Festival "Creation of the World" in Kazan

The “Creation of the World” music festival was held for the fourth time on Millennium Square in front of the Kazan Kremlin. BORIS BARABANOV found the composition of the event participants extremely successful, among whom was the Russian President, who appeared to the people during a performance by the Gogol Bordello group.

Last year’s “Creation of the World” festival practically killed the original idea of a meeting of different musical cultures, turning into a local “Invasion”. This year the organizers set out to improve. Such a combination of the diversity of the participants and its strength has not yet been seen at the “Creation of the World”.

The format-forming type of music for the festival, which is usually referred to as “world music,” was presented in all its glory. It is enough to mention the Tuvan singer Albert Kuvezin (group “Yat-Ha”) and the Malian duet Amadou & Mariam for a music lover who follows folklore affairs to appreciate the caliber of the participants. The task of modern world music performers is not to amaze the listener with the beauty of melodies or the skill of composing songs. Using the root music of their territories, these people put the audience into a trance, organize an exchange of energy, and bring them to ecstasy. Both Africans and Siberians solved this problem equally successfully, despite the fact that, unlike the terribly catchy music from Mali, Mr. Kuvezin’s low voice and the gloomy meditative accompaniment of his partners, taken out of context, could easily scare away unaccustomed spectators.

The work of the post-punk band PIL, led by former Sex Pistols frontman Johnny Rotten, was built on the same principle. Operating with very simple harmonies, avoiding accessible melody, building a rhythm more in the manner of a rave than a rock concert, the project at first could cause bewilderment: PIL’s music always left a feeling like “I could do that too.” Johnny Rotten often added not even verses to the marching chords of his songs, but examples of his oratorical talent. Towards the end of the set, the PIL group managed to thicken the colors of the accompaniment to the limit, and Johnny Rotten brought his exalted image of a loudmouth on the verge of the apocalypse to the state of a masterpiece. It was impossible to resist this pulse, and you don’t even have to try to repeat it.

Amadou & Mariam, “Yat-Ha” and PIL performed as if in the second part of the festival, after a kind of intermediate finish had taken place. Multinational, like everyone else at the “Creation of the World,” the group Gogol Bordello was assigned to play immediately after the Moscow group “The Untouchables,” which was stylistically close to it. The audience had just begun to wonder which of the two “gypsy-punks” was in more trouble today, Garik Sukachev or Evgeniy Gudz, when a political factor intervened in the course of the festival - President Medvedev, who was reconciling Armenians in Kazan just these days, was brought onto the stage and Azerbaijanis (see page 2). The visit was known in advance - the organizers of the “Creation of the World” mentioned the president among those who provided funding for the festival. On this occasion, people were allowed into the fan zone according to pre-compiled lists.

The musicians of Gogol Bordello, who before the start of the festival loudly wondered why in Kazan everywhere, including on stage, you need to have a passport with you, finally understood what was going on, and even included a couple of fresh Russian-language songs in the program: the original number “Latitude Love" and "Ballad of Love" by Vladimir Vysotsky - to the obvious pleasure of our dear guest. The President listened to the gypsy punks, talked with the president of the festival Andrei Makarevich, accepted discs of the Huun-Huur-Tu group as a gift from the art director of the festival Alexander Cheparukhin, and appreciated the number performed personally for him by musicians from Benin.

The final chord of “The Creation of the World” was the performance of one of the founders of the Creedence Cleawrater Revival group, singer and guitarist John Fogerty. After a variety of ethnic experiences and post-punk experiments that were not very clear to the general public, Creedence’s hits, in the outstanding performance of their author, were literally a breath of pure water. And at night, in the popular Kazan pub “Maximilians”, a traditional crazy after-party took place, during which Andrei Makarevich, with an expression of childish joy on his face, played along and sang along with Evgeny Gudz and Johnny Rotten.

Persons first and not last