The culture ministry of Chechnya — a republic in the south of Russia — is taking steps to ban music it considers too slow or too fast. The move comes as the government aims to squash outside influence on its conservative Muslim population.
Chechen Culture Minister Musa Dadayev announced the change after a meeting with local state and municipal artists, stating [via the Moscow Times], "From now on all musical, vocal and choreographic works should correspond to a tempo of 80 to 116 beats per minute."
"Borrowing musical culture from other peoples is inadmissible," Dadayev continued. "We must bring to the people and to the future of our children the cultural heritage of the Chechen people. This includes the entire spectrum of moral and ethical standards of life for Chechens."
All things considered, between 80 and 116 beats per minute (BPM) is relatively slow for most Western popular music. This rules out a majority of tracks from dance genres, including techno, house and drum and bass. These restraints also place restrictions on most other genres.
For reference, some examples of songs too fast for Chechnya include "DVP" by PUP at 148 BPM (and probably the rest of their discography, who are we kidding?), "Black Sheep" by Metric (124 BPM), "Rich Flex" by Drake and 21 Savage (153 BPM) and "Blame Brett" by the Beaches (156 BPM).
Some songs that are now too slow for the Chechen people are Joni Mitchell's "River" (61 BPM), "Complicated" by Avril Lavigne (78 BPM) and "Lover's Spit" by Broken Social Scene (also 78 BPM). Their loss!
Though much of Chechen traditional music falls within 80 and 116 BPM, local artists have until June 1 to re-write their compositions to fit within the new guidelines.
