Tajik-Russian Musician Manizha Defies Ban to Sing for Peace

LONDON – Manizha, the last musician to represent Russia in the Eurovision Song Contest, has released a defiant anti-war track, but says she can’t perform live in her adoptive country.

“Gun,” a reworking of a track she wrote a decade earlier, was released late last month as a single. It will also be part of her Extended Play (EP) “Hope,” set for release on Sept. 4.

“The main idea (with ‘Gun’) is to create something that will be about peace in Ukraine. Peace in Russia. Peace in Israel. Peace in Palestine,” she told Reuters in a Zoom interview from Moscow.

Born in Tajikistan, Manizha, whose full name is Manizha Sangin, fled the civil war there in the 1990s and was initially welcomed in Russia.

However, after she publicly opposed Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and campaigned for LGBTQ rights, she said she is banned from performing in the country, which can no longer participate in the Eurovision Song Contest.

Her Russian identity also complicates international performances.

“I’m cancelled in my country and I’m cancelled in the world,” she said. She explores this sentiment in her track “Standing Between Two Walls,” also featured on the upcoming EP.

Despite these challenges, Manizha remains hopeful.

“Every war is having an end because I experienced that in my homeland in Tajikistan. So it’s just a very, very dark part of our time,” she said.

She expressed her love for Russia and has been helping displaced people following Ukraine’s surprise attack on Russia’s Kursk region.

(Reporting by Sarah Mills; editing by Barbara Lewis)

Source: Reuters