Throughout human history, even the most despotic governments have failed when they tried to ban fun. That failure may take some time, but it always happens. People are wired to seek out things that make them feel good and that won’t be denied.
Chechnya is the latest place to try this, by banning music that is “too fast” or “too slow,” and yes, they give numbers.
The Russian republic is said to have ruled that all music should “correspond to a tempo of 80 to 116 beats per minute (BPM)”.
Its culture ministry made the announcement in a statement earlier this week, according to the Moscow Times.
The new standard of music is relatively slow compared to a lot of modern day pop music and would rule out a number of western genres from being played publicly in the conservative Islamic society.
Chechnya’s top Chechnyan, Ramzan Kadyrov, would make American leftists’ hearts glow warmly, as he stated that part of the purpose of this ban was to eliminate cultural appropriation on the part of Chechnyans.
The republic’s leader Ramzan Kadyrov instructed culture minister Musa Dadayev to make Chechen music “conform to the Chechen mentality,” the Moscow Times said.
“Borrowing musical culture from other peoples is inadmissible,” Mr Dadayev reportedly said.
Kevin Bacon has not returned a request for comment.
This is, candidly, a portrait of an overbearing government gone insane. We’re accustomed, in the Western world, to there being some limits to government, even if a lot of the people in government might wish there weren’t. It is the nature of government to grow ever bigger and more intrusive, but at least we have not yet gotten to the point of regulating music, and considering the esteem with which our culture holds entertainers, it’s hard to imagine this kind of overstepping here.
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Chechnya isn’t exactly the most tolerant nation in other areas besides music.
All western rave and techno music, which tends to be of a higher BPM, would be banned under the new rule.
Chechnya has been a vocal supporter of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
It has also seen a wave of anti-LGBTQ+ violence in recent years, including reports of anti-gay purges, that the UN described as “acts of persecution and violence on an unprecedented scale”.
No matter how much a government tries to clamp down on fun, people will find a way to enjoy themselves. There will likely be a robust black market for non-Chechnyan music in Chechnya soon.
This kind of thing, with luck, won’t last. There is historical precedent; the downfall of the Soviet Union was due not only to geopolitics and the machinations of Ronald Reagan and Maggie Thatcher but also to blue jeans and rock and roll. A lot of young people in the Soviet Union, with the rise of Glasnost, saw that there was a lot of fun being had out there and that they weren’t having much of it – and they demanded more.
We can hope that young people in Chechnya today will arrive at a similar conclusion and maybe find a heroic figure to lead them to freedom and fun.
Kevin Bacon! Chechnya needs you!
