For Ukrainian musicians, rejecting Russia is a matter of national pride
AILSA CHANG, HOST:
Russian President Vladimir Putin claims that Ukraine has no national identity of its own. Well, Ukrainians are trying to prove him wrong, and musicians are a part of that cultural battle, as NPR's Daniel Estrin reports from Kyiv.
VITALY ABRAMOV: (Singing in Russian).
DANIEL ESTRIN, BYLINE: It's about midnight on a snowy street, and a guitarist is singing in Russian. We approach him, Vitaly Abramov.
ABRAMOV: If you talk Russian, it doesn't mean that you think you are Russian.
(Speaking Ukrainian).
ESTRIN: Then he performs a song in Ukrainian.
ABRAMOV: (Singing in Ukrainian).
ESTRIN: Many Ukrainians speak both languages. Russian and Ukrainian share most of the same Cyrillic alphabet and a lot of vocabulary. But they're further apart than, say, French and Spanish. Which language you speak and sing in can be a statement.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
VAGONOVOZHATYE: (Singing in Russian).
ESTRIN: Anton Slepakov, lead singer of Ukrainian electronic band Vagonovozhatye, used to only sing in Russian.
ANTON SLEPAKOV: (Through interpreter) It didn't bother anyone. I used to perform and live with my former band in Russia. We recorded music there.
ESTRIN: It made business sense, too. Singing in Russian attracted more fans. The best paid gigs were across the border in Russia. But Slepakov gave all that up after Russia invaded Crimea and sparked a separatist war in Donbas in eastern Ukraine.
SLEPAKOV: (Through interpreter) The summer after Russia annexed Crimea, we were in talks to play in this very cool Russian club called Chinese Pilot. But during the negotiations, Russia's aggression in Donbas began. And we as a band decided we cannot tour in Russia. We not go in there.
(SOUNDBITE OF VAGONOVOZHATYE SONG, "WHERE ARE YOU FROM?")
ESTRIN: He and many artists stopped performing in Russia, and his band stopped singing in Russian. He only writes in Ukrainian now. This is his very first song in Ukrainian.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "WHERE ARE YOU FROM?")
VAGONOVOZHATYE: (Singing in Ukrainian).
ESTRIN: The chorus is in English. Where are you from?
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "WHERE ARE YOU FROM?")
VAGONOVOZHATYE: (Singing) Where are you from? Where are you from? Stop it.
ESTRIN: Ukrainians have been revisiting that question of identity. For centuries in the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union, Russian was promoted as the language of culture. Ukrainian was stereotyped as a language of peasants.
TARAS SHEVCHENKO: We have this thing we call inferiority complex.
ESTRIN: Keyboardist and percussionist Taras Shevchenko is with the Ukrainian band Go_A.
SHEVCHENKO: People that even didn't hear Ukrainian music - they already think that it's bad and it's not interesting and it's not worth listening to.
ESTRIN: Now it's the law that about a third of music on the radio must be in Ukrainian. Russia falsely claims Ukraine is suppressing native Russian speakers. Ukrainians say they're trying to build a national identity.
SHEVCHENKO: I just love this language. This language makes me proud to be Ukrainian.
ESTRIN: Go_A represented Ukraine on the world stage at last year's Eurovision Song Contest, with Ukraine's first-ever performance at Eurovision sung entirely in Ukrainian.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "SHUM")
GO A: (Singing in Ukrainian).
ESTRIN: The song is called "SHUM." It borrows from a folk song of the Chernobyl region, where the nuclear disaster in the 1980s forced residents to abandon their homes. Lead singer Kateryna Pavlenko wanted to promote a musical tradition that was wiped out in Chernobyl.
KATERYNA PAVLENKO: We have our unique culture and our unique traditions. And Chernobyl - it's not only about catastrophe. It's about people. It's about people's lives.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "SHUM")
GO A: (Singing in Ukrainian).
ESTRIN: Their song was the runner-up in the European audience favorite vote. Today, it's a Ukrainian anthem. I heard a musician playing it on his flute in a Kyiv subway station.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
ESTRIN: This year's Ukrainian Eurovision contestant withdrew last week. Word got out she had performed in Crimea under Russian occupation. It was a scandal, which goes to show even after eight years of war, music remains a battlefield. Daniel Estrin, NPR News, Kyiv.
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