Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has upended every aspect of life in that country, including its thriving music community.
There’s something for nearly every listener in Ukraine. Fo Sho, three sisters based in Kyiv and Kharkiv, blend hip-hop with influences from their Ethiopian heritage. Onuka offers up haunting electro-pop. Postman’s delicate acoustic indie-pop reveals his love of Bob Dylan, Nick Drake, and David Crosby.
As promoters in Ukraine shied away from booking Russian acts, more venues became available for homegrown talent. “We had an opportunity to take the place of the other artists,” says Pochtar, then playing in the psychedelically inclined band 5 Vymir . “We were really young bands, and suddenly we started to play the big venues. They were, like, half empty. But we played on a big stage with proper acoustics, with proper equipment, and people loved it.
Since 2014, Ukraine has also developed its own festivals, indie labels , and live venues. In Kyiv, the Stereo Plaza club packs in 5,000 fans, while at nights, a furniture store in town turns into Closer, a gathering for DJs and electronic music heads. Last summer, a new techno club, Arsenal XXII, opened in a national arts center building that was once a weapons factory.
“We don’t think in this moment about [the festival],” Kulyk says. “We don’t talk about how to do this. We talk in this moment only how we don’t lose our Ukraine.” Rather than waiting on calls from artists, Kulyk is trying to find housing and shelter for the almost 100,000 people who have poured into his home base, the large Western Ukraine city of Lviv, near the border with Poland. “It is like I am organizing the biggest festival of my life,” he says.
“None of the artists would live here,” says Onuka singer and frontperson Nata Zhyzhchenko, currently huddled with her husband and two-year-old son in their home outside of Kyiv. “Maybe some 10 percent who wouldn’t have a possibility to go somewhere else.” She adds, chillingly, “We are in a war zone, and I don’t know if I will be alive tomorrow.”
Adds Death Pill drummer Anastasiya Khomenko, “There will be songs dedicated to the heroes who laid down their lives defending us, to every brave man who went through this terrible war, to Russian battleships which can fuck right off. Our music will become heavier, filled with anger and hatred. We will never be able to forget and forgive them all the evil they have done to us.”
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