Hello, how are you?

Hope you’re well. The photo accompanying today’s Editorial is from Friday, March 21 in Marseille, during Babel Music XP. I’ve already written about my participation in this panel. It was recorded and you can listen to it in full here.

I think it went really well. Each speaker approached the topic from a different angle, and it seems increasingly relevant by the day.

This year I could clearly feel the results of Babel’s intention to make the event more international than in previous years. All the panels had simultaneous translation available through the app. And the presence of international delegates was significantly higher. I don’t have the exact figures, which I’m sure the team does, but I believe I’m not too far off with this impression.

But at the same time…

On the 18th, I received an email from Zone Franche with a press release titled “Update: Artists without visas”, which you can read in full here. Here’s a summary in English (done by me with support of ChatGPT so I recommend to check the original one if you want to delve more):

SAWA SAWA is a cultural cooperation program fully managed and funded by the Institut Français, under the joint supervision of the French Ministries of Culture and Foreign Affairs. It supports Palestinian and French cultural organizations by organizing around 50 artist residencies (about 20 in Palestine and 30 in France), offering Palestinian artists from Gaza, Jerusalem, and the West Bank the opportunity to continue their creative work during wartime.

Despite the program’s positive intent, two Palestinian artists—a musician and a poet—have been unable to travel to France due to delays in obtaining visas from the French Ministry of the Interior. This has led to canceled concerts, disrupted projects, and negative impacts on French collaborators. Their visa applications were correctly submitted but remain unjustifiably blocked.

This situation highlights growing restrictions on the mobility of artists, especially from regions such as Sub-Saharan Africa, the Maghreb, and the Middle East. The increasing difficulty in obtaining visas is seen as discriminatory and damaging to cultural diversity.

The statement calls for the urgent approval of the pending visas and urges the French government to uphold international agreements and guarantee the free movement of artists, which is essential for cultural dialogue and universal human values.

Then, last Friday the 28th, I saw on Facebook that the concert of Malian musician Afel Bocoum at the Salam Music Festival in Vienna had been canceled. This flyer with the list of cancellations is from Norbert Hausen’s Facebook profile.

A few days before, I had seen this post. And it really caught my attention because I can only imagine the huge amount of work behind organizing a tour of 21 concerts in 7 countries. I can imagine how important it is for the booking agents and the artists, both financially, logistically and emotionally —the number of people involved, the thousands of tickets sold or ready to be sold…

Well, the whole tour had to be canceled (or postponed, I really hope so) because the visas were not issued. It breaks your heart.

The most detailed explanation of the situation I found is in this post from the Salam Music Festival. They explain the steps they made for the visas application and, between other things, that “we were told the French Embassy had stopped issuing visas due to broader political decisions”. I don’t want to place the blame specifically on France. They also didn’t succeed when applying for the visa through the Netherlands and Austria.

It’s just an example that illustrates a situation harming artists from other continents as well as many European companies and organizations, making it even harder to carry out projects that already face a huge number of challenges by default.

However, institutions in Europe insist that diversity must be a core value in cultural projects to receive public funding. Honestly, it all feels like a farce. Diversity… on the surface, sure. We are subject, in our global community, to these forces that I’m not sure we have the power to influence at all.

Well, not everything is negative. Below you’ll find some cool things, including a short interview with Anton Apostol from Antonovka Records — an initiative that really moves me. I find it very comforting that there are people in the world doing this kind of work. It’s obvious that the commercial interest in it is virtually nonexistent, but the legacy that Antonovka Records is leaving in the world is a true treasure.

I took this portrait from Anton’s Facebook profile.

The first time I talked about something related to Antonovka here was in this November 2022 edition. It was about the album by Damir Guagov and Asker Sapiev, artists from Adygea, Circassian culture. I love the album.

The label already has 155 releases, and you can listen to them on Bandcamp. Most of them are very raw recordings of various peoples living in the Russian Federation, some from the Balkans, and a couple of albums from Rwanda.

The label defines itself as: “Agile and low cost record label dedicated to traditional and local music of former USSR and the world”.

I sent a few questions to its founder, Anton Apostol. Here are his answers.

Araceli Tzigane: As I look at your website and your Bandcamp page, I remember when I first listened to one of the albums that has impressed me the most in recent years: Adyge Oredyzhkher: Adyg / Circassian Music by Damir Guagov & Asker Sapiev. It was in November 2022, and I found out about it from the list of albums that Daryana Antipova provided me to vote for in the Russian World Music Chart. It awakened very deep emotions in me. One of them was the surprise of hearing such young guys, barely 20 years old, singing in this way, like seasoned men, performing such a different kind of music with so few elements—just their voices, an accordion (called pshina), a violin (shichepshina), and the percussion of phachichao. Even the instrumental pieces were magical. Thank you for that, Anton.

