“Vladimir Putin has a very poor sense of humor,” said Mark Yoffe, the founder and a curator of International Counterculture Archive at George Washington University’s Gelman Library and scholar of Russian youth culture. “He doesn’t like a joke, and he specifically doesn’t like a joke that comes from young people.”
Yoffe was one of several speakers and performers at Friday’s Pussy Riot Solidarity Concert. Put on by Amnesty International, the second annual concert—held directly across the street from the Russian Embassy in Glover Park—harkened back to the golden days of D.C.’s protesting past. Days when Fugazi would stage shows on the National Mall and days when the bustling punk community would rally in front of the South African embassy to protest apartheid.
It’s been a year since Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, Maria Alekhina and Yekaterina Samutsevich—members of the Russian feminist punk collective Pussy Riot—were arrested and sentenced to two years in prison on “hooliganism” charges after performing an impromptu concert in Moscow’s famed Christ the Savior Cathedral. In the time since, Samutsevich has been freed on a legal technicality. While Tolokonnikova and Alekhina stay locked up, the world continues to voice their disapproval—and voice it loudly.
Kicking off the concert last night was Soft Punch—the solo project of Tereu Tereu frontman Ryan Little. Dreamy, atmospheric, but nonetheless loud, Soft Punch was appropriate enough of an opener—especially when he sprinkled in a cover of Bikini Kill’s feminist anthem “Rebel Girl” into his set.
Following Soft Punch, the hardcore trio Jail Solidarity—whose sludgy riffs and ear-splitting howling are reminiscent of harDCore’s golden years—ripped through a deafening set that, if not heard, was surely felt in the walls of the Embassy across the street. After Jail Solidarity was G.U.T.S., a female-fronted power-punk trio that plays the kind of blistering anthems one would expect to find in seedy L.A. basements and punk houses circa 1985.
But when the music ended, the message did not. Bullhorn in hand, organizers led the nearly 50 attendees on a short march across the street to the gates of the Russian Embassy to ensure that if their message wasn’t heard through the two-and-half-hours of screeching guitars and thundering drums, their voices would surely would be.
“Don’t joke with Putin, that’s the message,” Yoffe also said during his five-minute speech after Jail Solidarity’s set. That may be the case in Russia, but in D.C. a basic human rights violation is no laughing matter.
