„The arena personally scares me,“ says Mamania. Donciavas also cares about a very earthly question – how many tickets will we sell? And Kastetas wants an evening that people in nursing homes would still have something to talk about – how the “roof was moving” in Vilnius arena.
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That is not enough for what the group has already created. „The most important to me are the last about ten years, when we proved to ourselves that we are not moving by inertia, not riding on the baggage of hits created in youth,“ says Kastetas. The hardest part was to keep the hunger for creativity – to still have something to say with music.
For this evening, the group is giving up other concerts for half a year. „You can’t just play an ordinary concert here. This space obliges you to squeeze out not 100, but all 110 percent of yourself. After so many years on stage, it’s getting harder to surprise the audience, but that desire hasn’t gone anywhere,“ says Donciavas.
The arena is not a medal for the path they have taken. „We can play from a club party to arenas and always remain ourselves,“ says Svaras. The scale changes. The relationship with the listener – does not.
What will sound in the arena, the group does not fully reveal yet. An important place will be given to the latest album’s works, and by April there may be completely new music. „People will see the best version of Sindikatas they have ever seen throughout the group’s career,“ says Kastetas.
For Donciavas, the list of songs is only part of the work. „We care much more about the form. We decide how to present those songs: we think about new arrangements, the lineup of musicians, live sound – we look for solutions so that even well-known pieces sound completely new and powerful in this space.“
They will not be four on stage. More guests and joint numbers are planned, but the group does not disclose names yet. Kastetas explains simply – at such moments, you want to share the stage with friends.
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What remained when everything changed?
G&G Sindikatas once pushed rap from the underground to the big stage themselves. The group members today evaluate what happened after that differently. „It worked. It’s nice to be the pioneers of that cause,“ says Svaras. In his eyes, rap waves, transforms, but will not disappear anywhere.
Donciavas expresses himself more sharply. „From underground protest culture, it turned into shiny, fashionable youth party pop music. Hip hop simply became the new pop,“ he says. „For us, it was a whole philosophy with its foundations, five elements, and a deep history. For me, hip hop always went together with rock – it was protest music. Today at the top, it’s more of a glamorous background about nothing.“
And what hasn’t changed in all these years?
„Us. Values, attitude towards each other, towards music. The ability to find compromises. The ability to stay together,“ says Svaras.
Kastetas has a simpler test: „We can still spend ten hours together in a minibus and spend all that time having fun chatting and laughing at each other.“
Their connection with Vilnius has not changed either. „Our lives, our music, we ourselves are shaped by the streets of Vilnius. Here are our roots. We are its trees,“ says Svaras. Only the city itself did not stand still. Vilnius will finally have a stadium, the lack of which G&G Sindikatas once rapped about in their songs. „Apparently, after so long, we will finally have to adjust the lines,“ says Donciavas.
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