Their gathering still had to be dispersed, but the enthusiasm that Ored Recordings inspires even among enforcers of the law speaks volumes about the power of what Khalilov and his friend and label co-founder Timur Kodzoko call punk ethnography: the recording of religious chants, laments and displacement songs at family gatherings, local festivals, in people's kitchens, to fight against the erasure of Circassian culture.
The narratives they offer through culture are therefore some of the clearest expressions of how they see their role in a wartime country. This year, Moscow has hosted two major government-backed awards ceremonies one for books, one for films. In both cases, the organisers played it safe, repeating familiar themes, many of them rooted in Soviet-era cultural and wartime mythology. Prizes went largely to people within the same orbit in most cases, the families of well-known Soviet-era cultural icons.
The reality TV show, which sees 22 people from across the UK participate in a weeks-long social deduction game to work out who amongst them is secretly a " Traitor ", aired the acclaimed finale to its tense fourth season on Friday (23 January). Contestants and this season's surviving Traitors, Stephen Libby and Rachel Duffy, bagged £95,750 during Friday night's conclusion, which was watched by over 9.6 million people according to the BBC.