Katy and I first heard Daria when she performed at the Topic Folk Club in Bradford. Her music reflects her Russian and Ingush roots, ‘intertwined with multicultural influences she has experienced on her turbulent and exciting journey through life’. (her words) She is also wonderfully quirky. The songs that she sings tell wonderful stories of her family. She was the first folk singer that I have met who carried with her a photo album on which at least one of her songs was based. I am going to include this song ‘The Moon and the Pilot’ to provide you with a further taste of her repertoire. She is well worth going to see live.
With The Moon and the Pilot, we remember those for whom 23 February 1944 was the end of the world as they knew it and the start of an outrageous injustice which cuts deep, even to this day. It’s the story of a family and a nation banished from their homeland – Ingushetia – under the orders of Stalin. The dictator declared them enemies of the state in 1944 – when in fact they had been fighting for Russia in the war, and lost loved ones in the process. In the middle of winter, on 23 February 1944, Ingush and Chechen people were brutally deported from their homes… Despite being written about an atrocity carried out over 70 years ago, the theme of ‘The Moon and the Pilot’ is achingly current. A song of our time, a song for a world where people are displaced every day by inhumane governments and war.
