Blog Tip!

Moscow Through Brown Eyes is a blog by "Buster", a graduate student and former Moscow resident, who combines experiences as an African-American in Russia with a broad interest in culture, society, literature, history and much more, which naturally results in a Chirayliq-heavy mix (as evident in the collection of attractive faces - Langston Hughes and W. E. B. Du Bois among others* - in the blog's title image).

Like Tinet, Buster has written a lot about migrant workers in Russia and other issues of social concern, but my favourite feature on MTBE is the recurring Russian Rap Friday. The last two videos have been especially sweet:



Rapper Huligan, Russian from Kazakhstan, gets to the roots with «Я провинциален» ("I'm Country").



Rapper-throatsinger Ondar sings for Tuva in Vladivostok, and Buster finds lots of yummy clips of Yul Brynner (Siberian-born Russian-Swiss-Mongolian-Roma, whom we probably should write about more) as side dishes to the main course.

*) Both Hughes and Du Bois, as well as many other African-American intellectuals, visited the USSR in the 1920's and 1930's. Hughes even travelled extensively in Central Asia in 1932, and visited China and Japan. Here's an article about how Langston Hughes' poetry survives in the school curriculum in Turkmenistan. It's also a very interesting re-telling of the chance meeting and ensuing companionship between Hughes and Arthur Koestler in the heart of Central Asia. There's also an incredible twist at the end of the story...