Diary page 007 – Ored Recordings by Radio Fantasia published on 2023-02-02T09:59:36Z The Circassians' self-awareness is closely connected with the traditional music and culture of our people. And, of course, with the formation of Ored Recordings. In expeditions and research, we try to maintain objectivity and impartiality. But at the same time, Ored is a very personal story. This is the story of the decolonization struggle and the rejection of some stereotypes. And first of all, it is a struggle with one's prejudices. During school years and at the beginning of university studies, the local cultural environment offered us to listen to ethno-pop and radio pop music. We didn't know anything about our native culture outside of the official layers and didn't seem to want to know. Why remember your native language and why you need it at all are also questions to which the elders had no answers. Answers that would be suitable for young rebels who were looking for themselves in the ideas of Anton LaVey or in the music of Led Zeppelin. Radical and bold artistic practices and ideas of the West and Moscow seemed much more attractive than exemplary song and dance ensembles. Today it is obvious that the denial of one's identity was based on emotions and lack of knowledge. And the first to break through this wall of denial was not knowledge, but emotions. Thanks to the Жъыуensemble from Adygea, we heard what our music could be. Gloomy, ascetic, uncompromising - not like we've been told all this time. At the moment of acquaintance with Жъыу, we decided that this was pure music, as it used to be in the glorious pagan past, when globalization did not come to us. They took the archives of the past and tried to reproduce the music of the past with meticulous accuracy. Today it is clear that this is not a reconstruction at all, but a re- creation. Because nothing from the past can be recreated in its purest form. But at the moment of national “awakening” - the first reaction is not a decolonial shift, but the romanticization of the past and the search for purity in one's past. This was the case, for example, with Aslan Tashu, co-founder of the Circassian group Myst and resident of Ored Recordings. ------- read full material: http://radiofantasia.online/diaryv6 *Project funded by the Stabilisation Fund for Culture and Education 2022 of the German Federal Foreign Office and the Goethe-Institut