Tears of the Sun/ Uzbekistan Rock Band

1. Could you introduce yourself? Who is in the band and what are you doing in your normal lives? What kind of people are you?

“Tears of the Sun” are a group of people trying to make positive music and unite all optimistic people, also people with fresh brains, who support experiments, eclectics, ethnic music, and old school traditions of rock’n’roll.
Our main weapon is eclectics, and our fundament is funk.
Tashkent is a modern Babylon, mix party of many cultures and nationalities.
BTW our band is the most multinational music group in the city. We have Armenian singer – her name is Zlata Lepeshkina, two Russians: bass-guitarist Evgeniy Bodyan, keyboard player Anton Kudryavtsev, and a half German / half Korean drummer Edgard Pak. The trumpet player Sergey Ryabchenkov has Jewish roots, sax player Sukhrob Nazimov is an ethnic Tajik, and me, the guitar player Nikita Makarenko, my family is old Cossack family from northern Caucasus.
What do you mean when you say “normal life”? Music is the most important thing in our life. But it is very difficult to keep rocking in Uzbekistan without another financial income. Everybody in “Tears of the Sun” have another job. I’m working as guitar player in modern avant-garde theater “Ilkhom” and also I’m professional RJ and journalist. Zlata is a student of National High School of music arts. Edgard plays drums in night clubs, and works as sales manager. Anton is a programmer. Sukhrob is producer of an ensemble called “Omnibus”, it’s modern-avant-garde music ensemble. Evgeniy is a student, and Sergey is a specialist of repair of flats. Some of us participate to side projects related to music.
We are between 20 and 30. Everybody except Evgeniy has a music education.

2. What forces you to make music? Why did you become musicians?

I don’t know how to describe it. I think music chose us one time, and will keep till the end. I don’t know what I will do if I have to stop playing music one day. I cannot imagine that. Music lives inside me, and forces me to play it. Maybe everybody has different reasons to be musician. But one thing that we can say exactly – musician is the best profession in the world!

3. Can you describe us, how you create songs?

Oh, if I knew the exact recipe of how we do songs, everything would be much easier.
The most often, some ideas come to me. I write the music and text, and then show this material to our band. Everybody listens and gives ideas what they want to hear from this song. Mostly, the end result doesn’t resemble at all to the initial version. Sometimes I have a detailed plan of song and we just put all my ideas into reality in music. Many good melodies come from our jams and improvisations.

4. Why have you changed your style so much, from a more alternative to a more Pop band? Your sound now remembers me on 60ies/ 70ies Russian Rock/ Pop/ Big Beat. Is this how you want to sound?

It is an excellent question, to define what pop sound is. In our city, 70% of rock fans are metal-heads or hard sound fans. And 80% of rock-groups are metal groups. This means that hard sound is the real “pop” sound. One day we had enough to play the same style of music that everyone else around us. We sort of grew up and looked at music in a different way, wider and deeper than before. I can’t say that we became a pop group. Contrariwise, we are an « alternative » compared to what is happening around on Tashkent rock scene.
Wow, what’s the link with Russian pop of the years 60-70 and Russian rock? What groups do you have in mind? Russian rock, or at least what we mean by this expression, started to take shape in the 80-ies, with groups such as «Akvarium», «Mashina Vremeni», etc. I don’t quite understand what you mean. Our sound is quite far even from regular Russian rock. You are probably the first to compare us to that.
We want to sound like “Tears of the Sun”. We don’t have a plan for the sound of group as a whole. We make sound for each song separately – one song we want to make like black funk, one like reggae, one like old blues. And have a good mix after this.

5. Many bands from other 3rd world countries sing in English. Why are you singing in Russian? What are your lyrics about?

There are some reasons to make Russian lyrics. Russian poetry has great traditions. I would say that poetry and literature are very important for Russians. In USSR, poets could make big performances on stadiums like rock-stars. Also we have a saying «Poet v Rossii bolwe chem Poet» which means «Poet in Russia is more than simple poet». And I like Russian poetry more than any other. My favorite poets are Esenin, Mayakovski, Grebenshikov, Vasil’ev. Only in Russian language I can explain my feelings in the fairest way.
And we want that people think about our lyrics, understand our messages. Everyone around us knows Russian, but not all know English, it’s the second reason. BTW we have some new songs on English, but it’s just an experiment.

