Emigration
In the second part of the Nottoday interview, we spoke with “Serbian Knife” (Serbski Nož) about Belarusian identity, emigration, future plans, and their attitude toward the music industry.
Belarusian Music in Exile: Challenges and Positions
You are Belarusians in exile. How do the life and atmosphere of Warsaw influence your work? Does it allow you to step out of the Belarusian context, or is that context important to you?
St: It seems to me that living in Warsaw—largely the capital of the Belarusian emigration—on the one hand, truly allows one to step out of the Belarusian context. In the sense that we can look at ourselves as Belarusians from the outside, evaluating our life in Belarus from a certain distance.
We can only truly understand ourselves as Belarusians while being outside of Belarus. When you live inside the country, surrounded exclusively by Belarusians, you don’t think about what it means. Even if you’ve been abroad, that experience isn’t enough because you aren’t living permanently outside your environment. But when you end up here in Poland, you notice what distinguishes you from Poles, Ukrainians, or other people.
Living here, we can look at ourselves from the side precisely because there isn’t a constant environment of only Belarusians. That’s one side. On the other—there are so many Belarusians here that I personally don’t always feel like I’m abroad. Belarusian places, routes, and familiar people are everywhere. Even if you interact with Poles, you still meet Belarusian friends every day. So, it’s simultaneously a yes and a no.
In my opinion, music doesn’t have national “traits.” It’s another matter that we have the experience of living in Belarus, a connection to its history and culture—and this can influence the music or our theoretical reflections. But that doesn’t make it exclusively Belarusian. There is music oriented only toward the Belarusian context, the Belarusian language, or a Belarusian audience—but that isn’t us.
We don’t strive to work only for Belarusians. Our themes, even if the songs are in Belarusian, remain universal; they aren’t reduced to national identity. Language and national motifs are for us a form that dictates content in some ways, but they aren’t an end in themselves. They are just a means of expressing thoughts that go beyond the national.
D: I am completely in solidarity with the previous speaker.
M: I’ll probably say the opposite. It always seemed to me that music is rather a tool for conveying thoughts, including the transmission of features of a mentality or something close to it. Music lends itself easily to such a task.
As for context, I agree with Stas, but I’ll add: in emigration, sooner or later a desire arises to preserve “Belarusianness” within oneself, to stay in the Belarusian context. But this context inevitably begins to drift away—the connection with the mainland, with the people, and with the country is gradually lost.
You have lyrics in the Belarusian language. Is this a conscious choice or a natural internal impulse?
S: Regarding the question of poeticism, I’ll add one more bit: I absolutely don’t care. On one hand, I consider myself a Belarusian composer, but on the other, I admit that although identity is a construct, it’s the kind of construct we can get rid of if necessary… though, in fact, it isn’t always necessary. If identity is used not to harm others but to connect and unite, then it is an important thing.
As for the lyrics in Belarusian—they simply started appearing when I moved to Poland. I don’t write lyrics by deciding, “I want to write a song about a bottle of non-alcoholic beer.” No, I don’t work like that. My lyrics appear on their own. And so, after living in Poland for a while, I noticed that some began coming out specifically in Belarusian. I didn’t cultivate this intentionally. It was just the combination of content I started reading and consuming, including in Polish, that somehow made it possible to write lyrics in Belarusian.
But, as the guys said, I am primarily interested in universal questions—very serious ones: violence, human nature, the nature of power, the nature of oneself. Questions that would interest a person anywhere in the world, regardless of the language they speak. And yet we discuss them, obviously, in our own language.
I always emphasize (to counter people who read me with bias) that my native language is Russian. Native in the sense that my mother, my father, my grandmother, and my grandfather spoke it. I don’t have a single person in my family who spoke Belarusian. Even among more distant ancestors—mostly Germans, and their native language was German. And generally, the most “folk” language is Yiddish.
St: I would add that, of course, this all happens unconsciously at first regarding which language a text is born in. But there is a thought that language still becomes a certain artistic device, albeit an unconscious one. Being a form, it sometimes begins to dictate content.
It seems to me that some songs could only have been born in the way they exist in the Belarusian language. And others—only in Russian. If they were originally written in another language, it would already be a slightly different song: different images might have appeared. The Belarusian language, for example, dictates certain images, certain phonetic and musical solutions. Because of this, even the music over which the text is read might turn out differently.
It’s not something mandatory or planned—it just turns out that the language suggests what we will write and talk about in it. It has its own life, and it influences what will eventually be written.
In your opinion, what challenges is Belarusian musical culture in emigration currently facing?
St: I think the main problem is the movement toward opportunism and conformism. I’m not even talking about the music itself, but the musical space as a whole. The industry, if you can call it that, strives to repeat the same thing: the same names, the same events, no interest in the new or in experiments. The most that is considered “fresh” is, for example, an ethnic song to old motifs combined with electronics, and it’s presented as something incredibly original.
