Update 04/05/2022

JETLAG-2022 SERENDIPITY: NO WAR

The JetLAG-2022 program will be focusing on the anti-war message and a fundraiser, although we wish and hope that Russia's aggression in Ukraine would stop by then. We know that even once it’s over, a more continuous, global and vicious circle of war, violence, repressions, hatred, partitioning, division and displacement, will be still ongoing as it has always been. We, therefore, see it as a time to contemplate the roots of a great tradition of open-air music festivals countering this evil with the wisdom, beauty and boldness of the liberal and transformational arts, striving for freedom, peace and justice, for a better world to come.

Symbolically enough, the JetLAG’s site is located near Woodstock, where one of the most memorable and iconic festivals relevant to this great tradition has taken place once upon a time. The peaceworker and freedom-seeker spirit of such festivals, utterly American, is also very international. It has similar and different channels all over the world. We share the legacy of the Soviet Joan Baezes and Bob Dylans, the “bardic (folk) song” movement with its underground open-air forest “slyoty” (gatherings), the clandestine productions, and other social and cultural resistance practices from direct protests to internal and external emigration.

As a diaspora-initiated festival of three generations, we recognize immigration, displacement and exile as our shared destiny, which is also, in fact, an American destiny. We dedicate JetLAG-2022 to supporting Ukrainian refugees. Our goal is to collect 50K from the JetLAG ticket sales profit, merchandise sales and donations and to donate it to the refugee aid efforts. We encourage all of you to support this cause, as well as join all kinds of actions, performances and workshops that would reinforce the JetLAG-2022 spirit.

JETLAG-2022 TICKETS WILL BE ON SALE ON FRIDAY, APRIL 8, AT 3PM.

SERENDIPITY AGAINST WAR!
THE MUSES ARE HEARD!
WELCOME TO JETLAG-2022!

Update 03/10/2022

𝗧𝗛𝗘 𝗠𝗨𝗦𝗘𝗦 𝗔𝗥𝗘 𝗛𝗘𝗔𝗥𝗗

𝙄𝙣𝙩𝙚𝙧 𝙖𝙧𝙢𝙖, 𝙣𝙤𝙣 𝙨𝙞𝙡𝙚𝙣𝙩 𝙈𝙪𝙨𝙖𝙚

There’s an old saying that “When the cannons speak, the muses are silent”. We believe in the opposite, that when the cannons speak, the muses are heard.

Horrific and scary things are happening right now. And it’s exactly for that reason that we must stay together, be together, and act together. And what it means to be “together” is being challenged now more than ever. But we must try for this “togetherness”.

Since 2009, we have worked against all kinds of spiritual “jetlags’’, all kinds of divisions, walls, gaps. We have always kept a fragile thread of unity, connecting people of different cultures, languages, generations, and views. In fact, there are many people who could not have met anywhere else but at JetLAG - and so they did, eventually making friends, great collaborative projects, and families, for life to go on. This is what we have always been good at, and this is still the best thing we can do to support the thread of light against the darkness. This work of ours, this duty of ours, is now apparently being changed and reshaped, but it’s not being canceled.

The horrific events of today barely lend themselves to a party or a festivity. History also teaches us that, during and after such enormous disastrous upheavals, music, poetry, culture, and social life are never the same. But in spite of that, JetLAG has always been on its very special mission of integration, inclusion and unity. We are and will continue to be producers of cultural events that unify people.

And so it will be.

We are committed to helping people in Ukraine who need medical aid, evacuation support, and other forms of humanitarian assistance.

We are committed to helping refugees in all accessible ways.
We are committed to helping people in Russia who are going through increasingly hard times.

We are committed to all JetLAG-connected and JetLAG-minded people here in the US and wherever else they may be on this turbulent, rapidly and unpredictably changing planet.

Our diverse and unique community needs, and deserves, to be encouraged, affirmed, uplifted by faithful friends and good music. Stay with us, more announcements are ahead.

Yours,
JetLAG crew