Hello, hello! This is Muse.

Today we are gonna dive into music of Russia that was produced by one of the best modern artists of Russia. The theme however is special: it is made entirely out of artists who got labeled as "foreign agents", or whose shows got cancelled a lot by the government after the start of the war between Russia and Ukraine.

Here is what I hope listeners of this show already do know: politics don't define the entire country. There are people there who raise kids, laugh and cry, and write some of the most amazing music on this planet. And I really want to highlight how much I love music from that part of the world, well, because I fell in love while listening to it, I grew up with it, some of these artists I listened since high school, and some since I was in child care! So, I hope the listeners will understand that two things can be true at the same time: I hate the war, but I love this music dearly.

Here is the playlist from today, with many-many bonus tracks. And here is the recording of the show.

The first artist we have coming up is Zemfira. I would say Zemfira is arguably one of the most famous Russian musicians. She’s just a phenomenon, since she is an incredible singer, song-writer, and poet.

This song is called «Прости меня, моя любовь», which means “Forgive Me, My Love.”

The sea will bury us in the sand.
Fishermen will cast their lines and catch our souls in their nets.
Forgive me, my love.
It’s too late to think about anything.
I feel you need some air.
We lie in such a huge puddle.
Forgive me, my love.

If anyone feels like discovering more, here is her Spotify page. I would say that every album she ever put out is quite a masterpiece, so I definitely recommend listening to several of them. And here is the full lyrics translation.

The next song is called «СПИД» or “AIDS”, also by Zemfira.

I think it’s kind of a cultural thing, most rock musicians from Russia don't make every song about love—or if they do, it usually also has themes of existential crisis and more.

I took off my headphones and listened to the wind through the open doors of an empty minibus.
The wind told me a terrible secret: we only have one more day.

She imagines herself being in that situation where she has AIDS and how she would react to that. So I think it’s quite powerful. Here is the full translation.

Our next artist is Noize MC. He does hip-hop and rap. He also has a diploma in computer science!

Noize MC got banned from Russia and now lives in Lithuania,. He traveled internationally with two other artists (one of them is also on this playlist!) and his tour is called Voices of Peace, raising money for Ukrainian refugees.

For some of the artists on the playlists, I tried to include their songs before the war and after the war. The first song is called “Yes Future!”, and it’s very, very funny and very optimistic.

I’ll read a couple of the verses.

Listen to my prophecy, humanity: all cataclysms are canceled.
Everyone who is sick will recover. Harmful microorganisms will die out.
Aliens will come not to invade us, but to take the nuclear waste with them.
Unemployed people will get jobs, and St. Petersburg will have nice weather.
Someone good will get into power and unexpectedly fix everything.
The guilty will be punished; nobody will get away with it; all expectations will be met.

And for pre-chorus he slows down and asks:

What, you don’t believe my prophecy? You think it doesn’t sound realistic?
Your life specifically will be f****** awful, and everyone else will have it amazing.

And he talks about how millions of right-hand-drive Zhigulis (that’s a type of car in Russia) will fill Japanese highways, and how “No future” is not our mindset.

I think you can tell that he loves his country. He knows all the problems in his country, but he still wants to be optimistic. Here is the full lyrics translation.

The next song is called «Кооператив “Лебединое озеро”» or “Cooperative Swan Lake.” There are a lot of references in it that I’ll explain after you listen. Do look out for a particular tune you might know...

Swan Lake has political and cultural meaning in Russia because, in Soviet times, whenever someone in the political leadership died, the television channels would play the Swan Lake ballet. So it acquired all of this political baggage.

And in the song he sings: “I want to watch ballet, let the swans dance.”

And “Lake” (Ozero) is also a reference to the Ozero cooperative, associated with Putin and people around him who became very rich and very powerful. So he’s referencing those things in the title. Here is the full lyrics translation.

The next singer’s name is Grechka, which means “buckwheat.” We do eat a lot of it, in fact, I am gonna go home after this and cook some.

The next song is «Люби меня, люби» or “Love Me, Love”. It’s an incantation for somebody to love her. I just think it’s very, very powerful and really pretty. I honestly really like her singing technique. It’s refreshing. Here is the full lyrics translation.

The next artist is Monetochka (it means little coin). Her first song on this playlist is actually “Monopoly”, like the board game and also like the economic concept, and she references both.

