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Russian Feminist Punk Band Arrested and sentenced for two years

KEEPING IT ALIVE October 2012

Exploring Indonesian punk culture and its impact on society LOOSE LIPS

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IT MAY BE 30 YEARS LATE, BUT FOR MANY OF THESE KIDS PUNK IS THE BEST THING THAT HAS EVER COME TO INDONESIA

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t's after midnight in Jakarta and, below a highway overpass, a party is just getting started. Students and the unemployed are listening to well-worn cassette tapes, swigging from bottles filled with a cocktail of beer and local wine and loitering in front of Movement Records — a punk-music shop that has become a nexus for local youths. It is also home to Onie, one of Jakarta's self-proclaimed original street punks, who both works and sleeps on the premises. "It is very quiet at night," Onie says. "The shops are closed, so society is O.K. with us being here. My friends can come at night and argue, laugh and fight for as long as they want." Although they are from different backgrounds, Onie's cohorts all proudly call themselves punks — a name first coined 30 years ago. His gang must be one of the last anywhere in the world to use the term today, and stepping inside Movement Records is to walk into a shrine to another

era. Posters and stickers of their heroes — bands from the 1970s such as the Sex Pistols, the Ramones and the Clash — adorn every inch of wall space. "Punk is about free-

dom," says Onie.

"People can choose what they want to do and what they want to say." When the punk movement first surfaced in England in 1977, its nihilistic posturing and contempt for cultural and pop-music traditions rattled both the social and entertainment establishments. Long after the movement petered out or became commercialized elsewhere, it

took hold for the first time in Jakarta in the mid-1990s — at a time when the music's belligerence seemed to perfectly echo the hostility many young people felt toward the authoritarian regime of then President Suharto. Onie recalls listening to Guns N' Roses and boy band New Kids on the Block and never feeling a real connection with the music. "Then an Indonesian friend told me that I had to listen to Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols and I loved it," he says.

Punk soon proliferated as rapidly as cassette duplicates of the albums could be made, and Onie and his friends would meet nightly at Blok M — beside Jakarta's main 24-hour bus terminal — to swap bootlegs of albums by the likes of American punk rockers the Casualties and Scottish four-piece the Exploited.

"The youth were attracted to the freedom and rebellion that punk offered," says Trax magazine's music editor, Farid Amriansyah.

LEFT: MARJINAL - MAGGIE ANN MAY RIGHT: CHAIDEER MAHYUDDIN/AFP

“ PEOPLE CAN CHOOSE WHAT THEY WANT TO DO AND WHAT THEY WANT TO SAY.”

"They were looking for an identity and punk gave it to them." Onie's friend Aca found his mood reflected in the stark lyrics of Fight Back, the 1980 protest anthem by English hardcore-punk band Discharge: "People die in police custody/ Where's the justice in that?/ Don't see none/ Fight the system, fight back." These words directly inspired Aca to join street protests in 1998, when he was tear-gassed and bludgeoned with the butts of police rifles. "I felt so alive then," he says.

"I learned from punk and I was ready to fight no matter what." Eko, the owner of another record store, Anti Music Records, and a former member of one of Jakarta's first punk bands, the Idiots, says he constantly lives by punk's rebellious code. "I am always in a punk state of mind," he declares, as if electronica or hiphop had never happened. "Punk is better than religion to me."

Amriansyah explains that there are thouOctober 2012

sands of punks in the country. "Through an underground network of fanzines, record trading, the growth of independent distribution outlets and the power of the Internet," he says, "the scene is widely spreading to every region in Indonesia." But these days peer support, not protest, is one of the main attractions. One of Jakarta's youngest punks, 11-year-old Doing, meets up with his friends every afternoon at a playground near Blok M. With calloused bare feet and PUNK tattooed on his fingers, he survives by playing his ukulele on buses for money. "Punks are my family," Doing says.

At this family's core are the members of Marjinal, a punk band that has helped over a thousand street kids earn cash by teaching them how to busk. "Music gives these kids a way to survive, to make some kind of living," says Mike, Marjinal's lead singer. "Punk, to me, is ad-

ABOVE: Police gather a group of detained Indonesian punks at a police school in Aceh Besar in Aceh province. Sharia police are “morally rehabilitating” more than 60 young punk rock fans, saying the youths tarnish the province’s staunch Islamic image. After being arrested at a punk rock concert in the provincial capital Banda Aceh Saturday night, 59 male and five female punk rock fans have been forced to have their hair cut, bathe in a lake, change clothes and pray, an AFP correspondent on the scene said December 14.

dressing the things that are rotten in society.

