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Kapil Seshasayee pays tribute to a unique musical artist whose work still rings true for displaced people

Vytautas Beleska passed away on May 2nd, in Chicago, Illinois. He was 69 years of age. If you knew him at all it’s likely via his stage name Vyto B and his cult 1976 concept-record Tricentennial 2076 . To this day, physical copies of the album are scarce and can fetch up to a couple of thousand pounds online.

You’d be forgiven for thinking he fitted the bill of a typical ‘outsider artist’, but you’d be wrong. Vyto B was an anchor point for the Lithuanian diaspora in Chicago and a window into its culture for outsiders like me. It’s easy to see why this record in particular continues to resonate. Lyrically, a collection of sombre essays on a futuristic wasteland, dubbed New America, its paranoia around advances in technology (being in favour of profit versus anything resembling humanitarian aid) feels as relevant now as it ever could in 1976.

In stark contrast is its musical backdrop. Reminiscent of a player-piano, the songs gallop along at a relentless pace you’d usually find in music far less catchy. While I was hooked from its opening bars, this album isn’t why I found great influence in the work of Vyto B. It wasn’t until years later that I read beyond his mythos. Although I had been handed a backstory of ‘someone who dropped three albums and disappeared’, Vyto had, in reality, never slowed down. He recorded music as recently as 2016 and collaborated often with other musicians of Lithuanian heritage such as Edward Anderson of Chicago band The 1900s.

Vyto was drawn to those with the duality of his heritage in the same way I was drawn to other South Asians who hadn’t known India growing up. Reading about him volunteering at the Lithuanian Research And Studies Centre in Chicago and hosting Lithuanian-language radio programme M argutis made me realise that, if I wanted to find my own sense of community, I had to build it.

His status was such that when Lithuanian president Valdas Adamkus first left office in 2009, he granted an interview to Vyto on M argutis. Some time later when I began work on my own concept album on the horrors of the Indian caste system, it wasn’t the prog eccentricity of Vyto’s albums that I wanted to match but that diasporic connection he so lovingly cultivated throughout his life and his music. n K apil Seshasayee’s new single Rupture O f The W heel features D aranti G roup and is out now.

In this series of articles, we turn the focus back on ourselves by asking folk at The List about cultural artefacts that touch their heart and soul. This time around, Megan Merino tells us about cultural things which . . .

Made me cry: The string arrangement in Laura Marling’s ‘Song For Our Daughter’. I think it’s a happy cry, but it’s like a Pavlovian response at this point.

Made me angry: Howardena Pindell’s 1980 short ‘Free, White And 21’ is a deadpan account of the racism she experienced growing up in America. It stopped me in my tracks recently at the Fruitmarket in Edinburgh.

Made me sad: Asif Kapadia’s Amy. It took me days to get over it.

Made me think: Dogtooth by Yorgos Lanthimos. It’s definitely one of his more deranged films, but I fixated on its subversion of societal conditioning and our freedom to see the world as it really is . . . if that’s even possible.

Made me think twice: The display of Turner paintings at Margate’s Turner Contemporary curated by British-Ghanaian artist Larry Achiampong. His commentary powerfully showcases how we can hold multiple opinions of the so-called greats.

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