As Tbilisi’s famed nightclubs reawaken, a murky future awaits

Beneath Tbilisi’s Dinamo Sta­di­um, a thump­ing bassline tapers off just before 3am on New Year’s Day, and a boom­ing voice chants rhyth­mi­cal­ly in Geor­gian over the crack of a drum. A pair of giant crossed swords – the sym­bol of Bassiani’s leg­endary queer Horoom par­ty – looms in the pur­ple light over the DJ booth, where 98dots is about to tell the final chap­ter of his story.

“You can see a lot of anger, a lot of sad­ness, a lot of frus­tra­tion, a lot of tears,” 98dots – whose real name is Nikoloz Gede­van­ishvili – says a few hours ear­li­er, as he pre­pared to take the stage. ​“I real­ly want the peo­ple to go deep, to real­ly heal their souls and take every­thing out.”

“The path is com­ing, the voice / The sun is com­ing, the sea.” The mys­te­ri­ous mantras rum­ble over the soundsys­tem amid the dis­tort­ed tolling of bells. The atmos­pher­ic weight of Bassiani’s dance floor seems to be lift­ing, and some­one lets out a scream: ​“Free­dom to the régime’s detainees!” A month of resis­tance has giv­en way to a night of cathar­sis, but the wounds from recent protests are still raw.

The par­ty, which had begun exact­ly 24 hours ear­li­er, is the first at Bassiani since Novem­ber 28, when the rul­ing Geor­gian Dream par­ty announced it would sus­pend the small, Cau­casian country’s long­stand­ing bid to join the Euro­pean Union. Georgia’s under­ground club scene – regard­ed as one of the best in the world – declared a strike imme­di­ate­ly, urg­ing its com­mu­ni­ty of ded­i­cat­ed ravers to spend their nights on Tbilisi’s cen­tral Rus­taveli Avenue fight­ing ​“Russ­ian author­i­tar­i­an­ism”. Along­side Bassiani, oth­er nightlife cor­ner­stones of the city includ­ing Left Bank, Khi­di and TES shut­tered their doors, with many night­clubs launch­ing fundrais­ers to make up for loss­es dur­ing their clo­sure periods.

The under­ground scene has long been a prime tar­get for Geor­gian Dream, which direct­ed armed riot police to raid Bassiani and the city’s old­est tech­no club, Café Gallery, in 2018. At the direc­tion of secre­tive oli­garch Bidz­i­na Ivan­ishvili – whose per­son­al wealth equals a quar­ter of Georgia’s GDP – the par­ty has warmed rela­tions with Russ­ian Pres­i­dent Vladimir Putin, while turn­ing its back on the EU and tak­ing an increas­ing­ly social­ly con­ser­v­a­tive turn. In recent years, Geor­gian Dream has adopt­ed Russ­ian-style laws crack­ing down on for­eign-fund­ed NGOs and the LBGTQ+ com­mu­ni­ty, spark­ing fierce street protests.

Yet the stakes feel more exis­ten­tial in the cur­rent round of demon­stra­tions, which began a month after a par­lia­men­tary elec­tion that was marred by alle­ga­tions of wide­spread fraud. Police have arrest­ed over 500 pro­test­ers, par­tic­u­lar­ly tar­get­ing oppo­si­tion lead­ers and inde­pen­dent jour­nal­ists, with many fac­ing bru­tal abuse in deten­tion. Bands of gov­ern­ment-aligned crim­i­nals known as ​“titush­ki” roam the streets com­mit­ting unpro­voked acts of vio­lence against those same groups.

“Every­one is scared, but no one is hope­less,” said Gede­van­ishvili, adding that he sees the dance floor as an ​“edu­ca­tion­al place”, where he can take dancers on a jour­ney that begins with the sad­ness of the past few months and ends with a feel­ing of col­lec­tive relief.

