Rock and Roll, Almaty style

Last Tuesday, I turned off my lights at about ten to go to sleep—I teach early on Wednesday mornings, so usually don’t stay up too late the night before. I had just started to drift off to sleep, when I suddenly began dreaming that my bed was vibrating. But it wasn’t a dream. It was one of Almaty’s many earthquakes. The walls of the building were all shaking, and I began having flashbacks to the earthquake drills we had in second grade in Monterey, CA. The quake went on for several minutes, but it was about two hours before I could fall back asleep. My friends on the other side of the city had no idea that there was an earthquake—it mainly seemed to affect the city center. Definitely not an experience I’d want to repeat anytime soon, though!

As a result of conversations about the quake, though, I learned that my apartment building is one “Stalin-style”. I’m not quite sure about how I feel about that, but I’m told that these buildings are MUCH more desirable than the Khrushchev-era buildings. It’s easy to see why—the Stalin-era buildings are smaller, only 4-5 floors, as opposed to 15-20 floors. The construction is also supposed to be somewhat better, and they are definitely much more attractive.

Other than the earthquake, life has been fairly calm here in Almaty. As I noted before, the university faculty took me to see a ballet about a week and a half ago. It was “Legends of Lovers”, and was a Turkish ballet. Very different than what I’m accustomed to seeing—although beautiful. The symbolism was difficult to interpret without a program (which I only had after the ballet ended, but at least I could read what the different scenes were supposed to represent). The day we went to the ballet was also the day that the city’s birthday is celebrated. There were gatherings at many different sites throughout the city, but the largest was at the Old Square. It is located in the shadow of what had been the government center of the Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic. Normally, the major celebrations would have been at New Square, but there is quite a bit of construction. New Square is on the other side of the city, and the location of the 1986 Alma-Ala riots that occurred at the beginning of the protests that helped to end the Soviet Union—more on these at a later time, though. They deserve their own description.

Arriving at Old Square, one of the faculty members was able to convince the police to allow me and another visiting American to take pictures from the official stands. It was quite a show! The band was “Dveri”, or “Doors”. But they didn’t resemble “The Doors” in any way other than the name. Cheesy pop music, complete with lip synching and choreographed dance moves. Not a single brooding, disgruntled teenager in sight. Instead, it was a sea of people dancing, singing, and celebrating. It was a fantastic experience to be able to take part in the event.

Music over here is very much in the Euro-pop vein, but raised to the nth degree. Even with my love of 80s music (how many people do you know who can sing along to almost anything by the Pet Shop Boys, Falco, and Erasure?), the music here is quite cheesy. It’s not unusual to hear that great mid-80s anthem by the well-known (??) band Opus—“Live is Life" (If you want to know the words, they are something along the lines of “We all need the music, we all need the power, every minute, every hour. Live! Live is Life! Na na na na na”. Repeat as needed.) The song was drilled into my head in 1985-86, in Germany. Imagine being at a beerfest and hearing everyone in the beer tent sing along. Every half-hour. Over and over again.

Most days here, I leave the radio off as much as possible and instead listen to music on my computer. On the days that I do listen to the radio for any length of time, I find that I need to play Guns-n-Roses as loudly as possible (which is actually not loud at all). There’s just something about hearing the guitar at the beginning of “Welcome to the Jungle”. Or any guitar, for that matter. Strange the things you miss--I never would have thought that I'd wish my collection of guitar music was larger.