In March 2022, Terra Relicta shared an interview with Belarusian fantasy folk band Irdorath conducted by Belgian musician and dark music expert Xavier Kruth (Winterstille) for the Belgian online music magazine Dark Entries (you can read it HERE). And now, here comes another one. Why? Because Irdorath's members still need all the support, and because: "Everyone has the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and association, which are essential components of democracy. The right of peaceful assembly includes the right to hold meetings, sit-ins, strikes, rallies, events or protests, both offline and online. The right to freedom of association involves the right of individuals to interact and organize among themselves to collectively express, promote, pursue and defend common interests. This includes the right to form trade unions. Freedom of peaceful assembly and of association serve as a vehicle for the exercise of many other rights guaranteed under international law, including the rights to freedom of expression and to take part in the conduct of public affairs. The right to freedom of peaceful assembly and association is protected by article 20 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights." (https://www.ohchr.org/en/topic/freedom-assembly-and-association) - Terra Relicta

Interview with: Nadia and Vova Kalach
Conducted by: Xavier Kruth for Dark Entries
Terra Relicta is publishing the interview as originally published in Dark Entries, adding only Irdorath's photos.

Two years in prison. That was the sentence for Nadia and Vova Kalach, frontwoman and frontman of the fantasy folk band Irdorath. Their crime? They have played music at rallies during the mass protests against the rigged 2020 presidential election in Belarus. Three other musicians associated with Irdorath received a year and six months in prison. In the meantime, all musicians have been released and left Belarus. Nadia and Vova have gathered new musicians for Irdorath from their new home in Germany and will play at many festivals this summer. We were able to talk to them about the history of Irdorath, but also and especially about the repression against anyone who dares to raise their voice in Belarus, a country that currently has more than 1400 political prisoners.

Xavier: Hello Nadia and Vova. Thank you for this opportunity to have a conversation together. Let's start where you started with Irdorath. I think Irdorath was founded in 2011 in Minsk…
Vova: It was a bit earlier, like 2009. Later, we collected a band and moved to Minsk.
Nadia: 2011 was when our fresh band started to play in Minsk.
Vova: It was then that we released our first album.

Xavier: So you met in 2009? Were you already a couple at that moment?
Nadia: Yes. We met and immediately started to make music together. But it only got serious in 2011. Before that, we just learned how to play our instruments. We played in the streets. We were students and we had fun.

Xavier: 2011 is perhaps the moment when Anton Schnip joined the band, with whom you recorded your first CD, Ad Astra.
Nadia: Yes, we finished studying at the university in Grodno in 2011, and we moved to Minsk. Me, Vova and Anton were living together, and we started to record our first album. We had no connections in Minsk, no experience, no money, but we were very motivated, and together we did it.
Vova: We started to work on Ad Astra it in 2011, and released it in 2012.

Xavier: The second CD, Dreamcatcher, followed in 2016. So it took four years to work on a follow-up. Why did it take so long?
Nadia: We were young, and we needed time to learn how to do this. It never was our aim to release as much as possible, or to make a very simple product according to a strict timing.
Vova: I don't remember why it lasted four years, but there were a lot of festivals, a lot of concerts, a lot of changes in the band. You can hear the difference between the first album that we recorded with three persons, and the later albums, which are much more musical. They're not so medieval.
Nadia: We wanted to make something profound, something very beautiful. We used a lot of strings on that album. The music was noble and complicated. Since it was our first global work, we wanted to make something really good. That took some time. I hope we succeeded.

Xavier: Yes, I like the album very much. You released your third album, Wild, a year later. At that time, Irdorath incorporated more musicians. I think you were five or six musicians.
Vova: Yes, we were six. We had two drummers, a guitar, a violin and the both of us.
Nadia: When we had opportunities, according to the possibilities in Minsk or our hometown, we always invited friends and musicians to play with us, in order to make it bigger. But this is costly, and now we need to survive on a much more limited budget.

Xavier: You had some international success. You toured in Europe. You played a lot in Germany, but also in Belgium, at the Na Fir Bolg festival, where you also played again this year.
Nadia: Yes. That was the only time we played in Belgium. But we played in Germany several times, including at Wacken and at the Wave-Gotik-Treffen, and also in Poland, the Czech Republic, Italy, Slovenia, the Netherlands and the Baltic states.

