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Since 2015, a large -scale music festival has been held in Yekaterinburg - Ural Music Night. Journalists of the replica edition went to the festival, which was held on the night of June 28-29.

• According to the organizers, more than 300 thousand people come to the festival in the past three years. How is it felt in the city?
• How much does the organization of such an event cost and who is behind it?
• Why did the Katyusha sing at the festival - and not only a military ensemble, but also displeased visitors?

• Editor

  Editor

  Dasha Manzhura

• Publication

  July 1, 2024

Take away, Katyusha

On June 23, 2023, Evgeny Prigozhin went to Moscow and was also restless in Yekaterinburg. Here the Ural Music Night festival was rattled (hereinafter referred to as: UMN, Ural Night of Music). In clubs, cafes and museums throughout the center and even on the outskirts of the city, musicians played, and listened to them, according to the organizers, more than 300 thousand people. By dawn, just when the Prigozhinsky army was part of Rostov, UMN visitors gathered in the square in the city center. Together with Valery Syutkin, they sang the anthem of the festival - the Serenade of Trubadur from the Bremen musicians: "The night will pass, the time will pass, the sun will rise."

In 2024, at the anniversary tenth festival, the latter is the group of Therr Maitz . Moscow electropop-musicians sing to the accompaniment of a chamber orchestra and traditionally execute a dawn number with the team of the organizers. But the sunrise is delayed: “They are waiting until [the head of the festival Eugene] Gorenburg jumps through the puddles,” with irony, but visitors whisperlessly whisper. The crowd huddles under the umbrellas, trying to form a continuous shield from them and hide from the rain.

In the late evening, closing the main program, on the main stage of the Ural Night of Music, an hour and a half concert is given by the Academic Ensemble of the Song and Dance named after Alexandrov - the most famous military team in Russia.

We will raise the shields with faith

From an insatiable war -

The choir rattles and the singer Alexei Boyko, who, judging by his group VK, also appears under the pseudonym Brand Dee and recorded only five tracks. The viewer, only having heard lingering synthetic violins at the beginning of the arrangement , says to the companions: "Now again they will sing some kind of longing, let's go from here." They leave, Boyko too, and the ensemble of Alexandrov returns to Soviet songs.

This performance turns out to be the only one where visitors one after another avoid answering the questions of the replicas correspondent. Only one says that this is the "most adequate" of all the sites with "harmonious music." Behind the woman in a raincoat with a camouflage pattern and a patch - the flag of Russia on a backpack. Ahead, in the center of a half -empty square, two elderly women in high spirits circle each other in a waltz, and marching on the Katyusha closing program.

In 2022, the leader of the Ural rock band "Kurara" made an anti-war statement from the scene of Ural Music Night. As Ivan Rublev, editor -in -chief of the independent Yekaterinburg publication , IT's MI MITY , told the replica, the organizers later asked to delete the news about this.

In 2023, two sites appeared at the festival, the program of which was devoted to "the support of our homeland, our army, our cohesion." One of the large scenes was the ensemble of the Central Military District, which every day gives concerts at the front line. “Young groups” from Donetsk and Lugansk entered the scene smaller. Evgeny Gorenburg, the founder and director of the festival, thensaid : “We have directly sites [...] with the political support of our army, our line. [...]

Of course, we monitor the work of collectives when we select them and talk

“This is the song“ take out ”, we always devote it to all the political prisoners,” the soloist of the Yekaterinburg team “As always” Andrei Yakimov announces the last song of the group on the Ural Night of Music. A bar the size of a small studio apartment is packed, the same number of people smoke on the porch in the pouring rain. Some sing along with familiar words, others discuss plans to collect their own group. Yakimov, wet either from rain, or from sweat, shouts under a simple guitar party:

I watch how seven faded

And the eighth, panting, splashes.

In a conversation with a “replica”, he calls the songs of the group “Higherly, even despite their metaphorism”. The audience meets “export” with a non -subburiting approving roar. On the wall opposite, cutting video with skaters is spinning.