Later, I started following the releases of Antonovka. Some were from Rwanda, which you released around the same time as Guagov and Sapiev’s album, and many others from the diverse peoples of the republics of the Russian Federation, as well as some from the Balkans. At that time, when we were witnessing the increasing isolation of artists administratively labeled as “Russian” from many institutions and sectors, it completely broke my heart. Seven months had passed since Russia invaded Ukraine, and incredibly, this conflict remains unresolved… until today. What fault did those two young men have in all this horror? And what about the Ukrainian women from Siberia of the Bereginya Ensemble, for instance? What has happened to them? How are they now? Do they hold Russian nationality while having a Ukrainian cultural identity? What should be done with them, then? And yet, everything remains the same.

And despite all this, Anton, you say: “If you perform traditional or similar music, then contact us at aa@antonovka.online. We will do our best to visit you, record your music, and release it online. This is free.” You are Russian and currently live in Belgrade, if I am not mistaken. Since that Circassian music album, you have released around 100 more…

So, I have several questions:

AT: How is all of this financed? You say it’s low-cost, but in the end, you have to travel to these places, some of them very remote, which involves costs for flights and regional/local transportation logistics. I imagine the revenue from having the albums on Bandcamp is quite limited.

Anton Apostol: All is done at my own cost. Recently we (I have a companion, Marina Lobanova) opened a non profit company in Russia so maybe it will help. Some money arrives from the streaming, but very small of course.

AT: In general, are the people you go to record always in agreement and prepared? I imagine you must have had some surprises. I remember that Andrzej Bieńkowski, a Polish professor who has done extensive field recordings, told me that, in his case, he often had to drink high-proof alcohol in large glasses when offered. But in your case, do people usually invite you to record them? Have you ever encountered difficulties?

AA: Of course various stories happen. More often we search musicians ourselves, contact them, and of course not everyone agrees to be recorded. And this may work differently in different countries and cultures. Sometimes yes, I have to drink with them.

AT: What is happening on the ground with the culture of Ukrainians who have settled in Russian Federation republics? 

AA: Fortunately there are no issues for the moment. Because the majority of Russian Ukrainians are the descendants of Ukrainian settlers of the early 20th century, when people were coming to Siberia, Ural and similar areas in search of a better life. They were given free or very cheap land there by the government. So they are very well integrated, and some of them never even visited Ukraine. So yes, they have Russian nationality but still keep Ukrainian cultural identity. Not all of them, but still many.

AT: A few weeks ago, you had to change the cover of an album (Georgian music – click on the picture to listen to the album ) because “some musicians asked to conceal their names and remove their photo from the cover.” Can you explain what happened? By the way, that music is also amazing. 

AA: Technical reason, so to speak. There are two duos on the album, and one of them recently contacted me and said they do not like their own playing on this recording. So they wanted to remove it at all. We finally agreed that we keep the tracks but remove their names and the photo from the cover. Because for me the music is beautiful.

AT: Why do you do all this? What is your personal background? Did music play any role in your childhood? 

AA: I am a telecom engineer by my main profession. In my childhood I used to live with my parents at the university campus in Moscow where there were many students from all over the world. So, other cultures have been kind of natural things for me. Then, when I was a student myself I began to be interested in folk music. And I record it now simply because I love it. Some people like skiing, some like football, and I like field recordings. 

AT: What are your future plans with Antonovka Records?

AA: Not many plans for the moment, because I recently returned from Serbia (where I lived for the last 2 years) to Moscow and started a new job here. And it keeps me very busy. But I have an idea to probably visit WOMEX in Finland this year, just as a visitor. So that I see how it all works and probably next year we can participate.

#1 for Transglobal World Music Chart in March of 2025 is: Samba Touré’s Baarakelaw (Glitterbeat)

The winner of the World Music category for the best recording of 2024 in Slovakia, in the Radio_Head Awards, organiced by the Slovenská televízia a rozhlas has been Ildikó Kali with her album Jore, jore. I was a jury already for the 4th time and I glad to share the news. 

By the way, earlier in the year it was announced the winners of the award Golden Microphone, organiced by the “Association of Latvian Sound Recording Producers, Publishers and Distributors” (LaMPA). I was a jury for the category of folk and world music and the winner has been Etnogrupa OGAS with the album Ok, Laime!