Our lyrics are about very different problems or issues. It’s hard to find line or impression that unites all our songs. What I can only say is that my entire lyrics are ironic and post-modernist, maybe sarcastic. As an example, let’s take our last disc «Central-Asian sufferings». The first song «Mandela Boy» is about impressions of young Nelson Mandela, second «Childhood» – about childhood memories that permanently come back in our grown-un life, «Soundtrack for a Dream» - is an ironical Buddhist lullaby, «Almost Motherland» - about us, which have two Motherlands – historical and actual. The main track, «Central Asian sufferings», is about drug trafficking, and the lyrics are stylized as Russian popular song.

6. Uzbekistan is far away from Western Europe and I can‘t remember just a few Rock/ Underground bands from there. What can you tell us about this kind of music in Uzbekistan? Is there a bigger scene, also in other cities than Tashkent? Where can you play? What are your worst problems, what is good?

Rock-music in Uzbekistan has tendency to develope quite fast right now. But we have to remember that this development has a certain limit. I’ll try to explain. For example, in Germany you can play rock with English or German lyrics, and your potential audience is the whole country. But in Uzbekistan people of Uzbek ethnic origin have no interest in rock-music. At all. In no way. None plays rock or listens to it. And all rock-music is roughly a music made by representatives of other ethnic groups for their own audience. As if we existed inside the country in some independent way, without crossing the ways of the main ethnic group which is the Uzbeks. This explains our problems. And the worst thing is that this Diaspora is getting smaller. Everybody wants to go to other countries, mainly to Russia. All good musicians want to make a carrier and they have to leave. There are no perspectives for us, and only thing that we can do – make music and dream about the day when we can go to live in another country.

But now we have a good rock scene. The level of our bands is not worse than in Russia. Many styles are represented in Tashkent: alternative, rock’n’roll, punk, lounge, brit-pop and others. But the majority of groups are playing different styles of metal: modern metal, trash, death and another.
All rock life is concentrated in Tashkent. There are some local bands in other cities, but they can play only in Tashkent, where the most rock fans are.
We can play in night-clubs, special rock-clubs, we have four(!) rock-festivals – big open air “Iosis Fest”, small “Uz-Fest”, more academic «Ilkhom RockFest» and “Maximum RockFest” especially for young groups.
The worst problem is the permanent feeling that the things you are doing are not needed to anyone in the country, and that you have to choose another place to live. It is not easy for one person, and incredibly difficult for seven people. We have problems with instruments, almost all the equipment we have to bring from abroad.
What’s good in this situation? Really, I can’t say… Probably only the fact that we are doing rock-n-roll in the conditions it shouldn’t exist, so we feel like heroes. In any other country it couldn’t go that way. That’s a joke.

7. When I looked at the photos on your side your audience seems to be very young. Am I right and is this typical for your band or for Uzbekistan Music in general? What connects the audience with your music?

It’s not typical for us at all. Most of our fans are from 20 to 30, around same age than us, which think beyond clichés. We don’t do entertainment, and very young people don’t always understand us, ‘cause you have to grow to get some of our ideas. We are very happy when everybody says that like our music and come to our concert. But I think in general they are not teenagers who like emo-music and metal more than funk and rock’n’roll.

8. How strong are you connected to Russian music? What else influences your music?

I think, we don’t have a strong connection to Russian music. We have more influences from black music – funk, jazz and blues, especially in new songs, after «Central Asian Sufferings», our last album. There’s also some ska and reggae rhythms. Only the tradition of good poetry we took from Russian music. We like to experiment with ethnic music. Each person in our band has favorite groups. And each member tries to influence the general sound and bring in the music each of us likes the most.

9. What future do you dream of?

We have only one dream. If this dream is become real, we can say that we become a real happy people. We just want to go all of us together to other country, and play, play, play music.
That’s we want - make music and nothing more than that.


interview done by Gunter

Slezy Solnca “Sredneaziatskie stradaniya” CD:
http://sunband.uz/wp-content/music/cas2008.rar