"The geography of our listeners is very wide"

The Ay Yola trio will compete for the Grammy. Their longplay Ural Batyr may be included in the nomination "Best album of Global Music", and the single Aihylyu claims to be "The Best arrangement for instruments and vocals". The team got into the first round of voting, having passed the preliminary selection: This does not mean that the musicians will receive nominations — this will be announced on November 16. Ruslan Shaikhitdinov, one of the founders of Ay Yola, told Izvestia what helped the band decide on this adventure, why the foreign public loves Bashkir music and what unites the main epics of the peoples of the world.

— How did you get into the first round of voting at the Grammys?

— By chance. As always in all endeavors, Ural-Batyr, the literary pearl of Bashkortostan, helped us.

— This year, musicians from Nigeria, Brazil, Iran, Mali and other countries applied for the nomination "Best Album of Global Music". Due to the huge competition, experts often suggest separating niche subgenres into separate categories. How relevant would such a solution be for Ay Yola?

— That's a very good question, right in the eye. We always face this problem when we publish our tracks on online platforms, because we have to choose a certain direction. We're getting into folk, electronic, and pop music at the same time. So this is a difficult question for us. With the Grammys, everything is much more interesting, but there are Academy members for such a distribution. Let's see what happens next.

— How does Ay Yola attract the foreign audience?

— In a sense. It's enough to read the comments under our videos to understand how we attract people from all over the world. That's what it's all about: our images, contrasting ourselves to the trends of modern popular music. Let's say the song Amanat is very complex musically and deep lyrically. We list eight ancient epics that are similar in meaning. These are the Indian "Mahabharata", the Iranian "Gilgamesh", the Kyrgyz "Manas", "Ural-Batyr" and many others. They give people the opportunity to gain a certain strength, to look into ancient history, to turn to their roots, their family and their land. I think it's this connection with the past that attracts more and more fans to us.

The geography of our listeners is very wide. Unfortunately, the concerts in Europe have been canceled. But in Berlin, all the tickets were sold out, and in Sofia, the organizers asked us to perform again. This was not possible due to visa issues. However, we sang in one of the largest concert halls in Belgrade with 4.5 thousand seats. We often tour in Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Turkey. There are a lot of offers, but sometimes certain factors interfere. Let's say we were supposed to perform in Jordan at a big festival and in Qatar, but for obvious reasons these events were postponed.

— Why did you decide to pay attention to the epics of other nations at all, expanding the geography of creativity?

— All these stories are very close to each other. If we take Manas, the greatest epic of mankind, which is listed in the Guinness Book of Records, then we will see there a Bashkir woman, the mother of the main character. Ural Batyr was looking for a source of living water, Gilgamesh is a flower that gives eternal life. These epics describe everything that resonates in the hearts of people, regardless of their social class, religion, and so on. These are our common origins, which preserve the world and allow it to live to this day.

There is a perfect example. <url> TV channel.TV has established the Voices of Russia Award since this year. We became its pioneers by receiving an award for the song Ay, bylbylym ("Ay, nightingale") together with Alsou. Now Russian performers have the opportunity to join the rotation in their native language.

— You recently released the song Adel based on Pushkin's poems, which became a creative experiment for you. How did you decide to do this?

— I would argue that for us this is a bit of a departure from the usual form. The song features all the traditional Bashkir instruments — kubyz, dumbra, kurai, and throat singing. It's still an electronic sound with the same analog synthesizers. Stylistically, the track is closer to the downtempo that we used to do, yes. But otherwise we don't cheat on ourselves.

— Do you plan to continue working with Russian classics?

— Very soon, another of our songs in Russian will be released on the On Label. This is a reinterpretation of a diamond that everyone knows about, but which I can't name yet. Wait until the beginning of November and you'll find out everything.