Babylon had never any power over you!

Last night I got my first real experience of Moscow nightclub. However, this experience was altogether rather non-conventional (Moscow being infamous as the Holy See of Russian "popsa"), since the band I went to listen was no one else than the legendary ensemble Aquarium (renowned also as simply "Å") of Boris "БоГ" Grebenshchikov. His repertoire in last night's gig consisted of Jamaican reggae, sing-alongs, his old (underground) rock classics, some gnostic gospel (pay attention to the song called Day of Joy) and plenty of completely new rock. 

For me, perhaps, the most appealing peace of music in that concert was the song Вавилон никогда не был властен над тобой (in English Babylon had never any power over you). With these words BG repeatedly sang I became mesmerized with his persona and his indisputable charisma or rather aura. For a moment I saw him as a prophet preaching his gospel to the crowd and I saw the heterogeneous crowd (consisting of both young and old, hippies and white collars, hipsters and rastas) conjoining with the chorus that seemed to obtain a feeling of a psalm or a rallying cry of rejecting the society and system based on the schism of Babylon and the mutual lack of understanding one another. In that moment I might have seen even a mirage of the Zion.

The first song of BG I ever learned and grew not only to like but rather to love was a song called Болота Невы (The bogs of Neva). It's a song about St.Petersburg (BG's home city), lyrical "I" that has become one, both physically and mentally, with the city and how this "I" needs to leave the city in order to get a word with which he can release all the restless souls, buried in the bogs of Neva, to freedom before the Kingdom come. And last night, with the help of BG's slogan about Babylon, that word became flesh alongside with BG himself.

Yours and not Babylon's,

- Stefan