Xavier: Let's move to the more tragic story. In August 2020, there were presidential elections in Belarus. I'm absolutely convinced, like many people, that the elections were rigged. I don't think the dictator Lukashenko, who has been in power since 1994, really won the election. There was a broad protest movement against the election fraud. Many people took to the streets, and you also decided to go to the protests and play music at the gatherings. What was your motivation?
Vova: I think the most powerful trigger for all of the people was the violence. The police reacted very violently to the peaceful protests.
Nadia: It's kind of a tradition. After the elections, people go out and wait for the results of the elections. It was the same here. But what they saw was cruel. They were attacked, beaten, arrested, even killed.
Vova: They were shot at. They even threw grenades in the crowd, right in the centre of the crowd. It was incredible. A lot of the people we knew were impacted by this. We couldn't stay at home.
Nadia: The police arrested a lot of people. They got ten or fifteen days in prison, I don't remember. And when they were released from prison, people saw in what condition they were. They were blue from the beatings. They had broken noses, legs and arms. Some were raped. All this information was in the air. You could of course try to pretend that you did not see this. You could do this, and your life would be much easier. But you can't do this if you're a human being. We are humans. We were not able to shut up and to stay at home. We spoke out against it, in the way that we could. We are musicians. We put flowers on our bagpipes, as a sign of peace. We took to the streets and played. We supported the people who protested after this incredible evil happened. We had no chance to act differently because we are humans.

Xavier: But you were conscious that this was dangerous. There was always this threat of police violence.
Vova: Of course. But it was also dangerous to stay at home or to go to the grocery store. The police worked in civilian clothes. They were everywhere. They arrested everyone they suspected of any opposition. It was really dangerous to just go outside. So it didn't matter. We knew that we could be beaten, or that we could be imprisoned for several days.
Nadia: In this period, the prison sentences were still days, not years.
Vova: We knew that our bagpipes would be destroyed. But it was not enough to stop us, because of what they did…
Nadia: It was very scary to go there. We saw what happened, with our own eyes. It was very scary, but still we did it.

Xavier: I have also heard that they were especially looking for the musicians at the protests. Were they really tracking the musicians or just everyone?
Nadia: No. I would say they were tracking everyone. People in Belarus are incredible. Doctors took to the streets in white coats and the symbols of doctors. IT professionals went to protest with keyboards. A lot of people made cool art and installations. There were a lot of funny signs. It was so creative and bright. It was scary, but at the same time, it was beautiful and creative. There was a lot of humour. The protests were really peaceful. I don't think that we attracted more attention than others. But of course, the video where we were playing the bagpipes went viral. People in America saw our video, and that was the reason they tracked us, I believe. It was too beautiful for them.

Xavier: You also recorded two new videos at that time of the protests. These were songs you had already written: "Kryly" (Wings), which is really beautiful, and "Быў. Ёсць. Буду." (I Was. I Am. I will be). Did you connect these two songs to the protests?
Vova: We did our best with our bagpipes at the protests, but we had to do something more. We wanted to do something else with our art. It was the only way to act. Our music, our band, was not political at all. But we felt we could not continue to produce and release songs about fairy tales and mystical creatures like we usually did. We found two songs that really fitted for what was going on. We hoped that it would sheer up a lot of people.
Nadia: The lyrics to those two songs are very cruel, but they fitted the situation. "Быў. Ёсць. Буду." (I Was. I Am. I will be) is a prayer for everyone who suffered in an attempt to build a castle for humanity, a kind of new world. There is a phrase: "I pray for those who will make a revolution, even against god, if it would be needed for the people". "Kryly" (Wings) is connected to the women's manifestations that were happening in Minsk at the time when we recorded those videos. It's a hymn to Belarussian women. Women took to the streets in white and red dresses, and with lots of flowers. They were brutally repressed. The police attacked them. A lot of women were arrested. They convicted a lot of them in real criminal cases. Their punishment was years in prison. We dedicated this song to all the great women who stood there, attacked by weaponed men. We played a lot, also next to what was visible on YouTube. If you know the story of our revolution, you know about those tea parties in yards.

