wears her jewelry. One of the paintings was used by the Chuvash indie musician “Alone in the Deer Park” (it is also Yuma's handkerchief). The dress, which was sewn in 2 months for a lecture on fairy tales, was taken for a concert by Vera Kozhemanova, a vocalist of the Kazan group Shanu. And one of Yuma's paintings, with a girl standing at the window with her hands covering her eyes, was actively “remixed” in other countries.
How Udmurts are inspired by Tatars
“It seemed to me that making music, realising that your audience is obviously small, is suicide," Svetlana Ruchkina began. “Demand, anyway, is necessary, because you constantly invest, physically and financially. At the same time, I did not speak Udmurt as a child, my parents spoke to each other, and at first I did not understand them. The culture on TV, in the village club, did not attract me at all, but, on the contrary, repelled me.
After Ruchkina visited the Udmurt youth camp, she discovered the language in a new way, which she now tries to speak with children. Her rock band Silent Woo Goore recorded the only album in Helsinki. The pop project Ladi Sveti is published on the label of Leonid Burlakov, who at one time discovered The Brothers Grimm and Mumiy Troll.
Curiously, Ruchkina admitted that she has recently been inspired by Tatar music — she even came to Ilgiz Shaikhraziev's concert specially with her husband.
“I didn't understand the words, but I was singing along, I was grooving on energy. And despite that the whole concert was in the Tatar language, we greatly enjoyed," Lady Sveti concluded.