New kid on bloc shakes up Russia’s Eurovision
RUSSIA has backed an unlikely candidate in the Eurovision song contest: a Tajik refugee on a mission to smash female stereotypes.
Manizha, a domestic abuse activist born in a peasant hut, has delighted the country’s progressive youth as she rapped to victory with a song that lampooned traditional attitudes to women.
The kitschy song competition enjoys a cult status in Russia where getting the right artist and song is a matter of national pride as important as its football team. In recent years, Russia has chosen the safe option of vacuous “bubblegum pop” boy bands carrying love ballads without a social message.
But Manizha, a sassy and candid 29-year-old, who grew up in Moscow after fleeing a civil war in her native Tajikistan in the early 1990s, says that her mission is to present Russia as a “big, multicultural and strong country that gave me shelter”.
In Russian Woman Manizha wears a traditional sheepskin coat and headscarf, singing wistfully about waiting for a distant male figure only to kick off the coat to reveal scarlet overalls, rapping in English: “Every Russian woman needs to know: You’re strong enough to bounce against the wall.”
She says the idea is to show “what a stunning journey the Russian woman has made from a peasant’s hut to having the right to vote and run for office, from the factory floor to space travel”.
In a country where discrimination against Central Asian migrant workers is common, Manizha has been open about grappling with her dual identity, singing in one of her songs about being “not quite a Slav, not quite a Tajik” and making fun of both the stereotypical Tajik and Russian woman.
She has also lent her voice to fighting domestic violence and has been involved in charities, helping refugees and migrants in the Russian capital where Tajiks are one of the biggest but most marginalised minorities.
The daughter of secular parents from predominantly Muslim Tajikistan, Man
‘For the first time in a very long time millions of people in Russia will consciously wish for Russia to lose’
izha supports LGBT rights, a taboo subject on state-owned television.
Her win has delighted music critics and liberal intelligentsia but it also shed light on xenophobia and racism in conservative Russia. “The song’s lyrics is
classic Russophobic abomination which is insulting for Russian women,” Yegor Kholmogorov, a well-known Right-wing publicist, wrote. “For the first time in a very long time millions of people in Russia will consciously wish
for Russia to lose.” Best-selling tabloid Komsomolskaya Pravda suggested that Manizha has no right to represent Russia because she was born in Tajikistan.
But in Russia’s parliament, Oksana Pushkina this week supported Manizha
saying: “The law on preventing domestic violence still hasn’t been adopted, shelters for victims are few and the NGOs that are working on this problem are blacklisted as foreign agents.” Eurovision starts on May 18 in Rotterdam.