The formation of Pussy Riot in Moscow last September was not a culmination of long-harboured musical ambition, songcraft or that strange alchemy of notes, lyrics, personalities and desire that sometimes spawns a rock ‘n’ roll band; rather it was reactionary – a furious two-fingered salute to Vladimir Putin’s decision to return to the presidency, a protest writ large in music and femininity.
Pussy Riot are an all-female punk band. More, they are part of an increasingly vocal young-and-disgruntled generation in Russia, railing against political corruption, the state’s monopoly on the media and the culture of illegal protest (to name but three sizeable gripes) and finding novel ways to display their dissent: the Blue Buckets group have run over official cars while wearing buckets on their heads; the art collective Voina painted a 65-metre phallus on the drawbridge opposite the Federal Security Service headquarters in St Petersburg, and activists in the Siberian city of Barnaul circumnavigated the protest laws by assembling a crowd of small placard-wielding toys.
via Pussy Riot’s Kremlin protest owes much to riot grrrl. guardian.co.uk
No idea how accurate, but the article does cover Pussy Riot and their riot grrrl influence in way that’s not patronizing to the notion of women’s protest music. Awesome that they’re gaining attention after homophobic and racist Russian artists have been given state art prizes.
I’d LOVE to know what their views of Putin are, beyond the western riot grrrl comparisons, but being monolingual in English with a bit of Spanish = unable to translate any of their interviews on You Tube.
