Belarusian Generation Y logbook

The visit of the 5 most famous belarusian rock musicians – Lyavon Volski (NRM), Pete Paulau (NRM), Aliaksandar Kulinkovich (Neuro Dubel), Ihar Varashkevich (Krama) and Aleh Hamenka (Palac) – to the main “ideologist” of the country – Aleh Praliaskouski – raised a great debate among Belarusian bloggers about politics in music and loyalty to the principles of democracy. The bloggers community divided into two fractions: those who think that the musicians betrayed democratic principles by collaborating with the Belarusian regime (in their opinion going to a meeting to which they were invited is already a form of political collaboration) and those who defend the musicians from groundless accusation of political mistakes.

The story itself is not too long. We have previously informed about difficulties that many rock-bands are facing in Belarus. The main reason for it is that most of them participated in concerts held during opposition meetings in Minsk in 2003 and 2004. As a result they were included into a “black-list”, which led to their concerts being canceled every time they tried to play in Belarusian territory. One recent examples is the canceling of a concert of a well know Belarusian punk-rock band “Neuro Dubel” new album “Stasi”, scheduled for the 14th of November of 2007.

And after all these years of silent confrontation, the head of the department for ideological work within the president’s administration invited 4 famous rock musicians for a meeting. According to the musicians, during the meeting Mr Praliaskouski officially acknowledged of the actual existence of an order to ban musical groups which are in the “black list”. He also said that the initiative of the meeting came directly from the President. During the meeting each of the musicians was allowed to speak on their problems. Mr Praliakouski suggested that the bands make a program about rock music for the Belarusian state TV channel and organize a concert entitled “Rock for Belarus”. At the end of the meeting he recommended the musicians not to get involved into politics (namely no more performances during oppositional events). However, there were no agreements made during the 30 minutes chat with the president’s administration.

However, when the news about the meeting hit the wire it raised a huge number of posts and comments in the Internet, many of which argued that the musicians had betrayed the rock-n-roll principle of freedom. Many of the songs of the mentioned bands tell about the democratic struggle and have inspired a whole generation to join the democratic movement. Therefore, it seems obvious that an invitation to perform on state TV will end in censorship of the bands songs, for they will not be able to perform a big part of their songs due to their content.

After almost a week of heated debates, in which the rock-stars were denounced by people who promised to throw away all their CDs, the musicians decided to give a press conference in which they explained what really happened during the meeting. They explained that discussing the problems of the musical industry does not mean abandoning their personal political beliefs, that musicians are above all involved in cultural policy, and none of the sides (the opposition or the regime) has the supreme right to dictate how they should behave. Musicians proved to remain themselves and gained even more respect in the eyes of the fans who were following the “scandal” via Internet. The scandal also brought more of these musicians into Internet. Almost all of them have a personal blog now.