YUKA – Birds Should Fly [Self-released, 2024-03-15]
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict holds many highly disturbing questions, and here are some of the most provocative ones:
POLITICAL – “On which side are you; democracies or dictatorships? If you are living in a democracy but defend the side of dictatorship, or the other way round, aren’t you a traitor? How would you nuance these questions without eventually becoming one?”
HISTORICAL – “Who started the conflict first and how far back can we look for the answer? No matter if it is in the near or distant past, do yesterday’s acts necessarily legitimate today’s ones anyway?” ; “On the Jewish side: how to call their massive migration “an invasion” when large-scale dramas are played and when powerful countries approve and encourage it?” ; “On the Arab side: how would you judge people forced to welcome such massive migrations when you are yourself not impacted?”
A brief history of the Palestine region (thank you Wikipedia):
– Prehistory: The land is mainly a thoroughfare between Egypt and the Middle East
– Bronze Age: Egyptian province hosting the Canaanites, who built Jerusalem
– Iron Age: Fall of Egypt, the Israelis came & built the Kingdoms of Israel & Judah
– Antiquity: Imperial invasions, Babylonian to Roman, birth of the Palestine region
– Middle-Age: Arab invasion, Crusades and Ottoman Turkish invasion
– 1799: In his Egyptian campaign, Napoleon gives Palestine to the Jews
– XIXth: Egyptian invasion, revolts & comeback of the Ottomans
– WW1: Fall of the Ottomans, the British own Palestine and give it to the Jews
– WW2: Jewish genocide, escape to Palestine, rising tension with the local Arabs
– 1947: The UN shared the land in Israel for the Jews & Palestine for the Arabs
– Til now: Revolts/wars on the Arab side, genocides & expansion on the Jews’
MILITARY – “Is war a solution in modern societies?” ; “Can soldiers kill citizens, including women and children?”
GEOGRAPHICAL – “The world contains 49 countries with a Muslim majority, can’t the Jews have one at least ? If yes, why would they even have to share it?” ; “Yet does it give them all the rights, knowing that the territory was already occupied? Moreover, are these global considerations relevant when viewed from a human perspective? For example, do they hold true for young inhabitants of Gaza who are confronted daily with the terrifying reality of bomb attacks?”
With such questions, deliberately simplistic and cliche, we only scratch the surface of the conflict’s high complexity. As for the answers, none of us are geopolitical experts, capable of having clear positions. Yet we might still have a perspective to share, at our humble level of ignorance.
Our community is composed of people coming from all over the world, sharing a common point that is neither political, historical, military or geographical. We share an unconditional love for deep techno, and group each other around it. Partly thanks to our “World Map of Hypnotic Techno“, we see how much we are “one”, and how much tolerance and love are the best ingredients to live together, while intolerance and fear, on the contrary, only bring division. There is no need to be “on the side of the democracies” or “on the dictatorships”, we can rather be on the side of humanity…
If it eventually sounds like a psychedelic speech under LSD, it can only lead to one logical conclusion: some Palestinian and Israeli people should maybe listen more often to hypnotic techno, or at least start embracing its community spirit. “If only music was a deity…”
Our two favourite photographies linked to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict:
📸 Eliyahu McLean
📸 Astronaut Andrew Morgan
We take ourselves of course not enough seriously to imagine that our hippie words, written in a small musical review, itself in a small blog dedicated to a niche sound, will one day carry our call for love to mankind. However, if politics also fails to promote it, we still have faith in another well-proven means for raising awareness: Art.
With their provocative expression, artists may serve as the last bastion to promote compassion, or constitute at least great ambassadors of it. Take for instance YUKA: she’s a talented Russian DJ and producer now based in India, whose best works, for us, can be found on Kabalion, Silent Season or more recently on KVLTÖ Records. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict, occurring geographically – and almost symbolically – between Russia and India, has a strong resonance for her.
Among various experiences, she has been particularly touched by Qishta’s 2013 documentary “Where Should the Birds Fly?“, which inspired the title of the present album, its eponymous track and indirectly the intro, based on Darwish’s poem, itself serving as the opener of the film.
The documentary includes the story of two young Palestinian women, looking to preserve a sense of normality and humanity amid the cruel and terrifying war conditions. To a lesser extent, their fate somewhat echoes YUKA’s own motivation to fly far away from Moscow: the omnipresent sensation of danger, that she confessed having felt in her home country. Since 1999, she partly found peace in music, whose refuge may take a stronger meaning for her than for us, comfortably seated in our quiet town “where nothing happens”. Art is her main channel to express and convey her most intense emotions, so she took some of the numerous readings and viewings she had on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and used each to name her tracks, as if shouting their messages of agony, despair, and hope.
“Birds Should Fly” stands out as a significant release, thanks to its strong and touching storytelling that transcends the music, and thanks to the flawless sound design, resulting from YUKA’s well-inspired creativity and extensive studio experience. In parallel, she embodies the essence of art that promotes awareness, essential during our mad times. Let all the victims of violence have the necessary wings “to fly away from their mental or real prison”, including yourself, dear YUKA.
WRITING BY: CEDRIC FINKBEINER | 18 MARCH 2024
