Review | Songlines

Loud and Clear

Rating: ★★★

View album and artist details

Album and Artist Details

Artist/band:

Otava Yo

Label:

ARC Music

October/2024

Active for 20 years, Otava Yo are probably the most successful Russian band on the world music scene with their inventive arrangements of folk songs, mocking of Russian stereotypes, and crazy videos. Backing their often polyphonic vocals, their instrumentation is fiddles, fife, bagpipes and plucked gusli zither – featured on the instrumental ‘A Gusli Tune’. The most striking song, given the ‘special military operation’ with thousands dying in Ukraine, is ‘It’s the Last Day’. It describes a conscript’s final day with the family before going to fight in the Tsar’s army. ‘It’s the last day, the last time / That I’ll be making merry with my friends / Tomorrow early in the morning / My whole family will cry for me.’ It’s sung with gusto and there’s nothing in the performance to indicate whether the relevance is intentional or not. In a press release, leader Alexey Belkin says: “We believe that the right music, like any act of sincere art, can remind people of universal human values.”

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