The Pop Corporation

When governments act appallingly, we’re right to be furious with them. However, out of this anger often comes necessary and wild creativity. See, over in Chechnya, the powers that be have apparently banned music for a certain tempo.

They have said that all music should “correspond to a tempo of 80 to 116 beats per minute (BPM)”, with their culture ministry making the announcement earlier this week. The idea, you assume, is to preserve some kind of traditional music, and put the scuppers on western music.

The republic’s leader Ramzan Kadyrov told culture minister Musa Dadayev to make Chechen music “conform to the Chechen mentality,” so say the Moscow Times. “Borrowing musical culture from other peoples is inadmissible,” they added.

In a meeting between the ministry and regional artists, the musicians and producers were told that they have until June 1st to rewrite any music they’ve made which doesn’t meet this criteria. If these new rules aren’t met, then they won’t be allowed to perform it in public. It’s unclear what the penalty would be, but if a government is willing to make such a ludicrous law in the first place, then you imagine it’ll be a similarly draconian punishment.

So, what happens next? The thing with bpms is that you can be wildly creative with what you do and push the envelope. 70bpm/140bpm is the trap/drum ‘n’ bass crossover, so will musicians rebel and start making traditional music that’s breakneck fast with half-stepper action in it too?

When the UK government tried to clamp down on raves in 1994 and outlawed public performances of music that “includes sounds wholly or predominantly characterised by the emission of a succession of repetitive beats”, Autechre went about creating music that had no beat repetitions and, well, repetitive beats won.

Keep an ear out for the Chechyna underground. Things might be about to get real weird and creative there.