Performers - Part 6

 Russian Rockers

As in other countries, some rock musicians and bands in Russia have performed naked, though not without consequences, as you will see.  This is Sergey Shnurov with the band called Leningrad that he formed in 1997.

In addition to the usual instruments, Leningrad included a trumpet, trombone, tuba and saxophone.  Here they are playing in Germany in 2002, with all the band members naked.  The band broke up in 2008.

Did you know that Russia has rock music festivals?  This is the band Рубль (Ruble) playing naked at Russia's largest rock festival, Kubana, on the Black Sea in southern Russia.  The festival started in 2009, and this video was posted in 2011, so it's from sometime between those dates.  By the way, the festival is not named after Cuba; it's named after the Kuban region of Russia.

At the 2014 Kubana festival, when Russian rapper Noize MC (real name Ivan Alekseyev) made some remarks criticizing Russia's involvement in the Ukraine, his microphone was turned off.  To protest, he later went on stage naked (above) with the band Anacondaz, and performed this piece called Похуисты (Fuckers).

Afterwards, the Russian Orthodox Church said that the festival promoted "blatant immorality."  The festival was forced to move.  It was going to be relocated to Kaliningrad, on the Baltic Sea, but local Orthodox complained, and the Kaliningrad authorities canceled the festival for 2015.

So the festival's organizers moved it to the nearby Baltic country of Latvia, which was happy to host the event.  Goodbye, Russia.

Also in 2014, Russia passed a law outlawing explicit language in public performances.  The public reacted in a very Russian way by making jokes about the law, like this one: a colonel stands before a line of soldiers for an hour without saying a word. Then he simply shouts “dismissed!” and marches away. "What's the matter with him?" asks one soldier. "It must be the ban on obscene language," replies another.