Question:

How are Ukrainian refugees and Ukrainians abroad finding meaning/processing grief using music today?

Differences between those who stayed and left?
Rebranding and sudden attention to Ukrainian artists?

 

There has been a revival of traditional folk Ukrainian music since the start of the war. This has been a source of healing and processing of grief in a strange turn of events; there is a return of a linguistic and musical tradition that has largely been forgotten before the war.

 

Or has it? I have conflicting sources. Some people believe that this war truly reignited a tradition that has brought unprecedented attention and linked Ukrainian refugees and those who have stayed. Another that I talked to believes that the folk tradition has been coming back into the light for decades now, and that this revival has been dramatized.

 

I am still trying to find my angle and would like to root it more to the idea of migration and the refugee experience. This is an approach I hope to take by talking to more Ukrainian refugee organizations.

 

JRN 449 Final Project Source List

 

* = musician/performer

 

People I have interviewed:

Vitaliy Bolgar* – Ukrainian director Music in World Cultures (MIWC), Singer & Guitarist
Stephen Benham – Professor of Music Education at Duquesne University, President of Music in World Cultures (MIWC)
Sonya Zhukova* – Singer-Songwriter, Musika Musika Communications (REACH OUT)
Simon Morrison – Professor of Music at Princeton University, Focus: the musical, cultural, and political histories of the Soviet Union, Russia, the United States
Solomiya Ivakhiv* – Violinist
Maria Sonevytsky – Associate Professor of Anthropology & Music at Bard College

 

To reach out to:

Jana Strukova, PhD’ 07 Princeton Theological Seminary (leads program at church that welcomes Ukranian refugees)
Interfaith Refugee Resettlement Committee
Princeton For Ukraine (I connected with the Facebook Page)
Ukrainian Institute of America
Nadia Shpachenko, piano (concert at Ukrainian Institute of America on Nov 17 that I was invited to, they said I could speak to her)