The Messages Is in The Music
Index on Censorship
London, UK
Jemimah Steinfeld
Can music be a form of resistance? For this issue, we spoke to two artists who are challenging the limits of musical free expression… Conductor and music director Lidiya Yankovskaya, who originally comes from Russia, has not been affected by censorship in the country in the same way as musicians such as Pussy Riot, but her experience as a refugee led to her founding the Refugee Orchestra Project. Through this, she works with people who lived in countries, such as Afghanistan, at a time when playing music could result in instruments being smashed, beatings or imprisonment. Both musicians are working in the USA, where their messages aren't always well received. But they're unwilling to be silenced and instead are amplifying their own voices and the voices of the marginalised.
Read the whole feature in the Winter 2019 issue of Index on Censorship!