'I was born to do this': Ukraine's 2016 Eurovision winner Jamala on why Putin fears her people, the

[cbabe]

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/may/13/ukrain-eurovision-winner-jamala-crimean-tatars-putin

‘I was born to do this’: Ukraine’s 2016 Eurovision winner Jamala on why Putin fears her people, the Tatars

Jamala tells how her 2016 song shone a light on Stalin’s deportations and helped to dispel the myths that Crimea is historically Russian

Emma Graham-Harrison
Emma Graham-Harrison in Kyiv
Sat 13 May 2023 11.29 EDT

A ballad about ethnic cleansing was an unusual choice for Eurovision, a competition best known for glam, kitschy pop. But seven years ago Crimean Tatar singer Jamala swept Ukraine to their second victory in the song contest with 1944.

It told the story of the deportation of her entire people – hundreds of thousands of women, children and men – from their ancestral home to central Asia on Stalin’s orders. The Tatars’ exile lasted decades, and when they were finally allowed to return, their centuries-long history had been all but erased. Russians had moved into their homes, and the peninsula’s geography had been rewritten, with towns and villages all given new Russian names.

Music is particularly important to Crimean Tatars because the brutality of the deportations mean an entire people have been left with very few physical heirlooms. Families were given just 15 minutes to pack for their long journey crammed into cattle wagons, could take only what they could carry and ended up selling almost everything of value to survive in exile. Their culture survived mostly in intangible heritage that could not be taken away – music, language, stories, food.

t is why a musician like Jamala, and her project collecting folk songs, is so threatening to Vladimir Putin. The musicians performing the songs came to Ukraine to record them in 2021, before the full-scale Russian invasion. The project was so important to her that her producer returned to a besieged Kyiv early last year to rescue the tapes. Now she worries constantly about the performers’ safety. “Musicians who played for these songs are in Crimea and [some have been] taken away by the Russian authorities for interrogation,” she said. “I am scared to call them. This project should be pure joy, and I can’t even call because I fear that because of my call they may be arrested and go to jail. That’s my reality.”

…more…

(The power of a song.)

[Tetrachloride]

1. ty for this post