Listen: How Ukrainian folk music threw off chains of Russian imperialism

Ukraine has long been known for its folk music and folk resistance. The full-scale invasion brought them together, allowing folk performers to display artistic pride as often as deprivations of war.

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Back when Taras had both of his arms, balancing his instrument on his knee wouldn’t have been a problem. 

He liked to play the Lira, a wooden instrument with a violin shaped body, an instrument that had existed in Western Europe since the 10th century and became popular in Ukraine in the 17th century.

But while storming an enemy trench in Bakhmut last year, his left arm was blown off by a drone attack. Since then, Taras has had to find another way.

He fashioned a strap which allows him to carry the Lira. But for the time being, he cannot play the instrument, as it requires two hands if you want to play more than one note.

Taras explains that he hopes that in a few months, when he gets his prosthesis, he will be able to get back to playing the instrument he loves – and also to building new ones, a passion of his.

Taras made this instrument himself: 

“Look at how fine it is. Is it not fine?” 

He smiles proudly and leans the body of his cappucino-coloured Lira forward to admire the glossy back and run his index finger along the instrument’s edge.

Taras and his Lira

The existential threat posed by Russia’s invasion to Ukrainian culture has forced Ukrainian performers to think more about how they can use their art to express their identity. Many musicians have turned to fusing together traditional folk culture —a genre which is often thought to be the most quintessentially Ukrainian art form — with more mainstream musical forms to generate art that is rooted in Ukrainian identity.

The folk fusion genre being used to express Ukrainian identity is not a new phenomenon. But the history of folk performance has not always been tied to empowering depictions of Ukraine. During the Soviet Union, Russia used folk performance to construct Ukrainian identity as something inferior to Russian identity.

Although Taras insists that his talent lies in crafting the instruments, rather than playing them, he is taught by a musician who, 50 years ago, made some of the first popular Ukrainian folk fusion songs.

“It’s impossible to tell my story without telling you about my teacher Volodymyr Kushpet,” he said.

Volodymyr Kushpet is one of the founders of VIA Kobza, a Soviet Ukrainian music band that blended folk music, traditional music from rural regions of Ukraine, with elements of more mainstream music like rock or funk.

However, the history and politics of folk music in Ukraine is not a simple one. 

During the Soviet Union, Russia used certain types of folk performance to propagate ideas of Ukrainian inferiority. 

“It’s difficult to explain to those who did not live in the Soviet Union… The Soviets created an artificial, unnatural, national identity that was rooted in Ukrainians having a primitive nature…In one word — fake.” Taras explains.

Taras is describing Sharovarshchina. 

The term refers to a certain representation of ‘traditional’ Ukrainian identity which was constructed by Russia as a way of constructing the imperial myth of Ukrainian inferiority and Russian superiority. 

Sharovarshchina appears to be an expression of Ukrainian folk culture, but it relies on symbols which are inauthentic, not native to Ukraine, or are only native to certain regions. It creates a static, simplistic and two dimensional depiction of what it is to be Ukrainian.

Taras explains that Sharovarshchina comes hand in hand with the colonial understanding of Ukrainians as inferior. “If we take Soviet cinema, the Ukrainian is always some kind of idiot, some kind of a stupid person…. He was forced to wear a shalpa [a hat] and sharovary [a specific type of wide trousers] and eat salo [lard], tsybula [onion], horilka [vodka],” Taras explains.

A young boy in sharovary pants (acidgreyviaGettyImages)

Sharovarshchina took the place of authentic Ukrainian culture, Anna Gaiova, a researcher and designer of traditional Ukrainian clothes, explains: “[Soviet authorities] banned everything, they had to show something because – yes of course – Ukrainians exist, so they created this acceptable expression of Ukraine identity.”

VIA Kobza, the Soviet-era Ukrainian band, presented a very different image of Ukrainian identity. Their music was also rooted in folk performance, but, unlike sharovarshchina, they showed how versatile authentic folk culture can be. They sang funked up versions of traditional folk stories — their music did not rely on repetitive stereotypes but rather tapped into the richness of the genre through their music.

And to add to that they were popular, cool and creative – and so, they posed a threat to the Soviet understanding of the world and Ukraine’s place in it.

“[Soviet authorities] saw that people liked this music and it was Ukrainian. They didn’t have it in Russia. They hung those that made this music. Volodymyr Ivasiuk. Do you know about him?,” Taras asks.

Volodymyr Ivasiuk was one of Kushpet’s contemporaries, and the composer of Chervona Ruta, one of the most famous songs in the history of Ukrainian music. His death was ruled a suicide after he was found in the woods in Lviv hanging from a tree by a belt, yet few Ukrainians believe this explanation and there is evidence to suggest he was killed by Soviet authorities.