Gede­van­ishvili now lives in New York, but he flew back to Tbil­isi to play Bassiani’s New Year’s par­ty. On Decem­ber 21, he helped ral­ly the Geor­gian dias­po­ra for a fundrais­er at Queens-based venue H0l0, while New York tech­no main­stay BASE­MENT also raised over $10,000 for Bassiani in a crowd­fund­ing campaign. 

Despite these dis­plays of sol­i­dar­i­ty over­seas, the pub­lic fundrais­ers and some sup­port from the Geor­gian under­ground music com­mu­ni­ty, the strike took a severe toll on the clubs, whose inter­na­tion­al acclaim belies a pre­car­i­ous finan­cial sit­u­a­tion. ​“Decid­ing to go on strike wasn’t easy, but it felt nec­es­sary,” said Gacha Bakradze, co-own­er of Left Bank. ​“Even miss­ing a sin­gle week of oper­a­tion has a sig­nif­i­cant impact, and we were closed for six weeks.” 

Locat­ed in a crum­bling for­mer indus­tri­al park next to Tbilisi’s cen­tral Mtk­vari Riv­er, Left Bank defines itself as both a club and a ​“com­mu­ni­ty space”, com­plete with a cozy brick record shop, ping-pong table, and out­door dance floor in the shad­ow of a giant, decid­ed­ly non-native cac­tus. When it went on strike, it not only can­celled DJ nights but film screen­ings, lec­ture series, and even a nascent, free-to-enroll art school.

In con­ser­v­a­tive-mind­ed Geor­gia, where the overt­ly anti-LGBTQ+ Ortho­dox Church holds mas­sive sway, the impact of the strike went far beyond the venues’ finances. ​“Clubs are the only spaces where LGBTQ+ peo­ple feel safe,” said Maku­na Berkat­sashvili, a book­er at Left Bank and music jour­nal­ist who DJed on New Year’s under their black­rain alias. ​“If these insti­tu­tions no longer exist, it means that these peo­ple will no longer have spaces where they can go and feel free and accepted.”

A stone’s throw away at TES – which puts on eclec­tic, queer-friend­ly par­ties four nights a week inside an old ther­mo­elec­tric pow­er sta­tion – staff had met for sim­i­lar con­ver­sa­tions. The club employs over 50 peo­ple, many of whom are queer and could have dif­fi­cul­ty find­ing a job elsewhere. 

“It was a big dilem­ma com­ing back,” said Otto Kax­adze, a res­i­dent DJ at TES who goes by the stage name Otton­ian. ​“But at the end of the day, it was basi­cal­ly a ques­tion of us reopen­ing now or nev­er reopen­ing again.”

Lack­ing any exter­nal fund­ing, TES opt­ed to open on Decem­ber 21, after three weeks on strike. But Kax­adze said the night of New Year’s still car­ried a spe­cial res­o­nance. ​“It was a whole mix­ture of emo­tions that we had from the days of being closed,” Kax­adze said. ​“There was this feel­ing of anger, betray­al, sad­ness, but also a feel­ing of not giv­ing up – being strong.”

At Bassiani, Gede­van­ishvili want­ed to leave dancers with a sim­i­lar sen­ti­ment: ​“The pow­er of winning.”

As the next DJ takes the booth, the cryp­tic incan­ta­tions and pound­ing per­cus­sion give way to an uplift­ing, house-influ­enced cut, and the packed dance floor lets loose. Some ravers float down the stairs toward the Sovi­et-era Olympic swim­ming pool that func­tions as the club’s main dance floor. Oth­ers min­gle with new arrivals in the grot­to that con­tains its volu­mi­nous coat check. The par­ty won’t be end­ing until the far­away hours of the next afternoon.

While wait­ing for their coats, a few ravers begin to chant in the mock­ing, sing-song tone of foot­ball hooli­gans: ​“Olay, ola, qot­se­bi dedis t’q’una.”(​“Olay, ola, fuck the moth­ers of Geor­gian Dream.”)

