Ored Recordings documents chants, laments and displacement songs of the Caucasus threatened by erasure. After the invasion of Ukraine, its ‘punk ethnography’ has never been more urgent

In May 2022, a few weeks after the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, musician Bulat Khalilov was attending a demonstration in Nalchik, a southern Russian city in the foothills of the Caucasus Mountains. As he joined a group congregating around the monument to the Circassian victims of Russo-Circassian war, Khalilov was approached by a policeman and sensed trouble. To his surprise, the officer asked: “Are you from Ored Recordings? I follow you on Instagram. You’re doing great.”

Their gathering still had to be dispersed, but the enthusiasm that Ored Recordings inspires even among enforcers of the law speaks volumes about the power of what Khalilov and his friend and label co-founder Timur Kodzoko call “punk ethnography”: the recording of religious chants, laments and displacement songs at family gatherings, local festivals, in people’s kitchens, to fight against the erasure of Circassian culture.