The Kazantip anthem: what it was and where to look

Short version: the old anthem links no longer work. We checked every one that used to be in this article - six of the seven return an error, because the file-sharing sites and blogs that hosted those tracks shut down long ago. Below is what that anthem actually was, and where the music can realistically be found today.

What the «Kazantip anthem» was

Kazantip never had a single official anthem. Each year a new signature track came out for the opening of the season, and that was what people called the anthem - on posters, on the radio and in the file names on burned discs. The best known ones were made by the duo DJ Boyko and Sound Shocking, which is where titles like «Kazantipa.net» come from; they still surface in search results.

The tracks spread on discs and through the file-sharing sites of the 2000s. That is exactly why any old list of links is dead today: the promodj pages, bigsound and the DJs' personal sites disappeared along with that era of the internet.

Where to look today

It makes more sense to search for a specific artist and year rather than for the «anthem». Tracks by DJ Boyko and Sound Shocking are on the music streaming services and on YouTube, and recordings of sets from the festivals themselves are there too. A search by year («Kazantip 2006») usually turns up more than a search for the word «anthem».

What became of the festival

The festival began in 1992 at Cape Kazantip near Shcholkine, and later moved to Popivka near Yevpatoria. The Crimean era ended in 2013; after that the organisers tried holding the event abroad, but it was no longer the same Kazantip. So today the word stands for a period rather than for an event you can attend.

And about Cape Kazantip itself

The festival borrowed its name from a real place. Cape Kazantip juts out from the northern shore of the Kerch Peninsula, on the Sea of Azov side. Geologically it is unusual: a ring-shaped limestone ridge, a former reef massif, with a shallow basin lying inside it. Since 1998 it has been the Kazantip Nature Reserve - steppe vegetation, salt marshes and a great many birds.

In other words, behind the loud name there is no dance floor but one of the most interesting stretches of the Azov coast. We cover Crimean routes separately - look for them in the destinations section.