Pussy Riot unexpectedly occupied the spotlight at the Tallinn Music Week, as Estonian president Hendrik Toomas Ilves, who addressed the Baltics’ largest music industry forum at the Estonian capital’s Nordic Hotel Forum on Friday, spoke in support of the musicians. Alleged members of the Moscow feminist punk band were imprisoned last month after performing an anti-Putin “punk prayer” in a church.
The statement in defense of the women came at the end of a speech given by Ilves devoted to the link between rock and roll and freedom.
Speaking to the delegates, Ilves showed extensive knowledge of rock music, citing Neil Young, the Sex Pistols and PJ Harvey, and referring to MC5 and Jello Biafra as well as to the Czech underground art-rock band Plastic People of the Universe, whose members were put in prison on charges of “an organized disturbance of the peace” after an unsanctioned rock festival in 1976.
“There’s a band right now in Moscow who staged a protest against the prime minister,” Ilves said.
“Four women, they are called Pussy Riot, and as a result of doing this protest, set in a church, they were arrested. They’re being held without bail for two months and they’re being charged with seven years in prison. Very young women in their 20s, they have young children. So you see, rock and roll — with all these clichés about being subversive — well, it is subversive, but in some places this subversion is taken seriously. And just to show you what can get you seven years in a Russian jail, I’ll put [a video of the protest] on. Keep in mind it’s not all fun.”
 
 
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