By the sec­ond verse, 30-or-so club goers clad in tight black leather and dan­gling pierc­ings join in the protest song: ​“Tskho­v­ole­bo, nabozre­bo, tkveni dedis t’q’unis droa.” (“You ani­mals, you bas­tards, it’s time for your moth­ers to get fucked.”)

The impromp­tu dis­play of vul­gar defi­ance didn’t feel out of place. The entire par­ty is in essence a con­tin­u­a­tion of a demon­stra­tion that had begun the evening of Decem­ber 31 on Rus­taveli Avenue. A twist on the tra­di­tion­al­ly fam­i­ly-focused ​“supra” – or cer­e­mo­ni­al feast – it had served as a tes­ta­ment to Geor­gians’ gift for turn­ing their rich cul­tur­al tra­di­tions into mes­meris­ing acts of civ­il disobedience.

Pro­test­ers set up a kilo­me­tre of card tables end to end in front of par­lia­ment and cov­ered them with an equal­ly expan­sive red table­cloth. As the final min­utes of 2024 ticked by, the giant table became a cor­nu­copia of BYO amber wine, tar­ragon soda, bean pas­tries, and pick­led peppers.

A few blocks away, in an under­ground pas­sage beneath Tbilisi’s extrav­a­gant, Moor­ish-revival opera house, Bassiani DJs threw an impro­vised out­door pre-rave. ​“The sound was amaz­ing inside [the pas­sage],” says Luka Metrev­eli, a musi­cian and for­mer res­i­dent DJ at club KHI­DI, who calls the par­ty one of the most ​“heart­felt” that he had ever attend­ed. ​“Some cos­mic forces just lit­er­al­ly aligned, because acousti­cal­ly, that place should be hor­ri­ble for music that has beats.”

The fight­ing spir­it is unques­tion­ably a part of Bassiani’s DNA. Found­ed in 2014, the club’s name refers to a 13^th-cen­tu­ry bat­tle that pit­ted the medieval King­dom of Geor­gia against invad­ing Turks. It also hap­pens to mean ​“one with the bass” in Georgian.

“[Bassiani] was cre­at­ed as a polit­i­cal club, with the aim of social and polit­i­cal changes,” said Gior­gi Kikon­ishvili, an LGBTQ+ activist and founder of Horoom Nights, the ground­break­ing month­ly queer par­ty that even­tu­al­ly gained its own ded­i­cat­ed dance floor.

From the begin­ning, the club involved itself in a range of social move­ments, from women’s empow­er­ment to queer lib­er­a­tion and envi­ron­men­tal pro­tec­tion. But its pri­ma­ry bat­tle was against Georgia’s dra­con­ian drug laws – a rem­nant of the ​“zero-tol­er­ance” anti-crime poli­cies of heavy-hand­ed reformer Pres­i­dent Mikheil Saakashvili. 

It was this asso­ci­a­tion with the White Noise Move­ment for drug decrim­i­nal­i­sa­tion that led the pla­toon of armed riot police to burst into Bassiani and Café Gallery near­ly sev­en years ago. With­in an hour, every oth­er club had closed its doors in sol­i­dar­i­ty, and thou­sands of pro­test­ers had gath­ered out­side on the street. ​“Of course, I was afraid,” Kikon­ishvili says, recall­ing the event. ​“But also I was ques­tion­ing how stu­pid [the police] are, that they think that com­ing at us with guns will fright­en us.”

The club goers marched from Bassiani to the house of par­lia­ment, where the demon­stra­tion trans­formed into a mul­ti-day rave that attract­ed DJs from Berlin’s pres­ti­gious Giegling label and inter­na­tion­al media atten­tion. With­in days, then-Min­is­ter of Inter­nal Affairs Gior­gi Gakharia issued an unprece­dent­ed apol­o­gy. By July, pos­ses­sion of mar­i­jua­na had effec­tive­ly been legalised.

