IRDORATH Two years in prison. That was the sentence for Nadia and Vova Kalach, frontwoman and frontman of the fantasy folk band Irdorath. Their crime? They have played music at rallies during the mass protests against the rigged 2020 presidential election in Belarus. Three other musicians associated with Irdorath received a year and six months in prison. In the meantime, all musicians have been released and left Belarus. Nadia and Vova have gathered new musicians for Irdorath from their new home in Germany. We were able to talk to them about the history of Irdorath, but also and especially about the repression against anyone who dares to raise their voice in Belarus, a country that currently has more than 1400 political prisoners. Hello Nadia and Vova. Thank you for this opportunity to have a conversation together. Let’s start where you started with Irdorath. I think Irdorath was founded in 2011 in Minsk… Vova: It was a bit earlier,like 2009.Later,we collected a band and moved to Minsk. Nadia: 2011 was when our fresh band started to play in Minsk. Vova: It was then that we released our first album. So you met in 2009? Were you already a couple at that moment? Nadia: Yes. We met and immediately started to make music together. But it only got serious in 2011. Before that,we just learned how to play our instruments. We played in the streets.We were students and we had fun. 2011 is perhaps the moment when Anton Schnip joined the band, with whom you recorded your first CD‘Ad Astra’. Nadia: Yes, we finished studying at the university in Grodno in 2011, and we moved to Minsk. Me, Vova and Anton were living together, and we started to record our first album.We had no connections in Minsk, no experience, no money, but we were very motivated, and together we did it. Vova:We started to work on‘AdAstra’it in 2011,and released it in 2012. The second CD‘Dreamcatcher’followed in 2016. So it took four years to work on a follow-up.Why did it take so long? Nadia: We were young, and we needed time to learn how to do this. It never was our aim to release as much as possible, or to make a very simple product according to a strict timing. Vova: I don’t remember why it lasted four years, but there were a lot of festivals, a lot of concerts, a lot of changes in www.peek-a-boo-magazine.be - 12 - the band. You can hear the difference between the first album that we recorded with three persons, and the later albums, which are much more musical. They’re not so medieval. Nadia: We wanted to make something profound, something very beautiful. We used a lot of strings on that album. The music was noble and complicated. Since it was our first global work,we wanted tomake something really good.That took some time. I hope we succeeded. Yes, I like the album very much. You released your third album ‘Wild’ a year later. At that time, Irdorath incorporated more musicians. I think you were five or six musicians. Vova: Yes, we were six. We had two drummers, a guitar, a violin and the both of us. Nadia: When we had opportunities, according to the possibilities in Minsk or our hometown, we always invited friends and musicians to play with us, in order to make it bigger. But this is costly, and now we need to survive on a much more limited budget. You had some international success. You toured in Europe. You played a lot in Germany, but also in Belgium, at the Na Fir Bolg festival, where you also played again this year. Nadia: Yes.That was the only time we played in Belgium.But we played in Germany several times, including at Wacken and at the Wave-Gotik-Treffen, and also in Poland, the Czech Republic, Italy, Slovenia, the Netherlands and the Baltic states. Let’s move to the more tragic story. In August 2020, there were presidential elections in Belarus. I’m absolutely convinced, like many people, that the elections were rigged. I don’t think the dictator Lukashenko,who has been in power since 1994, really won the election. There was a broad protest movement against the election fraud. Many people took to the streets, and you also decided to go to the protests and the play music at the gatherings. What was your motivation? Vova: I think the most powerful trigger for all of the people was the violence. The police reacted very violently to the peaceful protests. Nadia: It’s kind of a tradition. After the elections, people go out and wait for the results of the elections. It was the same here. But what they saw was cruel. They were attacked, beaten, arrested, even killed. Vova: They were shot at. They even threw grenades in the crowd,right in the center of the crowd.It was incredible.A lot
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