Ivasiuk is also the inspiration for the first Ukrainian language festival, the Chervona Ruta festival, which began in 1989. Maria Sonevytsky, an expert in Ukrainian folklore revival, explains: “The festival was very explicitly about him and about the repression of Ukrainian music and culture. They travelled and staged it in different parts of the country. It became a very potent site for expressions of Ukrainian nationalism in the late Soviet period, which was exactly what the Soviets were afraid of.”

Although the Chervona Ruta festival ended the year the Soviet Union collapsed, Ivasiuk’s memory lives on in the folk fusion genre, which is as popular now as it ever was.

A brief timeline charting the development of the most modern chapter of this genre would have to start with Ukrainian singer Ruslana’s 2004 Eurovision performance ‘Wild Dances.’ 

Ruslana’s performance is a good example of how complicated authenticity and the question of Sharovarshchina can be. A crucial element of Sharovarshchina includes stereotyped presentations of Ukrainian identity.

However kitschy and absurd Ruslana’s performance may appear, her performance is informed by the time she spent in the Hutsul region of Western Ukraine doing research on traditional folk music. She uses traditional instruments like the Trembita, a long horn made of wood, which is used in Hutsul folk music. But, Sonevytsky explains that her time in the Hutsul region of Ukraine revealed that while some Hutsuls appreciated the representation, others felt offended and said her costume was too stylised and revealing to be traditional.

However, later on down the line the genre opened up and became more experimental, largely thanks to the performance group DakhaBrakha. DakhaBrakha’s four performers are from an avante-garde theatre in Kyiv called ‘Dakh’ and describe their music as ‘ethno-chaos’. Their performers all have a formal education in folk culture, but they use this knowledge to play with tradition. Their songs are known for weaving styles from different folk traditions in Ukraine and even incorporating bird calls, which is unknown in folk music but follow a tradition of folk lyrics often involving stories about birds.

Many followed DakhaBrakha’s example and continued to experiment with the genre, including Dakhdaughters, a sister band that was born from the same theatre in Kyiv. The all-female cabaret project also takes an avante-garde approach to folk music and is known for painting their faces white for performances and their strange and eerie music. Their odd appearances and powerfully weird music fit in against the backdrop of the unrest and chaos of the Maidan revolution when they rose to fame in 2013.

The rising popularity of electronic music and EDM gave rise to the sub genre folktronica, a genre which brings together folk and electronic music, which is represented best by ONUKA. ONUKA in Ukrainian means granddaughter, the lead singer Nata Zhyzhchenko, took the name in honour of her grandfather who, like Taras, was an instrument maker. 

By the time the full-scale invasion began, Ukraine’s Eurovision performances were still influenced by folk music but now they were farther away from sharovarshina than they had been in 2004 during Ruslana’s performance. While Ruslana’s ‘Wild Dances’ performance appears to be more of a highly sexed up pop version of a folk song, Kalush Orchestra’s performance of Stefaniya blends together rap and hip hop with folk music. This shows how much the genre has developed and how much more experimental musicians have become.

The beginning of the full-scale invasion brought the beginning of a new era in Ukraine, which was marked by musician Andriy Khlyvnyuk standing on St Sophia’s square in central Kyiv singing ‘Oy U Luzi Chervona Kalyna’. Although the song is technically a war song, Sonevytsky explains that it is ‘just about as folkloric as a war song can be.’ The first lines of the song translates as ‘Oh in the meadow red viburnum bent down/For some reason our glorious Ukraine is distressed.’

This performance, like most of the folk-influenced music that has come out since the full-scale invasion, has become much more associated with Ukrainian strength and sovereignty. The outcome has been a lot more music, particularly electronic music, that focuses on Ukraine as a warrior nation and returns to representations of Ukrainian Cossacks, like the song ‘The Cossacks go forth’ released soon after the full-scale invasion by PROBASS ∆ HARDI.

Over the last two decades the genre of folk fusion has gone from that of VIA Kobza’s funked up Ukrainian folk music to incorporating other genres like electronic music, rap, hip hop. The genre has now expanded so much that it has fractured into many different subgenres so that it has become something completely different.

The music, its development and proliferation, are an illustration of what a free people – unshackled by Russian authoritarianism and imperialism – can create.

After the paywall: In today’s news Ukraine has repelled a Russian offensive, and in the Reporter’s Notebook, Alessandra goes to a music concert to introduce us to some Ukrainian folk instruments and people playing them.