Xavier: Yes, the yard parties. I wanted to ask you about that also.
Nadia: We played there five times. It was as in a spy movie. We played at one place and then tried to go to another place secretly.
Vova: We travelled with several cars, so as not to be together in one car. It was really scary. They knew that we were doing this. But we were lucky. Friends who did the same thing were arrested. But they did not get criminal cases. In this period, that was not the case yet. But anyway, to go for fifteen days in that hell, Okrestina (the prison where a lot of opposition figures were jailed), must have been really hard.
Nadia: People will remember what happened in Okrestina. The people who work there are real nazi's. It's the most cruel thing that I ever saw with my eyes. Hopefully, the day will come that all these people will be punished by law. I hope they will be punished for what they did as public servants.

Xavier: You were also punished for doing the yards concerts. You had jobs at the Victoria youth centre, and you were fired.
Vova: We don't take that as a punishment now. After all they did to us, we understood that it was just a little trouble.
Nadia: We were teachers at that education centre for eight years. We were ideal teachers and we evolved quickly. I was a teacher of the first category before I was fired. That's a very good result for eight years. They appreciated us because we spoke different languages. We were very good workers for them, but when they understood that we were participating in the protests, they started to be afraid for their own asses. Our bosses were afraid that they would be fired because of us. They chose their own comfort. We had talks, several times. They asked us to stop this, or they would fire us. But we didn't agree. Should we stop fighting for human rights? Who is crazy? They asked us to stop fighting against violence. Did they support violence, or what? They answered that they were doing their work, that they brought education and culture to children. They spent so many years working there, and they didn't want to lose it. This is a choice people have to make. They made their own choice. They supported what happened there. Or maybe they didn't support it, but they just supported their own ego.
Vova: And now, after four years, we still have friends who are trying to work there. They tell us it's like the Soviet Union, full of KGB spies. The spies know who is who and tell you how to behave. They walk in as in North Korea. It's not a cultural or artistic place anymore. It's just another place with KGB spies.

Xavier: Is this the way the Lukashenko regime manages to survive? The protests were massive, and sociological studies showed that the majority of the people in Belarus supported the protest movement. But this system where every director fires the ones who protest and where everyone spies on each other… Is that the reason why the regime is still in place?
Vova: Unfortunately, Lukashenko has a very strong power vertical. His main weapon is fear. He uses it, and it works well, really well.
Nadia: People do not support the games he has played in Belarus, and they have shown it in 2020.

Xavier: We come to that fateful night, on the second of August 2021. It was your birthday party, Nadia, and this was the occasion when the police came to arrest you. Can you tell us what happened that night?
Nadia: I can show you a video if you want.

Xavier: I didn't see the video, but I saw pictures. It seems to have been very violent. The police was firing with weapons during the arrests.
Nadia: They behaved like animals. They had surrounded our house, and when they came in, they were shooting in the air. They were extremely brutal. I think they had fun.
Vova: It was quite early in the evening, we hadn’t really begun to party. People were arriving with their cars, and we had just poured out the first drinks. We were not really drinking alcohol, because people had to work on the day after. Then they came in, very violently. They were dressed in civilian clothes but were heavily armed. That was the last time we saw our home in two years.
Nadia: They were real monsters. Outside, the dog was attached to a tree. They left the animal like that. They knew the dog would not be able to drink or to eat if he remained attached. Only the day afterwards, the neighbours came and gave the dog water and food.
Vova: Afterwards, we realized that they broke into our phones. They knew everything about us. They had read all our text messages. They knew that all the participants in the protest marches would be there that evening, which is why they decided to arrest us there. This is not a very good way to celebrate your birthday. We do not recommend it.

Xavier: Most of the people present got an administrative prison sentence of 15 days for obstructing the police if I'm well informed, but five of you remained in prison, including both of you. You were charged with "great disturbance of public order". What did they accuse you of?
Vova: It was absurd. In the accusation, they wrote that we were obstructing the traffic, because we were walking in the middle of the street. Would we have walked on the sideways, it would have been better. But there were 250.000 people walking in the middle of the street that day!
Nadia: They also accused us of inciting the participants in the march to use violence against the police with our music. They wrote that our weapons of crime were bagpipes. It means, I think, that we are the only criminals with bagpipes ever. They arrested our bagpipes for two years, and they wrote that with our bagpipes and our music, we influenced the minds of people to make them ready to attack the police.

