Nadia Shpachenko and her colleagues were ready to share an aggressive political 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,” said Shpachenko, to her audience during a concert at the Ukrainian Institute of America in New York.

 

“Lewis’s brother called me the 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.”

 

Russian President Vladmir Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine is nearing the end of its third year. Back in Ukraine, blaring air raid sirens reverberate across the streets, but today, only a bustling New York City accompanies the melodies of 20th-century Ukrainian composer Thomas de Hartmann. Violinist Solomiya Ivakhiv and pianist Nadia Shpachenko are performing far from their homeland of Ukraine, where Shpachenko used to live and where all Ivakhiv’s relatives are today. For them, performances of largely forgotten Ukrainian compositions represent a broader phenomenon since the war: an artistic tradition rising from the ashes, molded into political messaging.

 

As the war continues, Ukrainian musicians 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, wondering how to preserve the identity of Ukraine. Today, the response for Ukrainians has been an influx of music connected to the Ukrainian identity and an increasingly politicized purpose behind their branding as artists.

 

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 source of morale, 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.

 

Historically, Slavic traditions associated with Russian culture come from Ukraine, where the origins of Slavic civilization took root. Through the 18th century, Russia was a relative cultural desert in comparison to Ukraine’s thriving literary and musical traditions according to Simon Morrison, a professor of music at Princeton University who studies the former Soviet Union and Russia.

 

For hundreds of years, Russia othered and reduced Ukraine through cultural condescension. Russian narratives have perpetuated stereotypes portraying Ukrainians as linguistically and socially rustic, as “rednecks.” “If you watch a comedy show in Russia, you see Ukrainian spoofs in terms of how they speak and their accents,” said Morrison.

 

Russia’s most acclaimed artistic figures have strong ties to Ukraine, but this aspect of their backgrounds have been mostly erased. Composer Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky spent over half his career in Ukraine and his second symphony incorporated Ukrainian folk songs. Novelist Nikolai Gogol was ethnically Ukrainian, yet never published works in Ukrainian because the Russian empire prohibited it.

 

“Terrible things happened via these systems of repression, creating a repertoire of work. Now, you find these ancient songs and they resonate with Ukrainians,” said Morrison. “You’re seeing this incredible effort from the Russians to obliterate anything to do with national cultural identity— archival collections, institutions—to leave Ukraine as a wasteland.”

 

Music is at the core of a resistance within an artistic-cultural battleground. As a defiant response to the Russian repression of Ukrainian heritage, Ukrainian musicians have reclaimed folk music. Though, as the war continues, artists have been experimenting with old music to create a distinct, modern Ukrainian sound.

 

“There’s been an explosion of musical practices. One main reaction to the full-scale invasion was to make more music and to repurpose old music,” said ethnomusicologist Maria Sonevytsky.

 

The hit song from Ukrainian group Kalush Orchestra’s win in the Eurovision Song Contest 2022, “Stefania,” is a representation of folk music changing amidst the war. This modernized return to Ukrainian music is a hip hop track, merging rap with traditional Ukrainian flute lines and a folk vocal hook. The song’s music video depicts a soldier in war trying to save her daughter and garnered over 73.3 million views on YouTube.

“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 to Ukraine, 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.”

 

This reinterpretation of folk music has also functioned as a mode of global solidarity. The lead singer of Ukrainian rock-pop band BoomBox sang a 20th-century song associated with military resistance in front of the St. Sophia Cathedral in Kyiv shortly after the invasion. The clip became viral on social media and was initially remixed and shared by South African artist The Kiffness in “ARMY REMIX.” The clip proceeded to garner attention from a growing number of remixers by various artists across the world.

 

As a result of the war, Ukrainian musicians have acquired an unprecedented global platform that was driven by a geopolitical conflict. Due to the rise of new Ukrainian music being deeply connected to a political foundation, the content of Ukrainian musicians’ most popular work has been about the war and Ukrainian identity.

