J-Lo Is Back in the Former USSR as Putin Drives Stars Out of Moscow

(Bloomberg) -- Shortly after wrapping up a residency at the Sphere in Las Vegas, Backstreet Boys made their debut in Kazakhstan. A few weeks earlier, Jennifer Lopez had played there and in neighboring Uzbekistan. In July, Justin Timberlake sang in Azerbaijan and Georgia.

Across the former Soviet bloc, music fans have seen a surge of interest from some of the biggest names in US music since Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine effectively shut down Moscow as a tour destination in 2022. 

More than 20 global artists from Guns ‘n’ Roses to Bruno Mars have played in central Asia and the Caucasus since then, most of them for the first time. For the performers, it’s a way to tap into the lucrative Russian market, while music fans from Moscow get to maintain contact with western culture. Demand among Russians for tickets to concerts abroad has exploded this year, with the Yandex Afisha site reporting a 70-fold increase. 

For countries like Kazakhstan, Armenia or Georgia, it’s a noisy revolution that is bringing new kinds of work, new ideas and a sense of new possibilities opening up, despite the horrors of Putin’s war.

“Before the war in Ukraine, this city mostly hosted washed-up former stars,” said Sergey Chikin, a rock fan from Almaty, Kazakhstan’s commercial capital. “Now people come here from across the former Soviet Union, including from Russia.” 

During the high period of globalization, Moscow was one of the biggest hubs in eastern Europe for live gigs. Western rock stars headed to the Russian capital to cash in on a booming economy and the tastes of a growing middle class.

But the war and the sanctions that followed upended Russia’s relations with the US and Europe, and US President Donald Trump’s efforts to broker a peace deal have yet to bear fruit. Even if an agreement is reached it may be years before tensions subside.

As that old world broke down, Russia’s neighbors stepped in, reaping immediate economic benefits from a spike in tourism and consumer spending, as well as more intangible gains. 

Household consumption in central Asia has surged 8.6% on average over the past five years, according to Oxford Economics. In Georgia’s it’s been growing at 4.7% since the invasion and is projected to grow 5%, the European Commission forecasts show. A similar outcome is expected for Armenia, according to international institutions.

In early November, rock fans from across the region shuffled past gray apartment blocks and stern metal fencing in downtown Tbilisi to see the classic rock band Deep Purple play in Georgia for the first time in a dozen years.

Once the concertgoers had got past the doorstaff at the Tbilisi Sports Palace, a renovated landmark of Soviet architecture, they were greeted by state-of-the-art-sound and lighting systems. 

“The production side gains experience show by show,” said Giorgi Gugeshashvili, a backstage manager helping to run the night. “What used to have me shaking with nerves is normal now.”

When lead singer Ian Gillan took to the stage, he was greeted by an eclectic and excited crowd from across the former Soviet world who joined in with the band’s classic hit Smoke on the Water.

“It’s very lovely to be here,” he told the audience, where Russian tourists mingled with Armenians, Poles and Ukrainians, as well as local Georgians.

Just turned 80, Gillan isn’t quite an A-lister in the league of J-Lo or Timberlake, but his tour is a marker of how quickly things have changed in the shadow of the war on Ukraine.

Deep Purple played more than 60 times in Russia and even visited Dmitry Medvedev, a massive fan, in his official residence when he was president. They’ve since condemned the invasion and handed back the gifts he gave them.

For all Putin’s ambitions of restoring Moscow’s imperial dominance, the Caucasus and central Asia concerts show how the parts of the former Soviet empire are moving further from Russia as a consequence of the war.

One reason why western stars can visit Yerevan, Almaty and Tbilisi is because their governments have avoided showing support for the Kremlin, whereas their Belarusian counterpart, Alexander Lukashenko, has thrown his lot in with Moscow.

“In Belarus there are no concerts at all,” said Oleg, a 57-year-old construction worker who traveled from Minsk to see the gig. “Politics killed everything off.”

Political tensions do linger in the background. At a 2023 gig in Georgia by the US band The Killers, a Russian fan invited onto the stage went down badly with parts of the audience. 

“Artists and their teams have become much more careful,” said Gugeshashvili. “They read the news, see what’s happening, and after that, they don’t make the same mistakes.”

On this night, the crowd in Tbilisi joked between songs about Trump’s latest pronouncements, corruption scandals in Kyiv and how Putin’s war had killed the Russian music scene.

“Nothing like this happens back home anymore,” said Elena, a 43-year-old entrepreneur who’d traveled from Moscow to see the show. 

“Music shapes the public mood,” said Hayk Simonyan, the founder of Doping Space, the company that staged J-Lo’s first concert in Yerevan in August.

An impromptu 2015 concert by Kanye West in the Armenian capital opened Simonyan’s eyes to the possibilities of live music. West was traveling with his wife, Kim Kardashian, whose father was from Armenia. 

“The city’s atmosphere changed overnight,” he said.

But his ambitions were frustrated for the best part of a decade, held back by a lack of funding from local promoters, a dearth of skilled technicians, and the skepticism of international acts about whether they’d find an audience. The J-Lo gig was his breakthrough. 

“The first fully realized commercial mega-event in Armenia’s history,” he called it.

Simonyan calculates that the 15,000 visitors it attracted spent about $20 million in Yerevan, generating about $3 million in tax revenue and millions more in free advertising exposure to the singer’s 250 million followers on social media. 

Another 15,000 people traveled to Tashkent for her gig while Timberlake drew crowds of more than 50,000 in Azerbaijan and Georgia.

Behind those numbers are jobs, businesses, and links forged across the region as an entirely new industry takes shape. With engineers gaining experience in running the sound and lights for big shows, cities across countries of the former Soviet Union are building the local expertise required to put on such shows.

“I’m proud,” said Leila, a 19-year-old Georgian student from Tbilisi. “If you look back two or three years, none of this existed.”

--With assistance from Chris Miller and Michael Ovaska.

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