Over the past few weeks, I’ve tried to highlight more music from Ukraine and in an early blog post, I featured some videos of Ukrainian musicians.
Many of those selections were provided by Daniel Rosenberg, Radio producer and presenter on shows like Cafe International, Afropop Worldwide and a contributor to the Rough Guide series. Rosenberg was working on a Rough Guide to Ukrainian music until the founder of that series passed away.
In the interview posted, Dan and I talk about some about–and hear from–some of musicians who’ve had to flee Ukraine or who have stayed behind. We also discuss some comparisons between now and what took place during World War II when Jewish people had to flee the war and a pandemic and in some cases, put try to put their children to bed in underground shelters, while above, the bombs were hitting their towns.
Check out our talk and sample of the music, which is featured throughout the conversation.
Hudaki Village Band - Dana Maye Dana
Dan Rosenberg writes that the nine-piece Hudaki Village Band regularly performed at the EuroMaidan demonstrations back in 2013-2014. They hail from the Ukrainian Carpathians and “are the masters of the alchemy of musical-vibrating happiness. In 17 years of performing in hundreds of festivals and concert halls across Europe, the band has learned to make their archaic, night-time moments of happiness accessible to the uninitiated.”
DakhaBrakha - Carpathian rap
DakhaBrakha is a world-music quartet from Kyiv, Ukraine. Dan writes that the band reflects the fundamental elements of sound and soul, and creates a world of unexpected new music.
DakhaBrakha was created in 2004 at the Kyiv Center of Contemporary Art. “Having experimented with Ukrainian folk music, the band has added rhythms of the surrounding world into their music, thus creating bright, unique and unforgettable image of DakhaBrakha. It will help to open up the potential of Ukrainian melodies and to bring it to the hearts and consciousness of the younger generation in Ukraine and the rest of the world as well.”
Yiddish Glory - Transnistrian Lullaby
Dan says “Transnistrian Lullaby” is a lullaby written by a young mother named Relly Bley in 1942 during the war and a typhus epidemic in a ghetto in Mogilev-Podolsk, Ukraine. She's trying to put her 2-year old to sleep, and wrote, “In picturesque Ukraine, it’s death that greets us.
Luman Seidjalilov- Tym-tym · Traditional
Another selection from Dan.
You can listen to a shorter version of our interview on Saturday's World Music Show (4/9/22) on VPM Music 107.3 or 93.1 or streamed via this website.