In reality, we constantly see the same faces. Everything is held together not by large organizations, but by a small circle of people who work “under the radar,” doing everything sincerely—organizing concerts, festivals, bringing in new artists. Meanwhile, large venues often just hold the same festival annually with the same artists: Liavon Volski, “Petlya Pristastiya,” and a few other groups. The artists aren’t to blame, respect to them, but the approach becomes formal. The public is happy, a couple of posts go up, and everyone thinks “culture is alive.” In fact, it’s more like a conscious conformism: we are doing something, but not putting in the effort, just going with the flow.
M: I would add something about emigration. Despite the fact that the Belarusian musical crowd abroad is quite large, the circle of people is still limited. There is almost no integration into other environments—Polish, Ukrainian—or it doesn’t happen in the volume one would hope for. In Warsaw, for example, separate “bubbles” of Belarusian, Ukrainian, and Polish music exist—the links between them are rare and often look awkward. We tried to arrange joint concerts with Polish musicians, but it’s all very difficult.
There is also a risk that due to limited resources, people will quarrel and break ties, which will only cause harm. It’s important for us to “crank up to the max” our level of tolerance and find common ground with everyone.
Let’s talk about the music industry. Is your participation in the DIY scene a conscious choice or a forced measure?
St: I think it’s both. We play where we are invited, and we are happy for any opportunity. It’s not some strategic choice; it just happened that way. Of course, it’s nice to play with your friends, but you can’t call it a fully conscious decision.
S: For me, DIY was attractive from the very beginning—you do everything yourself, control the process, invite who you want, play where you want. But sooner or later you hit a ceiling: the industry is not just money and “fat producers,” but a whole infrastructure—studios, production, music videos. In Belarus, this doesn’t exist, which is why we don’t have a choice between mainstream and underground.
In our region, everything is done on one’s knee with a minimal budget. You don’t earn much on such projects, so you have to act on your own. This gives freedom—we do what we want without contracts and unnecessary obligations—but it also limits us.
Do you think music in the modern world should carry some socio-cultural or political message? Or can it be songs about “Pink Flamingos”?
St: Everyone decides for themselves what to sing about. No one owes anyone anything. If a person wants to sing about “Pink Flamingos”—let them sing.
M: I agree, the question “should music?” sounds strange. For myself, I divide creativity into roughly “escapist” and “reflective.” Escapism isn’t necessarily something empty; it can be “Pink Flamingos” or high abstract art. Reflection can be a “Z-song” (pro-war) or the opposite, or personal feelings.
Now, among Warsaw-based Belarusian performers, more and more reflection is appearing—about themselves, the place they’ve ended up in, and what is happening. Both have the right to exist, but personally, I am closer to the reflective part.
S: In times of upheaval, of course, it’s important to take a side. There’s an ancient Greek legend that during a war, people who didn’t choose a side were expelled from the polis after it ended. But at the same time, I am against pressure: you can’t force an artist to speak out. If someone ignores what is happening, you can simply distance yourself from them.
A normal person, like a creative person, is still a political animal, except the latter has an audience, influence, and therefore—responsibility. I always take a clear position on political issues myself, but if I am forced to do so under pressure, I fundamentally refuse.
Looking into the Future
What themes would you like to explore in the future in your work? What hasn’t been voiced yet?
S: Personally, I can say that lately, I am particularly interested in questions of identity—against the backdrop of migrations and all the processes happening around us in society. I would like to understand these topics more deeply and reason about them. But that will be, let’s say, after we release the next album.
The next album will be, so to speak, about the roots of evil and the roots of good as known to people. We will reflect on why and for what purpose events happen, searching for the deepest foundations. And then I plan to turn to identity. This topic is very alive and relevant. The world is changing now, old nation-states are dying and will die, and in the future we will live in conditions where many familiar meanings will be lost.
St: Speaking for me, lately in creativity—and in poetry too—I’ve been interested in the theme of the fallibility and deceptiveness of poetic inspiration. I think this is exactly what happens with many poets: they are in some elevated, almost sacred state, but then it turns out it was mostly an illusion.
A person can experience such a state of elation, feel something divine in it, but simultaneously get lost in it, failing to find the strength to do anything with it. I saw something sacred, divine in this state, and then realized it was perhaps not what I thought it was. Due to the influence of this false, misunderstood “poetic voice,” events sometimes happened that I would have preferred not to happen. This is an important, even religious theme for me—the theme of the erroneous or distorted voice of God. Actually, that is what I am working on now.
And yes, the theme of emigration and the feeling of being lost in the abyss that separates us from those currently in Belarus is also very important to me. This is a significant line for me as well, and I try to raise it in my poetic work.
M: I don’t think I have anything special to add, but I agree that right now reflection about oneself, the place where we are, and occurring events as a reaction to what is around us is closest to me. What’s especially interesting is how time is superimposed on all of this. Many sharp events are already at a distance and are perceived completely differently than when they were happening. At the moment, that is probably what concerns me most.