Ulyap Songs: Beyond Circassian Tradition
Ulyap Songs: Beyond Circassian Tradition
Free entry
Booking required:
t +352 453785-531
Music label and book publisher FLEE presents ‘Ulyap Songs’, dedicated to a living vernacular music tradition from the Northern Caucasus. An amalgam of traditional Circassian epic songs, Soviet folklorised politics and popular music, these songs remain relatively unknown to younger generations and outsiders.
The event will start with a hybrid presentation of the book and music by the curators of the project – Nikita Rasskazov and Alan Marzo. They will share insights about independent cross-disciplinary cultural production and the logistical, ethical and political issues it has to deal with along the way. We invite you to this informal presentation where there will also be food, anecdotes, music and documentary footage from the duo’s research trips.
This convivial moment will be followed by a workshop with Timur Kodzoko, co-founder of Ored Recordings. A musician and instrument-maker, Kodzoko will showcase the shichepshin, a traditional Circassian bow instrument, and show the public how to play several classical motifs. This spontaneous and collective music event will include singing and rhythms.
The evening will finish with a performance and concert by Valentina Goncharova, a Ukrainian-Estonian electronic musical pioneer, composer and electro-violinist who contributed to the record with her rendition of original and archival Ulyap song motifs.
A commissioned textile artwork by Milana Khalilova, which features in the book and incorporates traditional and modern Circassian fabric-making techniques, will be shown to the public for the first time.
BIOS:
FLEE
Founded by Olivier Duport, Alan Marzo and Carl Åhnebrink, FLEE is an independent publishing house, record label and curatorial platform dedicated to the artistic documentation and reinterpretation of hybrid cultural phenomena. Through a transdisciplinary artistic practice, the platform explores and creatively highlights the contours of globalisation from a historical and critical perspective. Oscillating between different subjects and disciplines, ranging from music to architecture, the collective proactively defends inclusive working methods, presenting diverse, varied and sometimes conflicting, points of view.
ORED Recordings – Timur Kodzoko & Bulat Khalilov
Bulat and Timur hail from Nalchik, the capital of the Kabardino-Balkarian Republic, and it’s here that they founded theirlabel, Ored Recordings, which operates as a research and publishing platform for traditional music from the Circassian diaspora, as well as Caucasian traditional and contemporary music more widely. In 2012 Khalilov and his friend Kodzoko organised an expedition across the Caucasus with French filmmaker and artist Vincent Moon. Their observation of the regional musical culture during the expedition inspired them to found Ored Recordings. They describe the label’s modus operandi as ‘punk-ethnography,’ a reference to their non-academic approach to research, documentation and production of traditional and contemporary music. As a team Khalilov takes on the research, publishing and communication tasks while Kodzoko is responsible for music and record production, as well as instrument building and performing both traditional and contemporary music.
Nikita Rasskazov
Nikita is a music producer, curator and artist, film teacher and museum inclusivity specialist who was formerly a music programme curator at V-A-C Foundation. His curatorial work is focused on the political agency and communal aspects of music-making, the blurring of boundaries between professional and amateur music-making and what can be learnt from non-western musical practices. Currently he is practicing sound therapy and working in the drone music space, mainly with clarinet and modular synthesis. After Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, Rasskazov resigned from projects based in, or affiliated with, Russia and focused on facilitating the evacuation of Ukrainian people through an organisation called Helping To Leave. Via this organisation he mediates art and education activities for Ukrainian youths.
Valentina Goncharova
Valentina Goncharova was born in Kyiv, Ukraine. She graduated as a classically trained violinist from Leningrad Conservatory and was involved in the late-Soviet avant garde music scene. Her interest in New Age culture led her to work and study in London at the end of the 1980s. She was also a street musician there and in Italy, eventually moving to Tallinn, Estonia, where she reinvented her composition methods and sound, recording solo custom-built electric violin pieces. She also leads a classical music chamber ensemble in the city’s cathedral and continues to experiment with a wide range of non-western musical traditions.
Milana Khalilova
Milana Khalilova lives in Nalchik, Kabardino-Balkaria. She is the art editor of children’s magazine Nur. Her professional and research interests include the interaction between archaic forms of folk, collective art and contemporary art practices. Khalilova studied at the College of Design in Nalchik and currently works in painting, animation, traditional crafts and book design. In 2017 she took part in the Mikhail Shemyakin Residency in France.