 

“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. They’re finding new methods to call attention to their various causes,” said Sonevytsky.

 

Ukrainian artists have taken to the trend of political pop, looking to new hot-button social causes for their work. Jerry Heil who represented Ukraine in the Eurovision Song Contest 2024 released the song “#AllEyesOnKids” in August, raising awareness about Ukrainian children being illegally deported by Russia.

 

Still, Ukrainians say that there is still a great demand in Europe for this Ukrainian music. Many Ukrainian musicians have left Ukraine to nearby European cities, including pop musicians who are find profitable tour audiences across Europe.

 

“Ukrainians abroad will go to concerts because it’s Ukrainian music, their language, and it connects with them,” Vitaliy Bolgar, a Ukrainian guitarist and singer-songwriter whose family sought refuge in Germany. “Other people come because Ukrainian music is so beautiful. They actually begin to sing Ukrainian songs in the Ukrainian language. It’s influencing the overall fabric of Europe and connects Ukraine more towards Europe at a heart level.”

 

For some artists, Ukrainian pride has been an integral part of their platforms long before the war. Violinist Ivakhiv released her first album consisting of works from eight Ukrainian composers in 2016, when there was a smaller platform.

 

“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. “It’s about taking a stand, and I believe that Ukrainians have the right to their own sovereignty.”

 

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 political satire series “Servant of the People” where he played a history teacher unexpectedly elected the president of Ukraine, before launching a real bid for the presidency in 2018.

 

Zelenskyy’s role in the television program was uncannily art imitating life. zthe portrayal of Ukraine overrun by evil oligarchal corruption reflected a national worry of Soviet corruption. The Party of Decisive Changes was renamed the Servant of the People in honor of his bid during the 2019 Ukrainian parliamentary election.

 

Zelenskyy also grappled with the preservation of Ukrainian culture linguistically, growing up in a Russian-speaking region. He learned Ukrainian for the presidential position in 2018, and now gives national addresses in the native tongue.

 

[how to transition out?]

 

“Ukrainians when they’re heard, are typically heard at moments of political volatility,” said Sonevytsky. “Some Ukrainian musicians feel strongly that they want to keep making music like before, that doesn’t necessarily have a political message.”

 

A return to old music has served a political cause for many artists, but at its core still functions as a personal, therapeutic device.

 

“These songs were about the experience of being alive and the suffering one has, there was no sense of nation when they were created,” said Morrison. “It’s a part of the texture of life. Ukrainian art is fundamentally about the smaller epiphanies, the profundities of individuals.”

 

The return to folk music and other traditional art forms marks a broader renaissance of the Ukrainian identity and its community—reviving personhood and lost historical traditions.

 

“The idea, and even word for identity is relatively new in Ukrainian studies. They would use words closer to the definition of ‘personality,’” explained Benham, who was writing a dissertation in Ukrainian studies in 1997.

 

In the return to Ukrainian folk music, the power of Ukrainian identity is amplified through the guttural singing style and using the Ukrainian language.  “You’re trying to communicate how you’re feeling about your country, to other the people that don’t know you. We’re experiencing a wave, telling people this is who we are. Folk music is a very important way of letting people know what you’re going through,” said Bolgar.

 

Traditional music forms have functioned as a healing source for traumatic events across migrant communities. Culturally centered music is gaining recognition as a therapy protocol for migrant trauma patients, according to the National Institute of Health.

 

“Music has always played a really important role for Ukrainians, as for many people around the world. It’s always been a source of comfort and a symbol of resilience for people,” said Sonevytsky.

 

Music & healing

 

Political music and needing the attention with a dwindling platform

 

Dance scene quote, carpe diem attitude and a bursting art scene in response

 

Politicization internationally of arts in solidarity with ukraine, cosmopolitan artists rebranding, spotfy removing artists

 

At its core it is still used in a meditative and personal way

Healing, trauma

A migrant tradition

 

 

It is personal AND political

 

– – –

“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.”