Antifascism for the Future? Live Music and more

Arkadiy Kots Band

Free Home is happy to invite you for May 9th live event dedicated to the 75 years anniversary of Liberation from nazi-fascism in Europe hosted by Arkadiy Kots - a well-known radical socialist, antifascist, feminist, and anti-regime folk-punk band from Moscow.

In their announcement they point out:

- How shall we speak about antifascism today? {..} It's not an option not to re-establish our antifascist roots, reclaim antifascism as ethics, as politics, as a model to transform our society. Specifically in the times of pandemic when we put all efforts to protects our families, our communities and the lives of our beloved, fascism finds its ways to always crawl back (every time recognizable yet always deformed and mutated into something new).

As a way to bring us these questions, Arkadiy Kots invited musicians, poets, activists and intellectuals from Moscow and St.-Petersburg, from former Soviet places and beyond. Alessio Lega , singer-songwriter and activist from Italy is going to perform a series of traditional anti-military and anti fascist folk songs; activist and singer Sergi Botswana from Barcelona will contribute with his live version of Ay Carmela; prominent russian-writing poets Galina Rymbu and Roman Osminkin are going to present their reflective poems. The full line up will be published on the facebook page of Arkadiy Kots band

During the event, we are launching our common project - Trans-European Partisan Jam - conceived by Arkadiy Kots Band together with Free Home to advance our antifascist studies.

Arkadiy Kots Band are addressing this particular event mostly to Russian speaking audiences, although a range of ambassadors and collaborating comrades-musicians from Italy, Catalonia, Belarus, Ukraine, Kyrgyzstan, US and other parts of the world - will be singing and speaking about the necessity of a renewed antifascist partisanship in their own languages. After all, it's true that playing, singing and experiencing music together is an act of translation which can hold us together in mutuality, solidarity and reciprocity.

Here’s the link to the band’s youtube channel, where the gig is hosted on May 9, at 8 PM (moscow time):

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC4ZG1tNPhORZWp2iOaNvhig

poster-invitation of the ANTIFASCISM for the FUTURE? event

Trans-European Partisan Jam is a collection of historical resistance songs from Italy, Spain, Yugoslavia, France, Roma People, and USSR.

Arkadi Kots initiates this project as a new session of Free Home University in continuity with its ongoing collaboration with trade-unions, activist, feminist, environmentalist, and migrant movements and communities, which has constituted a central focus throughout the past 10 years of the band’s activities. Arkadiy Kots considers folk culture and music as great pedagogical tools to share knowledge, express solidarity, and reinforce resistance through songs. The translation is also an important instrument for the band, that rearranges, readapts and translates songs from many places, languages, cultures, and contexts of struggles, enhancing a spirit of togetherness and a sense of unity.

Arkadi Kots translated into Russian and the post-soviet context, songs from Catalan, Shugnan, Bosnian, Polish, Greek, Ukrainian, Spanish, German, French, Italian, and English, adapted poems by Langston Hughes, Mike Yohansen, Luis Llach, Władysław Szlengel, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Joe Hill to name a few. The band also transforms the very process of making songs together into an ongoing self-educational process and into a form of social and political activism.

Composed by non-professional musicians - the group’s ethos is to underline the significance and richness of folk music and popular traditions, as the possibility for different communities to voice their struggle, and sing together as a way to promote social justice and solidarity across places and contexts.

Trans-European Partisan Jam invites musicians to sing a song from a place different from their own. We are seeking several comrade-musicians from Spain, Italy, former Yugoslavia, Germany, Austria and France, singers and instrumentalists who play folk string instruments, reeds, brass, accordion, and who share our antifascist-socialist-feminist values.

Considering the limitation imposed by anti Covid policies, we will collaborate with those having the gear to record their parts at home, which later will be assembled and mastered by a sound engineer. The funds to cover the participation in this project (only two or three musicians for each track).

The songs proposed for the recording are:

USSR || В лесу прифронтовом

France || La complainte du partisan

Jugoslavia || Konjuh Planinom

Spain || ¡Ay Carmela!

Italia || Bella Ciao

Roma People || Jelem Jelem

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Among many other gems of antifascist popular tradition