report from Yuri Shevchuk’s concert in Belgrade

The DDT group began a European tour, and one of the first concerts of the new tour took place in the capital of Serbia, Belgrade. DDT leader Yuri Shevchuk appeared in excellent physical shape and, among other things, wished the audience to “return home” as soon as possible. Attended the concert Igor Gavrilov.

Belgrade has become a meeting point of several cultural worlds in recent years. On the one hand, there are concerts by DDT, Morgenstern (recognized as a foreign agent in the Russian Federation) and other Russian-speaking artists who are now unable to perform in their homeland, on the other hand, Quartet I, Night Snipers, and Didyulya, who continue to work in Russia. In the MTS Dvorana multiplex, the largest hall of which was given over to DDT, next to the Hollywood blockbusters on the posters “Kholop-2” and “Masha and the Bear”. Deep Purple, The Smile and Ed Sheeran are coming to the city to tour. At the same time, Belgrade has become a kind of capital of post-Soviet independent music, Sasha Gagarin and “Sansara”, Mitya, Ploho, Monty Mechanic, Lisa Gromova, Lucidvox, “Spasibo” live and work here.

DDT arrived in Belgrade after Sofia, where her current concert tour began. This is the band’s first tour in two years. These two years also included cancellation concerts in Russia, and a fine for discrediting the RF Armed Forces, which was imposed on Yuri Shevchuk appointed in his native Ufa, and September heart attackafter which the group leader was recovering in his equally native St. Petersburg.

There was no confidence that the singer would be able to go on stage at all after his illness. However, he came out and still shouted at the Belgrade spectators, who were sitting in their chairs at the beginning of the concert: “Three months ago I almost went to the next world, and nothing – I sing and dance. And you?”

Naturally, soon the whole hall was on its feet. It’s just that in the first half of the concert there were a lot of relatively new songs – from the latest DDT albums “Creativity in the Void” (2021) and “Creativity in the Void-2” (2022), as well as from the new album “Wolves in the Shooting Range”, which Yuri Shevchuk recorded together with guitarist Dmitry Emelyanov (“Kommersant” wrote about him on July 13, 2023). The lyrics of these songs require special attention, as do the arrangements, in which Mr. Shevchuk and his colleagues took new heights – progressive rock, industrial, orchestral.

The song “Tchaikovsky” from the album “Wolves in the Shooting Range” at the end of 2023 took first place in the “Chart’s Dozen” chart of “Our Radio”, and also brought the authors the award of the same name. As noted on the band’s fan pages, voting for this song is a vote for the album, and for its creators, and for their beliefs. At the concert in Belgrade, “Tchaikovsky” was also performed, and the audience sang along not to the chorus, but to the pas de deux from “The Nutcracker” woven into the song. They still remember it better than the chorus.

As Yuri Shevchuk said from the stage, the third concert in two years took place in Belgrade. New people are now responsible for light and sound. But Shevchuk managed to preserve the composition of the musicians, and this can be considered a separate feat. Many of the rock classic’s colleagues, now forced to travel around the world instead of touring Russia, disbanded their groups and recruited new musicians.

According to Shevchuk, during these years the group was largely saved by the sale of albums and merchandise. Fans, as they say, supported their favorites with rubles.

Probably the main discovery of the group’s artists is the hunched figures of three men, sitting with their backs to the audience and passing bottles of alcohol to each other. On the song “Russian Tango” they simply sit on the beach under the palm trees, on “The Sun Will Rise” they float on an iceberg with the same serenity, watching ships and space stations. The absolute indifference and humility of these characters is a sad spectacle, but presented in a typically Shevchukian ironic style.

The striking light score of the song “Little Death”, when at the words “choose, choose, whoever you want, choose” the beams of spotlights one by one snatch out the audience in the stalls, symbolizing the loneliness and powerlessness of a private person – this is a Belgrade improvisation. The new show is being polished right on the road. Shevchuk believes that the group usually reaches its peak form around the fifteenth concert of the tour. And the tour is slowly expanding with new cities.

During a conversation backstage at the concert, the musician assured that he coordinates all decisions on future concerts with doctors. And still, it was a little scary for him when he literally tore out his throat on high notes or danced tango with vocalist Alena Romanova – she is now also a full-fledged dancer in the group.

Speaking about Belgrade, Shevchuk remembered how he played with his band on the main square exactly 25 years ago – during the very period when the city was bombed by NATO aircraft. After the concert, the group flew to Russia, and the vocalist stayed to help friends from the Ministry of Emergency Situations evacuate Russians, Ukrainians and Belarusians, worked literally under bombs and flew off on the last plane.

If any of the Russian rockers has the right to talk and sing about wars, then it is, of course, Yuri Shevchuk. But the most powerful songs in Belgrade were songs of the opposite theme – “Love” and “Night Lyudmila”.

Of the main hits, without which not a single DDT concert is complete, Yuri Shevchuk did not sing only “Motherland,” despite the eternal relevance of its text. At the end of the concert, performing the song “That’s All,” he thanked hospitable Serbia, fellow musicians and tour organizers, and in the end, turning to the audience, said: “Thank you for us…” He was looking for the right word. “What are we?” The hall fell silent. “That we are people.”