Street Racing, Drunkenness and Caucasian Hip-Hop: The Best of YouTube, Georgia

So as I wait for my Uzbekistan visa to come through, I don't have much to do. I'm at my sister's in upstate New York, lying on her couch, with an occasional excursion outside to snowshoe in the frigid weather. I have a lot of reading I'd like to do before my upcoming trip, but I get easily distracted. Today, the distraction has been YouTube, and seeing what sorts of videos I can find from the stops along my trip. So, over the next several days, I'll be presenting the Best of YouTube - Central Asia/Caucasus.

There are a few genres that have come up again and again on this search, including:
-- hip-hop videos
-- folk music videos
-- fancy cars or drag racing
-- nationalist war documentary-style propaganda
-- videos that show how beautiful the maker's city/country is, with some sort of local music in the background

I'll follow the same itinerary I plan to follow on my trip, so we'll start in Georgia.

This guy is apparently the biggest rapper in Georgia, Shavi Prinsi, which means "Black Prince."   

These kids look about 15, and are Ossetian. I can't tell if they're from North Ossetia (which is part of Russia) or South Ossetia (which is part of Georgia, and which I'll visit). Their name, if my terrible Russian is correct, means "South Side" (which I hope means they're from South Ossetia) and the song is "Iron Rap." (If I'm wrong, I welcome corrections.) When they get older and become the Beastie Boys of the Caucasus, you can say you saw them here first.

This one is really pretty cool, but for some reason I can't embed it here, so you'll have to go to the YouTube site yourself. It's called  "Drunk Batumi" and is by an "avant poet" from Batumi, on the Black Sea, which will be my first stop in Georgia.

There are better street racing videos in other countries, but anyway, this one is still pretty good.

Here's an Ossetian folk-music video featuring some furious accordion and a somewhat inexplicable tug-of-war scene.

Finally, one from Abkhazia, the breakaway province that used to be the Soviet Union's top beach resort area. It's apparently in bad shape now, but this is some nostalgic video from the Soviet days, with a smooth jazz soundtrack.

If you have any suggestions for things I ought to add, either from Georgia or from any of the other countries, I am still accepting nominations.

UPDATE: I just ran across this, it's a somewhat Goth band from Georgia called Yorick, singing something based on The Master and Margarita. It's quite nice, actually, thanks to this guy for finding it.

Comments

[Elizabeth]

Hi there. Your project looks interesting! Thanks for linking to me. Drop us a line via e-mail, we can chat when you get into Dushanbe.