Pussy Riot: "Terrible music - but let's applaud them"

 
As the three members of Russian punk band Pussy Riot are sentenced to two years in prison after being found guilty of hooliganism motivated by religious hatred, author Dylan Jones has said their case shows that the world needs revolutionary rock bands now more than ever.

Writing in this week’s Big Issue, on sale from August 20-26, Jones acknowledges that it is “ludicrous that these girls should be facing prison following a Salem-style witch trial,” but says there is a wider issue at stake.

“Because they’re not very good. In fact, they’re pretty terrible, sounding not unlike a particularly poor agit-prop Sigue Sigue Sputnik. This begs the question, does this matter at all, and is the political message and gesture enough? And have we lost the ability to have good music drive social and revolutionary change and thought?

“The history of contemporary music is littered with revolutionary statements fused with great music, and whether it’s the blues of Leadbelly, the punk snap judgements of The Clash, Billie Holiday singing Strange Fruit, or Jerry Dammers’ Specials releasing Ghost Town at the height of the 1981 riots, great music has always had the ability to stop us in our tracks, and make the political topical, and – saliently – hummable.

“So while the thrash-pop feminist ramblings of Pussy Riot might not to be everyone’s taste – OK, they aren’t to most people’s taste – their political and cultural activism should be applauded in the same way that Public Enemy’s Fear Of A Black Planet should be applauded, and celebrated.”

The trial has sparked protests around the world, as Maria Alyokhina, 24, Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, 22, and Yekaterina Samutsevich, 29, were found guilty this morning at a court in Moscow, and then sentenced by Judge Marina Syrova. The three women have already spent five months in prison, and throughout the trial have been caged in a small glass box.

They were refused permission to call defence witnesses, and the trial has been dismissed as an old Soviet-era show trial. Stars who have spoken out against it include Madonna, Paul McCartney and Peter Gabriel, while Russian chess champion Gary Kasparov was arrested this morning for protesting outside the courtroom.

Pussy Riot, whose first single Putin Wet His Pants was released in January, were arrested in February after stripping off and singing an ‘Anti-Putin Prayer’ in Christ the Saviour Cathedral, Moscow.

The band were protesting at the Orthodox church’s links with the Russian hierarchy, in particular President Vladimir Putin, who they have targeted since he changed electoral rules so that he could attain a third term as president, switching roles with Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev.