“Soviet attitudes positioned local culture as backward”: Record label stands up to Russian imperialism | music

IIn May 2022, a few weeks after the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, musician Bulat Khalilov was attending a demonstration in Nalchik, a southern Russian city nestled in the foothills of the Caucasus Mountains. When he joined a group gathered around the monument to the Russian-Circassian war victims, a policeman approached Khalilov and sensed trouble. To his surprise, the officer asked: “Are you from Oored Records? I follow you on Instagram. You are doing great.”

Their gathering has yet to be dispersed, but the enthusiasm that Orid’s recordings arouse even among law enforcers speaks volumes about the power of what Khalilov and his friend and co-founder Timur Kudzoko call “punk ethnography”: recording religious chants, laments, and songs of exodus at family gatherings, local festivals, in people’s kitchens, to fight the erasure of Circassian culture.

When Circassia was a state of its own, it extended from the Black Sea coast in the west to the foothills and high ridges of the Greater Caucasus Mountains in the east, and from the Kuban River basin in the north to the mountain valleys bordering present-day Georgia in the south. After Russia invaded Circassia in the mid-18th century and then proceeded to systematically kill or displace around 95% of its population, the region today is a fragmented region divided between several regions of the Russian Federation, with diaspora communities spread throughout Turkey, the Middle East, and Europe.

While Russian culture is rooted in Orthodox Christianity, the dominant religion among Circassians is now Sunni Islam. They have their own dance traditions, wedding customs and moral codes, which influence their music. “Circassian culture was often alien within Russia, and we carried a kind of internal self-doubt, shaped by Soviet and post-Soviet attitudes that positioned local culture as reactionary,” says Khalilov, who was born in Nalchik in 1987 and is of Circassian descent. Inspired by field recorders such as Chris Watson and PJ Nielsen, Khalilov and Kudzoko set out to document the music of the North Caucasus. They started the label in 2013 and released their first recording a year later – documenting a music festival dedicated to the centenary of the talented folk musician Aslanbek Shish.

Circassian and North Caucasian music is shaped primarily by sound, memory, and social function rather than performance or spectacle. It focuses on individual or small group singing, including laments, songs of mourning, historical narratives, ritual chants, and songs of work, resistance, and displacement. These traditions rely on typical melodies, sustained tones and subtle ornamentation, avoiding Western harmonic development.

The music is characterized by restraint and pressure. There is little choral harmony or dramatic expansion. Emotion is conveyed through breath, timbre and phrasing rather than volume. Tools like Bakhtishish (percussion decanter) or Shishchin (The bowed oud/flute) usually supports the sound rather than leading it. The instruments go by different names throughout the region – their diversity was captured in a documentary made by French director Vincent Moon while traveling with Khalilov and Kudzoko in 2011, titled Circassia: An Audio Exploration of the Ancient Land.

Since their debut, Orid Recordings has released a record every year on or around May 21, the Circassian Day of Mourning, which marks the end of the Russo-Circassian War of 1864 and the beginning of mass exile. These versions have been foregrounded by the diaspora as an integral part of Circassian history. By linking archival recordings, historical context, and contemporary reflection, Oread depicts May 21 as a living ritual—one in which music becomes a tool for mourning loss and emphasizing continuity.

“As children, we were often skeptical about our culture, and traditional music seemed old-fashioned or irrelevant,” says Khalilov. “At the same time, we felt strongly that we were not Russian, even though we could not clearly define what it meant to be Circassian.” “The goal is not revenge or to replace one form of domination with another, but to envision a future where different communities can coexist safely and freely.”

After February 2022, the comparisons between Russia’s historic invasion in the Caucasus and its contemporary warmaking have become more apparent – ​​but also more dangerous to state explicitly within Russia.

In its ethnic republics, anti-war and anti-imperialist voices are rapidly being suppressed, while state institutions promote rhetoric of loyalty and unity around the war in Ukraine. Feeling restricted by their region’s increasing isolation from the outside world, Khalilov and Kudzoko decided to leave their homeland.

They moved with their families first to Georgia, where they spent nearly two years waiting for visas to enter Germany, and now live in the university city of Göttingen in Lower Saxony. This month, Düsseldorf-based record label TAL will release Music from the Caucasus – Ored Recording Archive 2013-2023, a collection of diverse recordings containing stories of struggle, independence and historical memory in the present.

Their move to Germany reshaped their relationship with the Circassian diaspora. The proximity to artists and labels has opened up new experimental directions, including an electronica project with Martina Bertone and TAL founder Stefan Schneider, formerly of Electronica Trio To Rococo Rot. The label continues its core regional work with North Caucasian musicians and archival projects. Karachay’s band Gollu is preparing a new album, Kudzoko’s group Jrpjej is working with Berlin-based singer Svetlana Mamercheva, and the label is developing archival projects with musicians from the Nogai, an ethnic minority spread across the North Caucasus, the Volga region and Central Asia.

“Over time, we realized that it is not the trauma or victim narrative that gives value to music, but the stories behind it,” says Khalilov. “These songs are not just abstract sadness; they are connected to genocide, displacement, language loss and the everyday colonial conditions that still exist. Historical problems continue to shape the present. If we want to change anything, we must talk about it.”