Xavier: So you got two years of prison for attacking the police with bagpipes. When you were convicted, it started an international solidarity movement. This is where I first became aware of your story. Bands as Corvus Corax and Faun were protesting against your arrest. A lot of other bands joined in the protest. There was an action where musicians covered the song "Peremen", that you played at the protests. Were you aware of this protest movement while you were in prison?
Nadia: Yes, we got some information, and it cheered us up very much. You know, we didn't see the sun in the first seven months of prison. It is a place where you do not have sun or fresh air. You just sit there in darkness. It’s very lonely. To get small messages that something is going on... It gives you so much warmth. You are smiling in this dreadful place. We are very grateful for it. It gave us power to survive, especially in these very hard first seven months.

Xavier: You also didn't have contact with each other.
Vova: Of course not. We were not in contact. But we wrote letters to our families. My mom could write letters to Nadia, and tell her how I was and how I was feeling, and Nadia could do the same. It was not a very clear way to communicate, especially since there were censors, people who would read your letter before they give it to you. A lot of letters were also blocked because of the censors. They decided that we didn't need some kind of information. So we had just some small hidden parts in other people's letters.

Xavier: You were released in April 2023. Was that the first time you met in two years?
Nadia: We saw each other when we were in the same cage during the court hearings. But they didn't allow us to sit too close to each other. But after the conviction, it was the first time we saw each other in two years.

Xavier: Did you immediately decide to continue with Irdorath?
Nadia: We did not think about this. After we were released, we were under huge pressure from the police. They came to our house at night. They took our phones to install their spy programs. They called us to their post and so on. Again, they were rude. We were under such pressure that it was not about what we would do. We were in shock after everything. They forbade us to leave the country until August 2025, which was illegal. That is something they sometimes do to people with debts, but for us, there was no reason why. We understood that this would not lead us to something good. If they can come to your flat whenever they want, you will not feel protected. So we decided that we had to escape. At the beginning of June 2023, we crossed the border with the EU with the help of some very good people who were part of the BYSOL Foundation. They helped us, and we escaped. We are very grateful to them and to Libereco for their help. They work in different countries.
Vova: To come back to your question, about how we decided to continue or not… They sent us to a labour camp, a colony. It's a real prison where you have to work. There, we could communicate by writing letters. They allowed us to communicate because it’s in the law. As husband and wife, we had the right to communicate. We sent each other paper letters. They were reviewed by two censors, one from my side and one from her side. Anyway, we found a way to do this. We knew that if we would survive, and when we would be in a safe place, we would continue to make art. We didn't know what kind of art it would be. After prison, it's hard to say what you will do. But either way, it would be Irdorath.
Nadia: I would say it's not a correct question about when we decided to continue Irdorath because we did not stop.
Vova: Yes, Nadia wrote lyrics and composed melodies for a new album while we were in the labour camp. I spent some time on making new designs.
Nadia: If you see this bird, that we use for the solidarity movement (points at her t-shirt)… It was drawn by Vova on the cover of a letter. Vova creates our visual part, and I create our audio part. We did not stop, but we were just not able to leave this place.
Xavier: Indeed, you composed the song "Zorami" while in prison, which was released afterwards.
Nadia: Yes, this is one of those songs that I composed there during this labor sentence. We made police uniforms. During the work, I composed songs for our new album, and "Zorami" was one of them. When we will find financial funding for this, we will record an album with all those stories, and you will be able to hear what was written there.

Xavier: I sincerely hope you will find the funding. You are now on tour. I think the first concerts you did after your release were again with Corvus Corax and Faun, who asked you to play in their shows.
Nadia: We recorded "Zorami" in Poland, and then we migrated to Germany. We had to wait to leave the country because we still needed some documents. We wanted to present this song on the day that the clip would be released, but we had no band. We kindly asked Faun to let us play our song at the Festival Mediaval. They are superb people with great hearts. They told us it was an honour. We are so grateful to them. We played "Zorami" with them, and at this moment we understood that we could come back, because we still can play on a stage, and it seems like we love it. The second concert was with Corvus Corax at the Passionskirche. We are also grateful to them for all their support during this story. We had such a lot of fun playing bagpipes with them at the Passionskirche. We felt very much alive again.

