1 year into war, Ukrainians turn to music for strength to keep fighting
Althea Manasan | CBC Radio | Posted: February 24, 2023 9:00 AM | Last Updated: February 24, 2023
‘Uplifting is what we need right now,’ says Gogol Bordello frontman Eugene Hütz
Last summer, at an undisclosed location somewhere in Ukraine, the American gypsy punk band Gogol Bordello played a secret show for members of the Ukrainian military.
Some of the soldiers even joined the band onstage, playing instruments — drums, guitar, an accordion — while dressed in military fatigues.
"The fact that we could be there tangibly, you know, face to face with the defenders, it's completely something else," Eugene Hütz, the band's Ukrainian-born frontman, told The Sunday Magazine host Piya Chattopadhyay.
"To see that those songs are serving such a purpose of keeping that morale high right now meant to me more than any kind of review or anything like that."
As the Russian invasion of Ukraine reaches the one-year mark, music has been a source of strength for Ukrainians both at home and around the world. Hütz, who fled Ukraine with his family after the Chornobyl disaster in 1986, is just one of many artists using their talents to contribute to the war effort and keep people's spirits up.
After the war broke out last year, the members of Gogol Bordello — named after 19th-century Ukrainian author Nikolai Gogol — decided to rework their new album, Solidartine, to infuse it with themes of unity and perseverance.
"It actually makes all the sense in the world that people look to recharge with this kind of music," Hütz said. "It is inspiring, it is uplifting, and uplifting is what we need right now."
Finding joy in turbulent times
Music and the arts have always been deeply important to Ukrainians, says Melanie Turgeon, a professor of music at the King's University in Edmonton who also directs and conducts a Slavic chamber choir in the city.
She said she has been "really moved" by how Ukrainians "have clung to music" during the war. She shared anecdotes of friends in Ukraine who spent this past Christmas caroling door to door, even with the conflict looming over them.
There has been a long history of attempts to strip Ukrainians of their cultural traditions, says Turgeon. In the 1800s, Russian emperor Alexander II issued a decree banning the use of the Ukrainian language. But some musicians resisted this — composers secretly wrote musical scores with Ukrainian text, keeping their compositions to themselves to avoid persecution.
Today, examples abound of Ukrainians leaning into music despite the chaos of war. Early in the invasion, a video went viral of a young Ukrainian girl singing Let It Go (from the Disney film Frozen) while hiding in a bomb shelter.
Bella Ciao, an anti-fascist protest song originally from Italy, was translated into Ukrainian and has become an anthem of freedom and resistance. Ukrainian folk-rap group the Kalush Orchestra, which won last year's Eurovision Song Contest, has been performing around the world to raise funds, and even played in the streets of Lviv, in western Ukraine, a few months after the invasion began.
Turgeon says this ability to find refuge in music is part of why Ukrainians have been so resilient.
"They have that mindset that, 'OK, it's really bleak, this is my picture, but I can for a moment step away from that and take joy in this song,'" Turgeon said. "And I think that's so, so powerful."
'We work hard and we party hard'
Concerts are still being held in parts of Ukraine, even in areas where there is no electricity, says Anna Evstigneeva, manager of the Kyiv-based rock group Love'n'Joy.
She says the cultural agency Kontrabass Promo, which promotes independent Ukrainian music, has been organizing sold-out shows in Kyiv.
"It's incredible what people are doing," said Evstigneeva, who is currently on tour in Europe with Love'n'Joy.
Evstigneeva is part of a group of musicians and industry insiders who founded Musicians Defend Ukraine (MDU), an organization that raises money through charity concerts and direct donations. The funds are used to provide supplies like first aid kits, medicine, ammunition, body armour and even vehicles to fellow musicians who have put their careers on hold to fight on the front lines.
Members of Love'n'Joy, Kontrabass Promo and Ternopil-based recording studio Shpytal Records started the initiative in the early months of the invasion. Over the last 10 months, MDU says it has raised more than 240,000 euros (about $344,000 Cdn).
"Our enemy wants us to just get depressed and not to do anything," said Lesik Omodada, a co-founder of MDU and owner of Shpytal Records. "[But] we just want to show that we are strong and we work hard and we party hard."
Omodada says that in Kyiv, "people go [to] the concerts like every concert could be the last, and they are really having the time of their life there."
Hütz says his fellow musicians are doing an "amazing job" elevating the mood of Ukrainians. He says that Ukraine's musicians — from the ones performing to raise money and morale to the ones who are actually fighting on the front lines — are united with the country's armed forces in their mission.
"Unlike the Russian army, [which] doesn't know what they're doing and why they're doing it, the Ukrainian army knows exactly what they're doing," Hütz said. "They're chasing a narcissistic, psychopathic intruder out of their house."