KORTATU IN WARSAW PART 3: INTERVIEW WITH FERMIN MUGURUZA

Matt Crombieboy: Hi mate, thanks for talking to us. Tell us about your trip to Poland in 1987 please.

Fermin Muguruza: We travelled from Irun (Basque Country) by train. It took a day and a half to get there, and a day and a half to get back. But even though it was a three-day trip for only one gig, we didn’t hesitate when we were approached with the idea of playing in Poland. I love travelling by train, and going from Irun to Paris, then from Paris to West Berlin, and from East Berlin to Warsaw gave us the opportunity to talk to all the different people getting on and off the train.

There were five of us on the train: us three Kortatu band members; Jitu, who always travelled with us as a roadie, assistant; and Antonio, the brother of the record company guy – he had studied in Poland and helped us with translating and interpreting. I remember that people in Poland were generally very friendly and wanted to talk to us.

Did the People’s Republic of Poland seem like the ‘totalitarian’ country that people make it out to be today?

We were in the midst of the Cold War, there were hostile political blocs and political propaganda permanently issuing accusations of ‘totalitarianism’ about the regimes behind the Iron Curtain. It did feel like the bureaucracy there was quite heavy-handed, and the first thing you got to hear from people was jokes about ‘Stalin’s tower’ – by that, they meant the Palace of Science and Culture in the centre of Warsaw, which had been a present from Stalin. The joke went: What’s the best view of Warsaw? The one you get from the Palace of Culture and Science – precisely because you couldn’t see the ‘Stalin tower’ from there.

The kind of authoritarianism that I hate was one of the great mistakes of socialism. But even so, a ‘totalitarian’ country is one that prohibits abortion – not one that defends women deciding over their own lives.

Kortatu was a radical left-wing group, though. Did you have any sympathies for socialist Poland, or wasn’t it your kind of socialism at all?

In the Cold War my position was clear: I was with the socialist bloc. The dissonance that anti-capitalist westerners experienced when confronted with ‘actually existing socialism’ always had an impact, and in my specific case it was accentuated because I always advocated libertarian communism – an anti-authoritarian anarcho-communism. But still, even if I was a friend and follower of Redskins, who propagated ‘Neither Washington nor Moscow, but international socialism’, it was clear to me that supporting the socialist bloc, even in a critical fashion, was necessary.

The Róbrege festival was apparently perceived as a kind of cultural protest against government censorship. Did you know about this at the time?

Since it was organised by the university, we thought they were advocates of a socialism with a human face, which we supported – and of course, freedom of expression was written on our banners too. We didn’t know it was a bit oppositional. We saw that they invited the Soviet band Va-Bank and Benjamin Zephanian. There were dub poets who spoke of class struggle like Linton Kwesi Johnson, so we had no doubts about the nature of the festival. In fact, I am still certain that the government supported the festival in terms of infrastructure, accommodation, etc at all times.

You also appeared on a Polish TV show, and there’s a clip on YouTube where you sing the ‘Eusko Gudariak’. I’ve been told that you were very drunk on that TV show – is that true?

Yes, we became close friends with the Soviet band Va-Bank, and of course they had brought a lot of Lenin badges and several bottles of Vodka. We got totally drunk and did a delusional interview. The translator was a daughter of Spanish Communists who had fled the country after the Civil War. We told her that we were going to make up stuff and that she could translate whatever she wanted. And well, when one of the TV hosts invited us to sing a Basque song, we got up and sang the ‘Eusko Gudariak’. Who would have imagined that 30 years later people could watch it on a channel like YouTube?

In fact we also interviewed the interpreter you just mentioned, Dolores.

You spoke to Dolores? Wow. She was charming all the way through our visit. She introduced us to her family, and they taught us a lot about that other reality what wasn’t shown on our TV news back in the west. I really have a very fond memory of her. Could I have her contact details?

I’ll ask her, but I’m sure she’ll be happy to talk to you. By the way, I heard you were also interviewed on a Polish radio programme – and that you caused a scandal by provoking the interviewer. Is that true?

The programme was actually run by some weird wannabe oppositionists, and when they asked us about Nicaragua’s Sandinista movement because of the well-known Kortatu song, we declared our full support. The interviewer said that he could indeed understand Sandinismo, but the problem was that there was so many Cubans in that movement. Of course, when that was translated back to me, I started shouting ‘patria o muerte’ (fatherland or death), ‘venceremos’ (we will win) and other Cuban slogans. To each new question, without even waiting for the translator, I just went off and shouted ‘viva Fidel’, ‘viva Che’, And well, that’s where the interview ended because I answered all questions with Cuban slogans: ‘Ni un paso atrás ni pa coger impulso’ (Never take a step back, even if it’s just to gain momentum)…

What memories do you have of your concert at the Róbrege festival?

I have great memories. There was only one idiot who stood in the front row with a ‘Viva la Contra’ sign. So I insulted him and dedicated the song ‘Nicaragua Sandinista’ to him – a song that was chanted along by the whole crowd, around 5,000 people. There was also an attack by some nazi skinheads, but we stopped playing, the lights went on and the security staff kicked them out.

Did you find the skinhead trouble ironic, considering that Kortatu were a kind of skinhead band? I know you didn’t particularly like labels like punk or skinhead, but the influence was there both in your music and in the way you dressed.

Yeah, they were fucking mentally retarded nazi skinheads who didn’t know about the Jamaican-British working class multiculturalism that spawned that movement. We stopped playing, the lights came on, and some very tough Polish security staff unceremoniously kicked them out. Even before the lights went out again, I stood there shouting “against fascism, against racism: no pasarán!”, and we kicked into ‘Zu atrapatu arte’. The gig became even more exciting with great pogo dancing everywhere.

What else did you get up to during your three-day visit of Warsaw?

As soon as we finished the television interview, we had some anarchists waiting for us at the entrance of the television station. They thought the interview we did has been totally transgressive, and they wanted to show us Warsaw. We got some Polish currency as an allowance that we could only spend there, so we went wandering around Warsaw, visiting record stores and buying Polish punk music and buying photo books about World War 2 in book stores. I even bought a slideshow player.

Did you talk to Polish punks or skinheads?

Yes, we always had company wherever we went. And in fact, we had a very close relationship with the people of Antena Records, an alternative Polish label with libertarian tendencies. They distributed our albums and even released my solo album In-komunikazioa in 2002, with the lyrics translated into Polish in the booklet.

My relationship with Polish punks and skins has continued to this day. On the last international tour I did in 2013, a group of them travelled from Poland to attend the anti-fascist May Day concert I gave in Berlin. And I filmed with them for a documentary on ska music.

Thanks very much for the interview, Fermin.

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