“This is an opportunity to collect people close in spirit in the same room. Our songs, in my opinion, can support the audience against the backdrop of the outrages in which we now live, ”Yakimov explains to the“ replicas ”correspondent, why he decided to participate in the UMN. “We can leave the politicization of the organizers of the festival and its head by brackets. The festival is made by people who understand what is happening, not indifferent people, the festival holds on them and on volunteers, ”concludes Yakimov.

Who supports the war?

• The rapper Husky has been supporting military aggression in Ukraine since 2014. “I will not go to Ukraine, [...] on the tank only if,” he said in 2017. After the beginning of the full -scale invasion, Husky released the song “God of the War”, recorded “in the Zone of Svo”, and also shot the Doc “PMC Philharmonic. Musicians in the war ”about mobilized artists of the Luhansk Academic Philharmonic-for the Russian“ militarycate ”-channel Wargonzo.
• Sergei Bobunets , the Ural Roker and former leader of the Semlosy Hallucinations group, in 2024, released the song “We will return” dedicated to Russian soldiers with Alexei “Django”. Bobunets also gave concerts at the front.
• The Bryansk metal group WildWays appeared in one of the “List of Forbidden Artists” published by journalists. In 2018, the group released the video Put in: “Not worth it to the king, I don’t have it for a long time!” Now it is removed from the official channel, and in 2024 the musicians visited the advanced and Mariupol: “They saw their own eyes the consequences of what was happening there. Now the city is returning to the usual way of life, but there is still a long way ahead. ” In the photo from Mariupol there is no guitarist Denis Pyatkovsky, born in Ukrainian Cherkasy, but he continues to perform with the group.
• In 2023, the Perm Academic Choir of Mlada spoke at the conference of the Donbass Volunteer of the Donbass, which, according to the head of the organization, at that time raised more than 80 million rubles for the Russian army and residents of the occupied territories.
• The “Forbidden Drummers” group, whose first album was called “killed a black man”, and the style is sometimes defined as “Comedy Rock”, on May 9, 2023 acted in the Moscow Gallery “Lin” with the program of military songs “Feeling the Video of the Destroyed Donetsk”. In 2022, the leader of the group promised to “recall the past and play a new one” if Russia can return Viktor But, a weapon of weapons associated with the special services and then not yet exchanged from the imprisonment in the United States.
• The singer Alexander Drozdov , who in the 2000s performed as part of the VIA “Blue Bird” their hits “maple” and “I dream”, during a tour in Russia in 2023 performed the song “Do Russian Wars want?”. On his YouTube channel, these numbers are laid out with the heading: "The hall stood up."
• Musician David Deimur, known under the GSPD pseudonym, on June 24, 2024 published a post that he and his wife will transfer money to two funds helping the Belgorodians. At the end of the post, he wrote the following: “All the people in the world are brothers, but if fate puts such a choice, then I will personally be for Russia and for all our people.”

In addition, one of the sites in 2024 was the Museum of Russia - My History , which journalists associate with the confessor of Putin Father Tikhon (Shevkunov). At the festival, the Yekaterinburg Creative Association “Vobla” presented the “Melodiclam Program”.

None of the headliners made direct anti -war statements. Two performers, however, hinted that they did not support the war:

• The singer from Arkhangelsk Dead Blonde , known for the hits “Boy on the Nine” and “Associated”, fell into the “forbidden” list published in 2024. She did not speak directly about the war either before or after that, but on May 9, 2022 she published a post criticizing the holiday, with the wish of a “peaceful sky above my head”.
• The singer Dragon in the summer of 2022 released the mini-album “Three Special Songs”: “How beautiful this sunset is, how terrible smoke is over it”, “Someone will grow in a bedroom with Hello Kitty and unicorns, someone under concrete blocks.” In the lists of forbidden artista: he did not get to the musician, he did not speak directly about the war.

