International Music Festival

We did some rocking this weekend. On the Kremlin grounds of Kazan' was a pretty large music festival featuring bands from Western Europe, Spain and Russia. It was pretty awesome. The music was great. There was a guitarist from spain that was unbelievable. I was pretty much in awe. The final show was a group called DDT. Internationally, they're pretty famous. Led by Uri Shevchuk, I’d say they’re blend of folk, rock and metal. It was cool. There were thousands of people there and everyone knew all of the words by heart. I remember listening to DDT in highschool, when Robbie Chura would pull out old cassette tapes and play them in Lingaphony Kabinet. I figured it was probably one of the only times I'd get to see them live and I was glad I did. There's actually a pretty cool story behind them. They first appeared toward the end of the Soviet Union and were warned by the state to change their name, which the state deemed problematic because it was unusual for groups to give themselves "rebellious" titles like DDT (the dangerous poison used to kill off insects (if I'm not mistaken)). Well at the time, they were competing against another very famous, new rock band whose name change was also requested by the state. Shevchuk decided against the change, stuck to his guns and went completely underground. It seems DDT didn't play any shows for a number of years and a sort of mythology was created around their absence. Meanwhile, the other group decided it would be best to change their name, and, as the story goes, had lost all its momentum after only a couple years, fading away as quickly as they rose. The professor telling me about this couldn't even remember their name. DDT came back after the fall of the wall and lives on as one of the most well known rock bands in Eastern Europe, if not the world. They were great on Saturday. After the show was a great fireworks display which lit up the Kremlin walls and dazzled the crowd. A great night.

Class is still going very well for me. We're learning alot and yes, we're still only speaking Russian. It's become so comfortable, I can hardly believe it. I hear English here and there on the streets, and it's striking to my ears. I'm so used to hearing only Russian on TV, at breakfast, at school, at lunch, at the gym, at the park, in films, well pretty much everywhere. Personally, I'm beginning to notice tremendous changes in my ability to speak and understand Russian. I'm at the point where I can watch the news, go to class, etc. and not miss anything. I converse nightly with my house mom about everything from money, power and drugs to jazz, art, education and foreign policy. While I do make mistakes, she does a good job of correcting the glaring ones and we are never at a complete misunderstanding. It's good. I feel totally different about the language now than I did having studied it in the classroom. It's weird to say, but it's actually starting to feel like a language and not like a struggle. I know that I still have a lot of work to do, but I'm getting more and more comfortable. It reminds me of when I first started playing guitar. At first, every fret, chord and scale seemed like a separate entity. I could play chords, scales and even other people's songs, but never felt like I understood how it all worked. It was always a series of replications and imitations, each of which in my mind were disconnected. However, with time, I began to see and feel that very important, invisible layer on the fret board. It was the layer that one day lit up and smacked me in the head. I finally saw how it was all connected. Each chord is connected to each scale and each scale is connected to each note and when these are played in various patterns, music happens. It's a pretty extraordinary feeling to finally be able to wrap your mind around it. Although not nearly as bright as the invisible patterns on my guitar's fret board, Russian is lighting up for me. It's quickly coming together and turning into a useful tool that I can navigate through without fear.