It tells us that we have the ability to be independent and take care of each other."

There isn't a kid at a Marjinal show that doesn't know the lyrics to every one of the songs.

"How are you, everybody?" sings Mike to a crowd of around 200 children, 5 years old and up. "Including the one who lives under the bridge, under the heat of the sunshine, the ones that live on the streets. How are you?"

The children sing along as they pile onto the stage. "Let's share the good and the bad times together!" Mike exhorts over the roar of their voices. It may be 30 years late, but for many of these kids punk is the best thing that has ever come to Indonesia.

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PUSSY RIOT

BY LINDSAY ZOLADZ / ILLUSTRATION GUY DENNING

October 2012

AN EXAMINATION OF THE ISSUES SURROUNDING THE RUSSIAN FEMINIST PUNK BAND’S PLIGHT AND WHY THEY HAVE MADE SUCH A STRONG IMPACT AROUND THE WORLD. LOOSE LIPS

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TAKE ME SERIOUSLY:

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“PUSSY RIOT BOTTLE THE SPIRIT OF RIOT GRRRL BUT ALSO TRANSPOSE IT INTO A WHOLE NEW CONTEXT— AND IN SOME WAYS, MAKE IT’S MESSAGE RING EVEN CLEARER TO THE CURRENT GENERATION OF YOUNG WOMEN.”

WHY PUSSY RIOT MATTERS

t's the kind of thing that happens every day of the week all over the world in dingy warehouses, church basements, and beer-stinking loft spaces: a bunch of people gathering to hear some sloppy, ear-ringingly loud music. Except someone from the Associated Press is filming this particular punk show. And the PA is pointed at the Russian Embassy across the street. And many people around me are wearing multi-colored balaclavas, adding a tinge of surreality to the whole scene.

I am at a Pussy Riot solidarity concert in Washington, D.C., one of many such events happening across the globe. A hundred or so supporters, journalists, and Amnesty International staff have gathered on a breezy August evening to show support for the Russian feminist punk collective, three members of which are currently

imprisoned and on trial for performing a one-minute protest song entitled "Our Lady, Chase Putin Out" in a Russian Orthodox church early this year. Although their protest was peaceful– no one was hurt, no property damage incurred-- Maria Alyokhina, Yekaterina Samutsevich, and Nadezhda Tolokonnikova face three years in a labor camp on charges of "hooliganism motivated by religious hatred."

Amnesty International, who reached out to the local punk community to help organize this show, declared them "prisoners of conscience" and is demanding their release.

"Amnesty is showing the Russian authorities that people around the world, including in the United States, are very concerned about these women and the fact that they're being held solely for their political beliefs," the organization's media relations director Sharon Singh tells

Left: Pussy Riot fans showing their support me over the phone two days before the show.

"We're also saying that this isn't an isolated incident. It's emblematic of what's happening in Russia right now. From a crackdown on NGOs, to the excessive fines for dissension, to the regulations on defamation, there's been this return to draconian measures when it comes to speech and expression."

The crowd gathered in D.C. is certainly not alone in supporting Pussy Riot's right to free speech. Since their arrest in February, gestures of solidarity from artists, musicians, and politicians have echoed throughout the world. And in the two weeks since they've been on trial-- locked, as the widely distributed photos attest, in a cage in the courtroom-- the list of high-profile Pussy Riot advocates seems to grow each day.

Björk recently issued a statement of support and dedicated a performance of "Declare Independence" to the group. An Icelandic mayor donned Pussy Riot's signature outfit-brightly hued tights, dresses, and those iconic balaclavas, meant to symbolize their ethos of collectivity and anonymity-- at a parade last week. (For anyone who thinks October 2012

America is at the vanguard of global progressivism, take a moment to picture your city's mayor in a dress and neon tights.)

Musicians like Patti Smith, Sting, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Jarvis Cocker, and St. Vincent and have also vocalized their support. And perhaps most famously, Madonna donned a balaclava and wrote "Pussy Riot" on her back at a show in Moscow last week. A senior official in the Russian government tweeted that Madonna was a "former [slut] lecutr[ing] everyone on morality." No word on what he thinks about Sting.

Why has this story been hitting home for so many people-- and Americans in particular?

