T-shirts over Montmartre – Newspaper Kommersant No. 204 (7405) dated 11/02/2022

Zemfira Ramazanova will finish her European tour dedicated to the Borderline album tomorrow with a concert at London’s Royal Albert Hall. At a concert in the historic Parisian hall Elysee Montmartre visited Boris Barabanov.

The current European tour of Zemfira Ramazanova is the first big tour of the singer after the February concerts in Moscow (see “Kommersant” dated February 26). Performances were held in ten cities, only London remained. All 5,000 tickets to the Royal Albert Hall have been sold. Zemfira’s tour generally has little to do with the popular thesis in Russia that domestic musicians who are abroad after February 24 are not needed there and perform in small halls. Tickets for Zemfira’s concerts were nowhere to be found. They have become not only a multi-part international presentation of the albums “Borderline” (2021) and “Zemfira ot Luka” (2022), but also a must-have on the itinerary of today’s Russian-speaking travelers.

To call them emigrants does not turn the tongue. Someone chose a new comfortable place of residence for themselves, like Alla Pugacheva, who visited Zemfira’s concert in Tel Aviv. Some came specially for the Paris concert and returned home, like several Russian film producers of the first row. A lot of those who came to concerts on Zemfira’s tour are on their way right now and just made a stop at the “hubs” of the new Russian exodus – in Istanbul, Tel Aviv, Berlin, to go further, to Latin America or to the opposite side, to Thailand, Bali or Kazakhstan. Zemfira’s songs are the few things that unite them in today’s world and make them feel “like in Moscow.”

Zemfira’s Paris concert was held at the legendary cabaret Elysee Montmartre, which opened in 1807. The hall went down in history as the place where the cancan was first demonstrated. How it used to be here can be judged, for example, by the painting by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec “Elysee Montmartre”. The hall is designed for approximately 1300 spectators, and there are very few seats – this is a very democratic venue. In the 21st century, DJ parties and rock concerts are held here, as well as performances by hip-hop artists very often. In May, the Russians IC3PEAK, a duet from among the currently banned musicians, performed here.

Today’s concert program of Zemfira does not include the song “Meat”, which became a sharp and sharp reaction to the events of February-March 2022. It sounds so straightforward and painful that a “live” performance may well lead to a serious nervous breakdown.

At the same time, the first five songs of the program are taken from the album “Borderline”, which, in full accordance with the title, is dedicated to borderline personality disorder. So Zemfira sang in any case at the limit of emotions. In one of the refrains of the song “Pills” that opened the concert, instead of the album line “demons pray”, she sang, as in one of the early versions, “beggars pray”, referring to the always relevant words of Ilya Kormiltsev: “Beggars pray, pray for what their poverty is guaranteed.”

In the current tour, Zemfira cannot be blamed for the fact that she bypasses the most tragic topic. By tradition, she raised it before the song “Do not shoot”: “Today is the 249th day of the war that my country unleashed.” Complete silence reigned in the hall. “My country must stop this war. No war!” In Zemfira’s speech, it was important not only the word, which is either still illegal, or no longer, but also the fact that she does not separate herself from her country, although she has not come for many months.

It is worth noting that the Ukrainian audience at this concert had nothing to be offended by. Previously, they criticized the singer for the fact that during a concert in Cyprus, she did not unfurl the Ukrainian flag thrown onto the stage by fans, but took it backstage and later asked on social networks “not to throw anything on the stage.” However, in Paris, she raised yellow and blue balloons over her head, also flown in from the audience. And she also reacted very positively to the flash mobs that the fans prepared for the songs, happily showed the public one of the many leaflets with the inscription “Je t’aime” and separately thanked those who came to the concert from Russia, sincerely surprised that they had it at all managed.

The program sounded in abundance songs for which Zemfira was once loved and which she is still remembered for, scolding the latest “difficult” albums. For the current tour, she rehearsed with her group “T-shirts”, “Rumba” and “Forecasters” that had not been heard from the stage for many years, and “Arivederchi”, which closed the concert in Paris, sounded as close as possible to the original version of 1998. This was the case when you had to leave in order to return.