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 regime’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, Cafe 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 13th-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 Cafe 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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