It’s been a reoccurring theme for recent votes in Armenia. That is, the use of music to attract audiences for events staged to convey political messages. During the 2003 presidential and parliamentary elections, for example, Armenia’s pop stars were dragged out to campaign for the incumbent authorities, something which is continuing today for the pro-government Republican and Prosperous Armenia parties.

However, the international community occasionally gets in on the act too, and specifically the British Embassy and the British Council who have sponsored rock concerts for the 2005 referendum and the last Human Rights Day. Interestingly, attempts by the youth movement, Sksel a, to arrange another British Embassy funded “Rock for Freedom” specifically timed to coincide with the 12 May parliamentary election have failed.

As a result, the active part of Sksel a met last weekend to discuss ways to get around official rejection of their request to hold a rock concert by the statue of Komitas in central Yerevan, as Observer explains.

This new gathering of Sksela was called “OpenSpace”. About 40 young people were citing in a circle in front of the Komitas statue, the favorite location of Sksela events, and were discussing their future plans in the “open space”, for anyone to hear and join. In fact I spotted a lady who had no relation to the action joining in with a suggestion of her own after watching these strange young people sitting on grass for a while.

As to the topic of discussion - there really was a lot to discuss: Yerevan Municipality continuously rejects permission for Sksela to organize the “Rock for Freedom” concert. obviously they’re starting to take Sksela seriously. Furtunately, noone can stop a bunch of young people from peacefully sitting around wherever they like. So anyway, there’s more in the video.

According to Observer, a decision was made to bombard the Mayor’s Office with requests for holding events which was done by two dozen people this week. What’s interesting, however, is that the idea of holding a rock concert is not what prompted the Mayor’s Office to reject the application for permission to stage the event, but perhaps fears that it would be politically charged specifically in the run-up to the election.

This appears to be the case if only because on the same day that Sksel a had it’s open air meeting, a rock concert was actually staged less than a minute away in Yerevan’s Liberty Square. The Armenian Patchwork has more on both events, and posts photographs.

Young movement “Sksela…” gathered again last Sunday. The meeting was mostly dedicated to rejections from the town hall to organize a rock concert in front of the Komitas monument. The organizers offered the people to join in an act of protest.
I left the gathering sooner than it finished to join preparations to a rock concert in front of the Liberty Square. […]

So, first about Sksela… As I was saying in the beginning the organizers told all the people who came about the rejection of the town hall. What they suggested was to began an act of protest by sending lots of applications to the town hall on some silly topics. Many of the guys actually did it, and A1 Plus has covered this. […]

This girl for example writes, “I want to be able to say what I want and not to be afraid that tomorrow I will be burnt for my thoughts.” Things aren’t that extreme in the country, and in general some were quite aggressive, which I guess is because they’re pretty young and want things to be done right away and loudly.

One of them suggested a protest in front of the town hall, and another went as far as saying we need weapons to fight the situation in the country. There were also proposals for a conference and marches around the centre.

[…]

Later the guys joined in groups around the monument to discuss the suggestions. At this point I decided to leave to see what was going on the front of the Armenian-Russian rock concert at the Liberty Square.

[…]

Some of the Sksela guys were among the audience.

The full post accompanied by photographs is here.