REVIEW OF UNDERGROIND MUSIC SCENE OF BELARUS

...Standing somewhat to one side are the instrumental trio Port Mone (i.e., “Purse/Wallet”), made also of three core elements: an accordion, bass guitar, and percussion. Immediately, however, complications emerge in this deceptively simple lineup as the musicians ask us to reconsider the meaning of their name.”There are two words here. A ‘Port’ is always a place that’s beautiful, and perhaps even tragic. It’s a place where people meet, say farewell, and never remain for long. ‘Mone‘ [i.e., Monet in Russian] – is the founding father of impressionism. Our artistic goals are somewhat similar to the programmatic statements made by those painters.”

Just as the impressionists were concerned with the relationship between static depiction and transient actuality, so the members of Port Mone often speak of turning reality’s constant flux into fixed notes: “Any event [in our music] can become the starting point for a new theme, or the origin of a song. It’s always possible to hear or to feel the sonic chaos that surrounds you and then to [re]organize it in a musical context.”

This notion stands instructively side-by-side with the work of Cassiopeja, and all its offshoots. There is much in that latter group that comes from a Soviet “underground” view of originality: the use of performance in a carnivalesque way; the “reclaiming” of intellectual reference-points from the canon (such as “ground-breaking,” revolutionary scientists); the related battles over children’s animation as an “adult” genre; the role of saxophones as subversively “alien”; and so on. At a time when commerce has erased much local specificity from national art(s), it’s interesting to see several performers, especially under a “retro-regime” like that of Lukashenko, go back to the performative modus operandi of a few decades prior. The late Soviet intelligentsia is back on guard.

What might have looked as if it were slipping woefully out of fashion ten to fifteen years ago now looks vital. This is the kind of social ebb and flow that leads Port Mone to foreground metaphors of flux. Rather than battling over ownership of the canon and its venerated representatives, it seems better to grab an accordion, head off to the port and write music to accompany the ships.

That seems enough celebration of constant change to worry any politician. Especially the ones that won’t leave office....