Violinist Solomiya Ivakhiv and pianist Nadia Shpachenko’s duet reverberates through the silence of the room. The space is humble in contrast to its grandiose exterior: a three-story mansion across the street from the Met, home to the Ukrainian Institute of America. They are performing far from Ukraine, where Shpachenko used to live and where all Ivakhiv’s relatives are today. The concert named “Rediscovering Hartmann” closes on dances from the 20th-century Ukrainian composer’s Epera opera. Yet, underneath these folksy melodies, if you listen closely there is the interlude of New York City bustling underneath.

 

Rediscovery has rested at the core of Ukrainian identity since the start of the war in Feb. 2022. This is a rediscovery rooted in the revival of the past—of personhood, of lost historical traditions, and of an appropriated national culture. For these musicians, performances of largely forgotten Ukrainian compositions represent a broader phenomenon since the war: an artistic and linguistic tradition rising from the ashes.

 

However, as the global platform for Ukrainian musicians dwindles, they must grapple with how to maintain the memory of an ongoing, brutal war. Three years out from Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, over 6.7 million Ukrainians have been forced to migrate away from their homes and grapple with how they should preserve the identity of Ukraine. The response for Ukrainians has been an increasingly politicized purpose behind their musicmaking and branding as artists.

 

Shpachenko and her colleagues were ready to share a political and aggressive message in response to the Russian attack on Ukraine. “The war started on my birthday, so I was crying all night. The next morning, composer [Lewis Spratlan] passed away, we were very close collaborators. I was invited to perform at his memorial. Lewis’s brother always wanted me to play, he wrote most of his piano music for me,” Shpachenko said to the audience.

 

“He called me the next morning after the war started, and he said, ‘I want to write a piece about this war, and I want to kill Putin with it.’”

 

Before they performed, Ivakhiv told the audience that Shpachenko had been learning Ukrainian for the past few years and now refuses to speak Russian. “She is not as good as me yet, but she’s getting there,” joked Ivakhiv. Shpachenko’s choice is emblematic of a broader trend of Ukrainians agreeing upon a resistance that is centered in culture, rooted in ancient artistic and linguistic traditions. The embrace of traditional art forms has served as a form of therapy as well as a political statement to the threat of erasure of the Ukrainian identity, a movement that has become increasingly visible on a global scale.

 

Perhaps there is no better example of an artist using their work to confront political turmoil than Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Zelenskyy was a comedian and TV show star of the 2015 television series “Servant of the People” where he played the president of Ukraine before launching a real bid for the presidency in 2018. References to the series appeared in his political campaign’s logo and his inauguration. Zelenskyy too, grew up in the native Russian-speaking city of Kryvyi Rih, and delivers national addresses in Ukrainian.

 

“I believe that as musicians, we are citizens. When people say that art is beyond politics, I disagree, because art is created by people who have to be responsible for their acts, statements, and beliefs,” said Ivakhiv, sitting down for an interview. “It’s about taking a stand and I believe that Ukrainians have the right to their own sovereignty.”

 

In the aftermath of the full-scale invasion, there was an explosion of musical practices: Ukrainians have been making more music, but also creating new sounds by repurposing traditional folk music according to ethnomusicologist Maria Sonevytsky.

 

The hit song from Ukrainian group Kalush Orchestra that won Eurovision Song Contest 2022 “Stefania” represents this modernized return to Ukrainian music. The hip hop track features rap verses against lines played on traditional Ukrainian flutes, the sopilka and the telenka, and a Ukrainian folk song vocal hook. In the song’s music video, there is heavy imagery of soldiers and the war.

 

“The melody itself is from a very traditional province in southeastern Ukraine, but it’s taken a life of its own,” said Stephen Benham, president of Music in World Culture (MIWC) who frequently visits Ukraine for music development projects. “When I went there, singing and leading the camp with the kids, they were trying to play ‘Stefania’ on their violins. It was a way of protesting, but also expressing Ukrainian identity,” said Benham.

 

“We’ve been seeing musicians figuring out ways to use musical tools for advocacy. Ukrainian musicians, who had huge platforms at the very beginning, have smaller platforms now, as the world has gotten tired of the war in Ukraine, and so they’re finding new methods to call attention to their various causes,” said Sonevytsky.

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“There was a propaganda by our neighbor that Ukrainian culture does not exist. I am on a mission to share our deep, sophisticated Ukrainian culture,” said Ivakhiv. “It makes me happy to see that there is such interest in discovering Ukrainian culture through literature, music, art. But also, it makes me sad that it takes a tragedy for people to be more aware,” said Solomiya, sitting down for an interview.