Kyrgyz Music Friday

Kyrgyz Music Friday is a weekly feature in which I post a pop music video from an artist in Kyrgyzstan. It could be catchy, annoying, funny, insightful, brilliant, awful, or anything in between. It’s what’s playing on the radio, what all the cool kids are listening to these days. Kyrgyz Music Friday is not trying to appeal to your musical taste (which I’m sure is awesome), but simply gives you a glimpse into how pop music is done on this side of the world. Feel free to share your thoughts on this week’s video in the comment section!

There are so many albums being released by Bishkek artists in the next few weeks. Dad Manki just released their debut album, “Fuck Yeah Kombich”, and Oakland is releasing theirs, “Однажды в Бише” (which I think means “Once upon a time in Bishkek”, but someone correct me if I’m wrong) on April 27th. In what seems like something terribly Bishkek-esque, their release party was originally scheduled to take place at Club XS, but it shut down (unexpectedly? Maybe. Thankfully? Yes.) and now the release will be at Pizza House (I know, no comment).

Oakland is a rap duo (you might recognize them from this previous Kyrgyz Music Friday post), that, from what I can tell, raps mostly in Russian about things like clubbing, eating lobster and drinking Hennessy whiskey. You know, just an average day in Bishkek. I’m not much of a rap connoisseur so I can’t tell if there are some finer nuances of this particular song that I’m missing that make it better than any other rap song. There’s a string part sampled that sounds cool (you can hear it best at the very beginning of the song).

I’m not positive that this is the “official” video for this song, but I like it anyway. It seems spontaneous and not overly choreographed, and the duo looks effortless in performing. Very minimal, I appreciate that.

If you’re interested in hearing more from Oakland, you can purchase the album on iTunes.