I can't help but wonder this as I survey the crowd in D.C. There are signs depicting photos of the band behind bars; it's hard to ignore the privilege I am enjoying just by being here. The weather is as idyllic as summer in D.C. gets, and-- in what strikes my guilty conscience as a sharp contrast to the hunger strike two of the women carried out at the beginning of their imprisonment-- there are a couple of food trucks parked nearby: one hawking artisinal waffles, and a sandwich shop called "Wassub?" (scrawled in graffiti-inspired typeface). Some Amnesty interns periodically throw beach balls into the air.

But after a few warm-up chants ("free

expression, not repression!" "free speech is not a crime, why are they still doing time?"), the mood transforms as the night's headliners, Baltimore feminist punk quintet War on Women, take the stage. I've seen the band before and always enjoyed their high-energy brand of hardcore, but the cause seems to galvanize them: They've never been better. Spitting through politically charged numbers like "Effemimania" and "Confess", frontwoman Shawna Potter's stage presence is electric, recalling Kathleen Hanna at her most exuberantly confrontational. "Take me!

Take me! Take me seriously!" she screams at the crowd.

The performance ends with Potter doing a series of sardonic, exaggerated cheerleader calisthenics, adding a sign of the cross between each high kick. When the song ends, she turns to the Russian Embassy and raises a middle finger as feedback squalls beneath her vocals. "Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck you. Free Pussy Riot." It's a powerful moment; shutters click, pens go flying. A few passersby who've wandered over to the show from the nearby bus stop look a little ruffled. "Free Pussy Riot.

Fuck you. Fuck you. Free Pussy Riot." She repeats it. Nobody comes over to pull the plug.

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“A BIG REASON WHY PUSSY RIOT’S MESSAGE HAS TRAVELED SO WIDELY– AND RESONATED SO DEEPLY IN THE WEST–IS THAT THE GROUP HAVE SHOWN EXPERTISE IN HOW TO USE NEW MEDIA TO THEIR ADVANTAGE.”

Potter is, naturally, a little more relaxed when I get her on the phone two days later. But Friday's show is still on her mind. "I think it is important, as a punk musician in America to be the voice saying, 'I don't want to go to jail for singing my songs about the government or the patriarchy!' I can't even imagine a life like that."

Still, even in the Western world, some aspects of Pussy Riot's struggles don't feel quite so remote. As Potter recently told The Nation, "War on Women feels it is our duty, as a band with U.S.-based privilege, to not only call attention to the stark difference between how we and Pussy Riot are able to make our art, but to draw attention to the similarities in how women are treated as 2nd class citizens all around the world." Their songs tackle issues that often go unsung in the hardcore, punk, and metal genres that their sound straddles: gender equity, women's autonomy, street harassment. One of their best songs, "Broken Record", directs some choice words at a persistent cat caller, "I'm not your girl/ I'm not your baby/ What I'm wearing has only to do with the weather/ Stop leering, motherfucker, stop staring."

Yet even in America right now, bands that tackle feminist issues-- or politics at all-- are in seemingly short supply. When War on Women formed a few years ago in Baltimore, Potter felt like they were an anomaly. "The music scene there was a lot of fun, party dance bands. And the heavy music we listened to was all about getting drunk and breaking shit," she says. "We saw a gap, and we wanted to make the music that we felt was missing."

Across the globe, the women of Pussy Riot would form after feeling another sort of void.

The band began last September, after Vladimir Putin announced he would try to reclaim the Russian Presidency (amidst opposition protests and allegations of election fraud, he did just that in March 2012). "At that point," one anonymous member of Pussy Riot told Vice days after the group was arrested, "We realized that this country needs a militant, punk-feminist, street band that will rip through Moscow's streets and squares, mobilize public energy against the evil crooks of the Putinist junta and enrich the Russian cultural and political opposition with themes that are important to us: gender and LGBT

rights, problems of masculine conformity, absence of a daring political message on the musical and art scenes, and the domination of males in all areas of public discourse."

And-- though they also cite a wide variety of musical and political influences-- another member added, "In terms of feminist musical acts, activism, and community building we do give credit to the Riot Grrrl movement."

Pussy Riot's comments about riot grrrl give a jolt to the movement's legacy. Last year, I wrote an article called "Not Every Girl is A Riot Grrrl", documenting the frustration that many feel when the term "riot grrrl" is still used as a reductive way to group all female musicians together, years removed from its original point of power. As I was writing that piece, I never could have anticipated the way that Pussy Riot would bottle the spirit of riot grrrl but also transpose it into a whole new context-- and in some ways, make its message ring even clearer to the current generation of young women.

If I might quote a Bratmobile song, Pussy Riot are a punk rock dream come true.