In addition, in a small rotunda on the Embankment Iseti, musicians, regardless of Ural Music Night, organized a “partisan scene” , where they performed songs of the Rock band “Spleen”. Spleen fell into black lists, presumably for the support of the performers who left during one of the concerts.

Updates of July 5, 2024. The WildWays video clip was released in 2018, and not in 2021, as we wrote initially. "Spleen" - St. Petersburg, not the Yekaterinburg group. We apologize for inaccuracies.

"They just can't live without music"

Dozens of sites of the Ural Night of Music are scattered around the city so that it is difficult for people with different interests and views to cross. Even if you spend all ten hours at the festival, you will have time to look only at the small part of the events. The organizers themselves list : there is music in the genres “From Punk-Meetal to hip-hop, from folk jazz to glitter-pop, from academic music to drama-n-beis, from post-minimalism to kraut-clock.”

Punk-metal combines elements of punk rock and heavy metal: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xhr-rzujczu

You probably heard about hip-hop, but here is an example: https://youtu.be/0vgjv8Suyvg

Folk jazz combines elements of jazz and folk music: https://youtu.be/2VN8ZH366M8

Glitter-Pop mixes nostalgia for disco tracks of the last century and “sparkling” (glitter-sparkles) visual: https://youtu.be/vx5yr2uzssma

Academic music inherits the European classical, rethinking its traditions: https://youtu.be/vtw8mhf9bfi

Drama-n-Bais is a genre in which the performer: Nits mix the bass from the ragga and the accelerated Breikbit of hip-hop (this is still difficult, so listen to an example better): https://youtu.be/bqhofrnxpwe

You can’t tell you briefly about post-minimalism, but here is an example: https://youtu.be/bqhofrnxpwe

Crow-Cro Croat is one of the areas of experimental and psychedelic music: https://youtu.be/oqiyepe6DWY

According to the organizers, there is still something in common between such different participants. “The intonation of Ural Music Night is always an elevated festive mood of a person who simply cannot live without music, wants to share with everyone,” the former participant in the UMN organizational team says in a conversation with a “remark”. “This is [the festival] for people who are not rotten, not [sit] at home,” the woman who walked and marched at the performance of the ensemble Alexandrov inspiredly explains. The friend, apparently, arrived for a day from another city - especially for the sake of UMN.

PinkGlasses - "I forget myself." We used the line from this song in the heading.

Most of the artists also come to UMN from other cities, and on their own initiative, and not at the invitation of the team. According to the organizers, in 2024 more than a thousand musicians participated in the festival, and more than 2.5 thousand applications came. Each application was evaluated by at least five experts, among them there are “representatives of labels, streaming platforms, concert agencies and festivals, music managers, promoters and journalists.” They represent small projects from different cities For example, the Arkhangelsk Music Search / “North Hears” showcase, the Perm Club “Freedom”, Izhevsk Libe “9 Yandvar”, the Samara Center for Modern Culture “Zero Room”. Russia or federal organizations controlled by the state or a business close to power: the Presidential Fund of Cultural Initiatives, MTS, Sber and Taurida. And also VK Gazprom belongs. Music and Yandex How Yandex is related to power, read here . Music ” , which, as noted by one of the speakers of the review of the Russian musical industry in 2024 from Forbes, after the departure of foreign platforms“ rule everything ”.

Many of the participants in Ural Music Night are based in Yekaterinburg, while others are not coming for the first time. The team of the organizers develops a whole ecosystem of parallel projects: an educational festival for young musicians New/Open Showcase, a school for musicians under the age of 18, a conference for industry professionals. According to one of the interlocutors, “replicas”, the reason for such a scale in Gorenburg’s desire “to take as many niches controlled by it as possible.” In different years, the teams under his leadership also held rock festivals, the Gikkon festival for those who are interested in comics, cosplay and games, book fairs, shot documentary and feature cinema about Ural history and identity.

