Ukraine - The West

 Ukraine has obviously entered the international conscience in the last few years due to the ongoing war.  Whilst I set out this blog to try and maintain neutrality, it is clear for everyone to see that this "Special Military Operation" is a war of aggression, and is therefore unjustified, but being a pacifist, I can't justify any war.  

As on this blog I have decided to format the music into countries, which already doesn't work with many fusions across borders, and borders are never and have never been static but change all the time, I have then the task of deciding where I draw the borders for the purpose of this blog.  I have decided to go along with the pre 2014 borders to define Ukraine, which are still recognised by the majority of UN nations.  

So, to continue our journey due south from Minsk in Belarus on our last stop, ignoring any tensions between these 2 countries, we hop across the border to the northern Ukrainian village of Nedilyshche, where legendary folk singer Nina Matviienko was born in 1947.  Starting off as a copyist, then a crane operator she went on to study philology then entering the Ukrainian State Folk Choir.  She then became something of a national treasure as she carved out a solo career championing women's rights and the folk music of her country.  Sadly she passed away in October of this year.  There doesn't seem to be much of her music available to western listeners, but here is a 2020 performance on the World Folk Vision Festival:

The Volyn State Academic Folk Choir was established in 1978 in the western city of Lutsk and is a large all singing and dancing ensemble with some 80 active members, 24 of them being dancers.  Apparently they have released CDs of their music, but I can't find them, nor do they appear to have an active website.  However there are a number of videos on YouTube of their dance performances and here is a fun one called The Enchanted Hat:

Next stop is the western Ukrainian city of Lviv.  Now if you were born in this city before World War I and are still alive today and have never left, you would have lived in Austro-Hungary, Germany, Poland, the Soviet-Union and Ukraine during your lifetime.  This part of the world has changed hands more often then some people change their underwear!  Anyway moving on with the musical theme, composer and singer Mariana Sadovska was born here in 1972.  She is considered a pioneer of blending Ukrainian folk with contemporary avant-garde elements.  Nowadays she lives in Cologne in Germany.  Here's a song from her 2010 album Just Not Forever (Re-released in 2022) called Zozulya:

Also from Lviv, and I feel I should mention her, is Ruslana Stepanivna Lyzhychko, or simply Ruslana, who won the 2004 Eurovision Song Contest.  As you may have figured out by now, I'm not a fan of that glorified schmalzfest, but Ruslana appears to be quite a talented musician and dancer, whose talent may be wasted in the commercialised world of pop, as well as having a sexy figure, which always goes down well with the voting public.  After her success she got involved in politics and even served in government for a while as a cultural advisor and was voted one of the world's most influential women by Forbes Magazine.  She still is active as a campaigner, particularly relating to the current war.  So here is a quite a moving video, presumably to boost the morale of the troops. 

The Hudaki Village Band is a troupe of 9 musicians from the Ukrainian Carpathians region on the border with Hungary and Romania known as Maramorosh and were established in 2001.  Being from a mountainous border area the regional influences are multi-faceted and include Slavic vocal traditions, Romanian melodies, Jewish rhythms and Roma temperament.  This is all delivered with panache and a great deal of humour.  Here are a couple of songs from their 2018 album Yo! called Let's Drink Boys and Mariko Do You Hear Me:

During lockdown the members of indie-pop band Tik Tu from Ternopil in western Ukraine were getting a bit restless.  Browsing around YouTube they found the joyful Malawian duo the Madalitso Band, 2 guys that had been busking on the streets of Lilongwe on battered old guitars to keep their heads above water, but came to international attention around 2017 when they performed at the Zanzibar music festival.  So the Ukrainians sent them an e-mail about how they admired their music and would they like to collaborate, remotely obviously during those days, which resulted in a single called Sitimamenya complete with accompanying video and here it is:

That's it from western Ukraine for the time being, next stop is the capital Kyiv.  In the meantime you can follow my virtual ramblings on my Tripline map.