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"It would be really cool if this reinvigorated feminists from all over the world," Bikini Kill frontwoman and riot grrrl originator Kathleen Hanna told Pitchfork. "Everyone is always asking me, 'How do we restart riot grrrl?' And I'm like, 'Don't.' Because something's organically going to happen on its own; you can't force it. Who wants to restart something that's 20 years old? Start your own fucking thing. This could be a part of a lot of people starting their own fucking thing."

The original riot grrrls had a notoriously thorny relationship with the media. After a spate of mainstream magazine articles that misunderstood the movement, they imposed a media blackout, refusing to talk to the press. It was a controversial decision, but it made sense in a time when it was harder to control the message that a group of activists-- or people in general-- could transmit to the world at large. But a big reason why Pussy Riot's message has traveled so widely-- and resonated so deeply in the West-- is that the group have shown expertise in how to use new media to their advantage.

Their aesthetic is viscerally visual, and the strikingly kinetic videos of their performances have been YouTube-ready. Whereas riot grrrls communicated privately, Pussy Riot benefit from the connectedness of the digital world: They thrive on the fact that the world is watching.

Still, it's likely that Pussy Riot's iconography resonates more strongly with Westerners than many people close to their home.

"The interest that they command in the West is flabbergasting to the Russian public," GQ Russia editor-in-chief Michael Idov noted in a

recent episode of WNYC's On the Media. "Russian musicians don't really speak up for them. Partly it's because they're afraid, but partly because they're not really perceived as musicians in Russia. Whereas when you look at them from the West, they actually form a much more familiar picture of this edgy punk band."

To those more familiar with the sneering sentiment of punk, the images of Pussy Riot are striking and unsettling (enough for Hanna to pen an aptly titled blog post, "Seriously, They're in a Fucking Cage!!!").

Idov believes many Russians have read their self-presentation as "insincere," but Potter says she sees these images as secret, coded glances across continents. "You can see the little smirk on their faces," she says. "They're like 'Yeah, this is ridiculous.' They're letting us know that they know." But the frontwoman also believes the images are suffused with hope. "What are they going to do, look totally defeated and dejected? No. Of course they're not happy about what's going on, but as long as people are taking photos and sharing them around the world to influence people, the issue won't die."

The Pussy Riot trial has struck so deep because it reminds us of some of the most basic things about why we listen to music and how ideas can be communicated through art. They're the kinds of things that are so obvious that they feel banal or trivial or cheesy to actually admit: that punk music can transmit ideas and feelings with the immediacy of lightning, and that art has the potential to cut across barriers and obliterate differences.

“THE PUSSY RIOT TRIAL HAS STRUCK SO DEEP BECAUSE IT REMINDS US OF SOME OF THE MOST BASIC THINGS ABOUT WHY WE LISTEN TO MUSIC AND HOW IDEAS CAN BE COMMUNICATED THROUGH ART�.

Above: Pussy Riot Performance in Moscow.

Back in D.C., a speaker focuses on that aspect of the story. "They're just like you," she says, talking about Pussy Riot. "Don't you think they'd get along well in D.C.?" She also informs us that the event is being streamed on the internet, and that some of Pussy Riot's friends and family-- who knows, perhaps even some of the members of the collective who've managed to stay underground-- are watching. It's natural for people at a punk show to be skeptical of the media, but Pussy Riot have reminded us about the primal force of images. So, I think, let the cameras flash. Let them see us celebrating. Let them see what an ordinary, everyday punk show looks like.

Potter is similarly hopeful for how the episode could affect other parts of the world-- and serve as a reminder of the freedom we sometimes take for granted. "We might not see all of the changes right away, but I think there might be a shift in music. I think we could see [Pussy Riot's] influence in the next five or 10 years. It could influence more women to get involved with music," she predicts. "So go ahead and pick up a guitar, and put up with the other bands or sound guys giving you shit, because hey, you're not going to go to jail. You still get to do what you want."

Masha, Katya, and Nadya are set to be sentenced tomorrow [update: the trio have been found guilty and sentenced to two years in prison], and plenty of other solidarity events are scheduled. But in a closing statement circulated widely on the internet over the weekend, Katya expressed that, at this point, even a guilty verdict wouldn't be a complete loss. "I now have mixed feelings about this trial," she said.

"On the one hand, we expect a guilty verdict. Compared to the judicial machine, we are nobodies, and we have lost. On the other hand, we have won. The whole world now sees that the criminal case against us has been fabricated. The system cannot conceal the repressive nature of this trial."

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