Officially it’s about protecting the country’s cultural traditions, unofficially it’s about making life difficult for the LGBT community.
It’s a question of tempo, at least officially. Culture Minister Musa Dadayev announced the decision to limit all musical, vocal and choreographic compositions to a tempo ranging from 80 to 116 beats per minute (BPM) at a meeting on Friday, the new state agency reported Russian TASS, according to CNN.
A decision certainly not trivial for President Ramzam Kadyrov, close ally of Vladimir Putin, who officially wants to preserve “Chechen mentality and musical rhythm”with the aim of bringing “to the people and to the future of our children the cultural heritage of the Chechen people”, declared his minister of culture. Chechen artists will therefore have to comply with these new tempo criteria to be able to perform in public, specifies Telerama. They even have until June 1st to rewrite their scores!
This decision will effectively exclude a large part of the repertoire of current Western music from pop to techno. It also primarily targets the LGBT community which has made house music one of its strong points, music known to exceed 120 BPM. The homosexual community faces a campaign of persecution in Chechnya.
Ramzan Kadyrov, at the head of this territory located between Russia and Georgia since 2007, uses his mandate to stifle all forms of dissent and pursues an extremely violent policy towards LGBTQIA + people. UN human rights experts have also urged authorities to investigate allegations that gay men were illegally detained.