More than 100 international acts return to Russia

More than 100 international DJs and artists have quietly returned to playing gigs in Russia as campaigners warn western acts against “normalising” war and the Putin regime.

Russia has largely been boycotted by foreign acts in the wake of its invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, while touring giants including Live Nation and Oak View Group pledged not to do business with the country amid widespread outrage over its actions.

The ramifications for the international business continued to mount up thereafter, with Finland’s largest arena Helsinki Halli currently remaining shuttered due to its Russian ownership and Flow Festival ending its brand partnership with Heineken Silver due to the lager firm’s operations in Russia. Just last month English rock band Editors also pulled out of Kazakhstan’s Yandex Park Live over the alleged Russian links of the headline sponsor.

However, earlier this month, the Guardian reported that more than a dozen prominent western DJs performed at Russia’s Outline Festival in July. It was not an isolated incident – IQ has seen a list of well over 100 artists from Europe and the US – many of which are DJs or drum and bass artists – who have been booked for gigs in the country this year, in addition to already publicised examples such as American singer Joe Lynn Turner, who played Moscow’s 1930 club last October.

“It’s becoming a regular thing and is being done in such a covert fashion,” one insider tells IQ.

According to several sources, many of the acts have bypassed their booking agents to do business directly.

Russian festivals identified as having international acts on their lineups include Gamma, Mutabor, Afisha Picnic and Gazgolder Club. Two dance music events allegedly stopped announcing international headliner names until the day of the event to try and prevent them from being cancelled due to negative publicity.

“These are not superstars who will risk their career to go to Russia”

Ukrainian activist Maya Baklanova, a former mainstay of the Kyiv electronic music sector, has sought to raise awareness of the issue – which she believes is being driven by high performance fees – ever since the beginning of the war.

“I was approached by another promoter, who proposed to write an open letter for the electronic music scene to boycott Russian musicians who were not openly against the war,” she tells IQ. “We continued to work on that field, and then we started to switch the focus to international musicians who started to go to Russia.”

Although many of the DJs and artists in question are little known, Baklanova notes that a few have name value.

“These are not superstars who will risk their career to go to Russia,” she says. “We have seen artists who had already been to Russia multiple times before full scale invasion, so I think they have connections there. I think it’s all about the solid fees, with the excuse that you are going to visit your friends from pre-war life and that music is out of politics.”

Uwe Schmidt, a German DJ who performs under the name AtomTM, addressed criticism aimed at him for performing at Outline in an open letter posted on his website. Schmidt hits out at Baklanova and what he deems a “clearly politically motivated smear campaign against me and fellow artists which dared to perform their music in certain places, unsanctioned by a certain group of political activists”.

“I consider myself a profoundly non- or rather trans-political person,” he says. “Many years ago I had decided to take the path of making true human bonds through music. Unlike politics, which is the mode of separation, I had chosen music, which is the mode of connection.

“It should be redundant to say that I do not perform music for countries, nations, governments, ethnicities, political or ideological ideas, but for people – for other humans, independent of their passports, skin colour, gender or whatever cultural background they may have. It seems that music has lost that, previously obvious, message. In conclusion, I do reject speaking the language of war and hate or the language of nationalism.”

“Everything that we see going on in the cultural sphere in Russia is under Kremlin control, so you cannot separate culture and politics in modern Russia”

Baklanova rejects the argument, adding that she has grown weary of explaining why art cannot be separated from politics in this case.

“Russia invaded an independent neighbour country, yet at the same time, you are going to perform for festivals, for venues, for companies, which are directly involved in this war,” she says. “Russia’s strategy is to use culture to normalise the regime. Everything that we see going on in the cultural sphere is under Kremlin control, so you cannot separate culture and politics in modern Russia.”

IQ contacted a number of major agencies to ask for clarification on their policies with regards to booking their artists into Russia at the moment.

While the majority of major agencies contacted by IQ either declined to comment or did not respond to the request, ATC Live founder Alex Bruford says: “We can’t guarantee the safety of our artists in a country that uses false imprisonment of foreigners to leverage the return of its citizens. Therefore, we won’t send our artists to Russia.”

Independent Artist Group EVP, head of global music, Jarred Arfa says: “While we don’t have an official company policy, in general, most of our artists don’t seem to have interest in going to Russia at this time. If asked for guidance, I think we would tell artists not to go there at this time given the geopolitical situation and potential backlash.”

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