At the performance of the rock band "TOP" , the head of which the leader of Ural Music Night, is a crowd. On the dam, in the heart of Yekaterinburg, some make their way closer to the stage on the embankment, others occupy places on the bridge, from which the view also opens. The replica correspondent speaks with four visitors and finds out that not one of them knows Gorenburg - neither as a musician, nor as the director of the festival. Immediately behind the TOP group, the authors act on this site The track is recorded with the Bread group. The dance hit "Cry on Techno" - Cream Soda .

Group of the VK festival

"Unity of the masses on positive content"

The Center for Yekaterinburg is in full swing on the night of the festival. On each corner, the clogged points of the Life Mart Local Ground Network - here they take hot coffee and dry out of the rain. In the cafe, too, do not push through, many hang signs: “Toilet only for visitors, guests of Ural Music Night Entrance 300 rubles” (prices vary). In the city, which looks lively on ordinary days, money is obviously spinning today.

True, some Yekaterinburgers miss the time when the Ural Night of Music was not so popular. In conversations with the “replicas” correspondent, the participant and the former organizer of the festival independently called him “the second day of the city”. Quantitatively UMN is growing, but meaningfully "blessed", narrowing the international For example, in 2019, representatives of the famous British label Ninja Tune came to the festival. In 2020–21, international participation was reduced in connection with coronavirus. The festival remains international, but, for example, in 2023, geography was limited to seven countries: India, Kazakhstan, Belarus, Armenia, Serbia, South Africa and Georgia. The component to the “friendly” countries, and “ideologizes” - as a result, his reputation “dies”, the former organizer believes. The Yekaterinburg independent media It's My City even released a podcast-sport about whether everything is lost. " And Evgeny Gorenburg in an interview with the event commented on the changes ambiguously: "We make such a great festival that we begin to burn ourselves."

“[I feel bad about the growth of the festival and the appearance of a wire program, but I close my eyes to it. They decided to perform this year because there were memories of the first festivals and warm feelings. I do not want this to become a parade of patriotism, ”the musician shares, who refused to participate due to packed groups last year.

“The main task of the festival is to educate native patriotism, which is born from the unity of the masses on positive content,” the organizers said , submitting Ural Music Night to the presidential grant competition. “We go from the site to the site, just to get to our native music. Modern! " -tells the correspondent of "Replicas" the director of the Tatar-Bashkir Cultural Center in Yekaterinburg. On the terrace of the small bar Hanqyzy , a musician from Bashkortostan, puts his own remixes on national songs - from folk to Aigel. The girl in earrings with Tatar trunks-tulpans dances, a woman of about forty sings every word in the track. “I really miss my native edges,” she shares with the correspondent of “replicas”.

And the festival covers not only the center. By night, the replicas correspondents decide to get to one of the key venues of UMN in a remote area: technically there is a city, in fact - forests. After paying a taxi and having stood in a traffic jam for about fifty minutes instead of the promised twenty, we are late for the headline. This is Husky, and this is noticeable: along the road, the company of shaved teenagers in sports jackets moves towards us.

The next in the “television club”, which accommodates up to four and a half thousand people, is the DUED DEAD BLONDE and GSPD . The site is surrounded by a crowd from all sides, at least a few hundred people, and there is no more place in the club. "At least [sound in] a column on the street was taken out!" - The girl is complaining next to us. Who brought the speakers with him, includes hits that sound behind the walls.

Dad's pistol in his pocket, fur coat, cloak and boots, -

That's all my inheritance, I am a princess from the taiga,

-Senior students and junior students like songs about the 1990s.

Once every couple of minutes, small companies lose hope and push back to the road, but most remains to storm the club. Once every five minutes they chant: first - "fagots", then - "Russia", then - again "fagots". Guys nearby unfold the tricolor with the imperial eagle. Suddenly, someone sings Katyusha. The military ensemble performed it cleaner, a crowd of teenagers at the "television club"-more piercingly.