The Beat Goes On

Some of Armenia's top pop stars have been singing for their suppers at presidential election campaign rallies. Here are some notes from my column in The Moscow Times; for more images and info on the Armenian campaign circus, see photo-journalist Onnik Krikorian's blog.

As the race for the Armenian presidency heats up, with candidates hurling abuse at each other and gunshots fired outside campaign offices, pop music has emerged as a significant propaganda tool in this increasingly fierce struggle for power. Last week, Serzh Sarkisian, the current prime minister and the favoured candidate of the political establishment, deployed Armenia’s 2008 Eurovision Song Contest hopeful Sirusho (pictured above) as he chased the youth vote.

Sirusho is a winsome but chaste-looking former child star who seems to specialise in romantic ballads with an ethno twist. She’s one of a series of Armenian pop stars who’ve joined the Sarkisian roadshow and publicly declared that they’re down with Serzh. “We have not made that decision forcedly,” one of the politically-committed crooners insisted. “We did that with the call of the heart.”

When it comes to sugar-sweet choruses and faux-R&B grooves, the opposition candidates seem to be lagging behind. However, Levon Ter-Petrosian, the first president of post-Soviet Armenia who recently made a dramatic comeback and is challenging for the top job again, does have a feisty little ringtone available for download from his website, featuring a campaign-trail chant over a breathless house groove. It’s called Struggle, which fits nicely with the clenched-fist campaign logo and Warhol-style portrait on the site, as Ter-Petrosian seeks to portray himself as the righteous avenger riding into town to confront a ruling elite which he has compared to a criminal gang.