The demon­stra­tion set a prece­dent that would trans­form into some­thing of an iron law over the fol­low­ing years: when Geor­gians protest­ed, ravers were on the front lines. Yet for Nika Khotchola­va, a DJ and team mem­ber at Left Bank, the under­ground scene’s ​“roman­tic” dri­ve to be at the fore­front of the fight against the gov­ern­ment has cre­at­ed expec­ta­tions that put the clubs at risk. ​“Pol­i­tics became the main mar­ket­ing force for the clubs, and that enslaved the clubs at the end of the day,” Khotchola­va says. ​“Every­one is so anx­ious, and it turned into aggres­sion toward the club community.”

When KHI­DI announced on Face­book that it would reopen for one night on Decem­ber 20, it sparked a heat­ed online back­lash. ​“The under­ground was sup­posed to be on strike first and stand­ing on prin­ci­ple until the end,” one com­menter said, while oth­ers called the deci­sion a ​“betray­al”. Still, oth­ers were quick to respond with mes­sages of support.

Yet while the club goers argued, those on the inside were in agree­ment that reopen­ing by New Year’s was a mat­ter of neces­si­ty. ​“If we are going to go on strike for one year or some­thing like that, the whole com­mu­ni­ty will be shred­ded,” Khotchola­va says. ​“If we want to main­tain the com­mu­ni­ty, we have to fol­low the idea that we are not in front of the protest.”

The stakes seem poised to rise even fur­ther, with gov­ern­ment repres­sion increas­ing and Geor­gian Dream stok­ing homo­pho­bic sen­ti­ments to stay in pow­er. In Sep­tem­ber, the par­ty passed an ​“LGBT pro­pa­gan­da law”, which out­lawed same-sex adop­tions and gen­der reas­sign­ment surgery, while empow­er­ing the state to cen­sor depic­tions of the queer com­mu­ni­ty in books, films, and media. The next day, Kesaria Abramidze – one of Georgia’s most famous trans­gen­der influ­encers – was mur­dered in her apartment.

Kax­adze, the TES DJ, sees more repres­sion against Tbilisi’s club scene in the future if Geor­gian Dream stays in pow­er. ​“They will not come in with guns [next time],” Kax­adze said. ​“They will come in with cam­eras, and they will say, ​‘All of this is hor­ri­ble, this is not tra­di­tion­al,’ and all of [their] propaganda.”

For Berkat­sashvili, the Left Bank book­er, the impor­tant next step is to expand the protest beyond the under­ground scene to oth­er sec­tors of soci­ety that wield greater influ­ence and resources. ​“It’s big­ger insti­tu­tions that have to go on strike,” Berkat­sashvili said. ​“If you’re on strike, and you’re a small busi­ness, and you’re on the verge of clos­ing down com­plete­ly, who’s going to get dam­aged – you or the government?”

The under­ground scene doesn’t have plans to shut down again any­time soon, but the strike inspired its mem­bers to forge new con­nec­tions with each oth­er and the rest of Geor­gian soci­ety. Speak Up – a group cre­at­ed while the clubs were shut­tered to spark dis­cus­sions about protest tac­tics and free­dom of expres­sion – is still hold­ing week­ly meet­ings that rotate between venues and include lawyers, jour­nal­ists, and mem­bers of civ­il soci­ety. On Jan­u­ary 15, work­ers and com­pa­nies across the coun­try walked out in a three-hour gen­er­al strike – the first of its kind in Geor­gian history.

Yet at 5am on New Year’s – when Berkat­sashvili takes the stage to play a back-to-back set with her sis­ter – she isn’t wor­ried about organ­is­ing strate­gies. ​“Every­one had this feel­ing of recharg­ing,” she says. ​“You spend your whole day stress­ing out over this whole sit­u­a­tion, and then in the evening you go out protest­ing. It’s been too much.” 

Between the inti­mate brick walls of Left Bank’s com­mu­ni­ty space, it isn’t time to chal­lenge the dancers – it’s a moment to help them heal. She plays Brit­ney Spears.

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