A lot of Russian songs are metaphorical, and they often have a really fun plot. In this one, she’s playing this game of Monopoly. Her friends wanted to play a cute game, and she does not even know the rules, but she plays in all kinds of illegal ways, and the song becomes even more fun as she describes all things that happen. And somehow this song turns kind of jokingly political. Here are the lyrics.

The next one I think is really pretty, and it’s called «Ушла к реалисту» or “PASTE A BETTER NAME”.

There’s a painter, and he’s in love with a girl, and he paints her very abstractly. She doesn’t understand his intentions, destroys the painting and leaves. She then leaves him for a painter who is a realist. And, sure, the realist will be able to draw all of her face and how pretty she is, but he’ll never be able to draw what’s inside of her, all of her worries and doubts. I am really not making this song justice, you should just read the lyrics. Here they are.

The next song is one of her more recent songs, and it’s called «Это было в России» or “It Was in Russia.”

I think there is this very long history of artists, musicians, writers being expelled from Russia (Russian Empire and USSR). And they still have this love for the country, but they’re very upset about what their country turned out to be.

She wrote this while living abroad in Lithuania, and she’s being nostalgic about the place where she used to live, where she used to be a child.

The address and the number have faded from memory since then,
but I remember the advertisements and the pattern of the tiles,
the funny saleswoman in the sausage department,
and how Vitya kissed me for the first time.
[I remember] a Band-Aid on the scraped skin of my elbow,
and sunsets like nowhere else.

I remember how it was drizzling as I was coming back home.
This was in Russia, which means it was a long time ago.
This was in Russia, which means it was a dream.
And a dream can’t be stolen; it will stay with me.

Here are the full lyrics.

The next artist is really interesting. His name is Miron and his stage name is Oxxxymiron (get it?). Fun fact about him is that he moved to UK as a teenager, where he later studied English Literature at Oxford! Then he moved back to Russia and became one of the most famous rappers of Russia. His vocabulary is enormous and he draws a lot from Russian classical literature.

He has this concept album called Gorgorod, and it’s really cool because every single song is like a chapter. He basically raps a novel.

The plot is about a writer, who used to put his anger and talent into his novel, and now he became rich and powerful, mellows down, and there is a lot more that happens after. I really don't want to spoil it, so here is where to find the translation and the album. It has really strong imagery.

And I think the nice thing about Russian rap is that they still have rap battles. If you’re a famous rapper, you often prove yourself by participating in rap battles, and Oxxxymiron is very famous for them.

So I’m going to play «Накануне» or “On the Eve.”

The narrator knows that he will probably get killed in the morning by the government and he has one night to finish his new manuscript. There’s this sense of urgency and this sense of losing everything but still wanting to leave something for the people.

So, yeah, this is Oxxxymiron. He’s a very, very cool and very intense.

But what I find really interesting is that you couldn’t hear from him for a while after the war. And this year he put out this album called «Национальность: нет» or “Nationality: None.”

And this is quite in theme with his previous work, because previously he would talk about what it means to move from country to country and never have any place where you are considered at home.

This song is actually quite funny. It’s called «Как мои дела» or “How Am I Doing?”. As in response to somebody asking, “How are you doing?” And he is saying: “I have bad news for you guys: I’m doing just amazing.”

It’s kind of tribute to modern-day rap where you have to tell everybody how much money you’re making. And he adds his own humor there. At one point, when he’s talking about how wealthy he is, he says something like: “I’m not lying, I’m just manifesting.”

We also want to talk about quite an old music band. The group is called Mashina Vremeni, which means “Time Machine.”

I always thought that it is nice how our generation knows some of the songs of the older generation pretty well. There are songs that everybody knows, no matter how old they are, and you can easily get together and sing them together. It gives you this very nice sense of the community.

Technically, the band is not banned from Russia, but does face difficulty performing.

The song is called "Однажды Мир Прогнется Под Нас", or "One day the world will bend under us". This song says: "don’t bend yourself to accommodate the changing world; one day the world will bend under us".

The next band is Nervy, which means “Nerves.” I re-listened to so many of their songs recently, and picked one at random. This one is called «Кофе мой друг» - “Coffee Is My Friend.”

And the last song I’m going to play today is by Nochnye Snaipery, which means “Night Snipers.” Diana Arbenina is the lead vocalist, and in this song she’s singing about a brief romance she had with a girl. Somehow we forget how much artists could get away in early 2000s!

I hope you liked this episode.