This week, we're featuring DDT, a Russian rock band that has been around since 1981. The band is fronted by Yuri Shevchuk, arguably the most prominent rock star in Russia.
Shevchuk faced prosecution after a video from his concert went viral, though the case was later dismissed:
And in Ukraine, they’re killing people. Why? What are they after? People are perishing. The youth of Russia and Ukraine are dying, the elders, the women and children are dying, for what, some Napoleonic plans, why do we need a new Caesar? [Thunderous applause]. Homeland [родина], friends, is not the president's ass [жопа] that has to be constantly slobbered [посолить, like what you do to bread before you take a shot], kissed. Homeland is an old lady, poor people, selling potatoes at the train station — that's homeland." [My translation… it’s hard to understand him as he slurs his speech and speaks in what is decidedly not proper Russian. Plus, dude is old.]
Shevchuk is particularly popular in his hometown of Ufa (Уфа́ ) a bustling city with a population of over 1 million people, on the steppe in Bashkortostan, which until the twentieth century was predominantly populated by the Bashkirs, a Turkish-Kipchak people that are eventually descended from the Mongols, nomadic tribes united by Genghis Khan (Ченгиз) in the 13th century that conquered much of what is now Ukraine and Russia.
Ufa is notably at the very edge of European Russia: Ivan IV, “The Terrible,” built a fortress there in the middle of the 16th century; at the time, it was the only Russian occupation of Siberia and protected Russia’s southern and eastern borders from attacks by… remnants of the Mongols like the Kipchaks in the Khanate of Kazan. (Empires upon empires upon empires…)
Anyway, back to the twentieth century, back to Shevchuk. He wrote his first songs in Ufa, and it was there that DDT/ДДТ was founded. For many, ДДТ was the sound of perestroika, like Nirvana is the sound of grunge for many. Take a listen to what many consider to be “the DDT song”, Что такое осень. Uplifting.
I’m not saying it’s great, but it’s important!