Xavier: I saw your recent concert at the Wave-Gotik-Treffen in Leipzig. I thought it was a great concert. In the first half of the concert, you explicitly said that it was meant to be fun, and only at the end of the concert did you speak about the history of prison sentences. Isn't this a bit of a duality? In a way, I think you will become a symbol of the repression that is going on in Belarus. How do you combine this with the happy, joyful music that you are making? Is it difficult to find a balance between these two aspects of Irdorath?
Vova: In my point of view, there are two parts to this. The first part is that our happy music and our quick comeback on stage show that they didn't break us. They didn't break us, and we are powerful enough to live our lives. Our lives have not ended after prison. Of course, this story will stay with us forever. It is a part of our lives. It doesn't matter that we have to focus on it. We are not stuck in it. So the first thing is that we want to show that life is going on. The second thing is that we are so lucky to have our stage and our voice. We have an audience. That's such a power. We have to use this power to remind people that this shit is still going on in Belarus. Of course with Ukraine, with Israel, with the threat of nuclear war, people tend to forget about Belarus. It's such a small thing in all the world's problems. But every day, more and more people go to prison in Belarus because nobody wants to solve this small problem. We have to remind people of this every time we're on stage. There are people who was judged for nothing, who are sentenced for nothing
Nadia: Right now, there are 1400 people like us in prison in Belarus, political prisoners. And they have even harder sentences. It's not two years anymore. It's six years, eighteen years, twenty years. It seems like nobody can help us. What shall we do? Manifestations? We're still not politicians. As we see it, a lot of people are building up businesses and careers based on our story, but nothing is changing. Nobody saved us, nobody is saving all these other prisoners. What can we do? We can only remind everyone of the story of Belarusian political prisoners. But nevertheless, we are very grateful that we are standing on stage. It is not the power of our souls. It is not only because of what we did but also thanks to the thousands of people who donated, the thousands of people who wrote letters.
Vova: All these people didn't forget. They were with us. They supported our relatives with money or wrote letters. Even if they just talked about us with other people, it helped a lot.
Nadia: Somebody helped in this way, and someone else helped another way. So many people did one drop of good for us. It turned the motion and it changed our lives. We could never come back without this help. We don't just want to be on stage with a reminder of these stories, but we want to give something back. We want to give music. People made us come alive again. We are on stage again to give something, to give energy, to give hope, to give the feeling that everything is possible. We want to be an example. If you are supporting somebody, it can really change lives. Please, let's stay on the side of the good. That's why what we are doing on stage is not tragic. It is a celebration of freedom, kindness, love. Life is complicated. It has different sides.
Xavier: These are very beautiful words. Is there anything else you want to mention?
Nadia: What is going on right now with political prisoners in Belarus is making us crazy. The Belarusian dictator Lukashenko has announced that he will release at least some deeply ill people, including people with cancer. Yesterday, they released some people. We check it every hour, you know. We know several names. It seems they released some people we know. But it's nothing. One of them is a really old man. I personally know such heavy stories. People are in such bad conditions, physically. One woman lost the ability to walk. Me and another women brought her to the hospital on a blanket. That was one and a half years ago, and she is still there. Another girl had brain cancer and an operation before going to jail. She certainly needs special treatment now. Every day, she took painkillers, not with pills but with injections. She is still there. We are doing the best we can to bring people positive energy and to represent this story. But so far, people are still there in prison. And we continue to suffer. The biggest part of our soul will suffer with them. It is a hard time for us because we really feel like we are still there, with them. We are a part of them.
Vova: My message, I would say, is that if this interview reaches someone with economical or political power or someone with other ideas on how to release Belarusian political prisoners - it's time to do it. Their life is more valuable than any money and any principles. It's not about political views anymore. It is about the lives and health of simple, good people.
Nadia: These are people who are against evil, and they are suffering. We just would like somebody to help us so much.

Irdorath is doing a crowdfunding to cover juridic costs and the investment they had to do in order to be able to perform again. They need to collect 15.000 euro. Don't hesitate to donate if you have the possibility.

Irdorath links: Facebook, Instagram, Bandcamp, YouTube