Nadia Shpachenko and her colleagues were ready to share an aggressive political message in response to the Russian attack on Ukraine. \u201cThe war started on my birthday, so I was crying all night. The next morning, composer Lewis Spratlan passed away, we were very close collaborators,\u201d said Shpachenko, to her audience during a concert at the Ukrainian Institute of America in New York.<\/p>\n
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\u201cLewis\u2019s brother called me the morning after the war started and he said, \u2018I want to write a piece about this war, and I want to kill Putin with it.”<\/p>\n
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Russian President Vladmir Putin\u2019s 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\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
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As the war continues, Ukrainian musicians must grapple with how to maintain the memory of an ongoing, brutal war. Three years out from Russia\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
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Before they performed, Ivakhiv told the audience that Shpachenko had been learning Ukrainian for the past few years and now refuses to speak Russian. \u201cShe is not as good as me yet, but she\u2019s getting there,\u201d joked Ivakhiv.<\/p>\n
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Shpachenko\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
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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\u2019s thriving literary and musical traditions according to Simon Morrison, a professor of music at Princeton University who studies the former Soviet Union and Russia.<\/p>\n
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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 \u201crednecks.\u201d \u201cIf you watch a comedy show in Russia, you see Ukrainian spoofs in terms of how they speak and their accents,\u201d said Morrison.<\/p>\n
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Russia\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
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\u201cTerrible things happened via these systems of repression, creating a repertoire of work. Now, you find these ancient songs and they resonate with Ukrainians,\u201d said Morrison. \u201cYou’re seeing this incredible effort from the Russians to obliterate anything to do with national cultural identity\u2014 archival collections, institutions\u2014to leave Ukraine as a wasteland.\u201d<\/p>\n
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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.<\/p>\n
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\u201cThere\u2019s been an explosion of musical practices. One main reaction to the full-scale invasion was to make more music and to repurpose old music,\u201d said ethnomusicologist Maria Sonevytsky.<\/p>\n
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The hit song from Ukrainian group Kalush Orchestra\u2019s win in the Eurovision Song Contest 2022, \u201cStefania,\u201d 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\u2019s music video depicts a soldier in war trying to save her daughter and garnered over 73.3 million views on YouTube.<\/p>\n