Frenzy and beauty of Ethnic Tuesday
A new bright element in the structure of Kyiv’s entertainment
The Kyiv Art Club, located in the movie theater with the same name, will become a venue for Ethnic Tuesdays. The project is a brainchild of the Hlechyk Art Union and was organized with the assistance of the art club Kyiv, Roman Kornienko’s Choven Theater, and the music band Polikarp.
The structure of the first evening when the project was launched was nearly flawless. At first Hanna Yarovenko’s documentary Fiesta about Mykhailo Koval, a kobza player from the Cherkasy region, was screened. Masterclasses in various folk arts, from embroidery to motanka dolls, were arranged at separate tables. Actually, the concert part began with the Traditional Folk Dance School. Twenty pairs were dancing to accompaniment of a music trio made up of Bozhychi members. Latern the duo of Dmytro Levkovych (harmonica) and Valentyn Mykhailovych (drum) took over.
This was followed by Bozhychi performing in full lineup. They sang in seven voices the new songs they collected on their recent expeditions to Left-Bank Ukraine. The band’s leader Illia Fesenko and his colleagues skillfully select the repertoire, merging wistful lyricism with mischievous and witty songs.
The energy of the concert intensified. Bozhychi was followed by the band Propala Hramota, which definitely has the status of a cult group. Hramota plays up-tempo dynamic rock music, whereas lyrics are taken from ancient folk songs; however, ethnic elements were present also in the beat pattern of many compositions. It was sheer pleasure to listen and dance to the music by Pavlo Nechytailo and his friends.
The band Polikarp, a co-organizer of the party, performs folk rock music in the literal sense of the word; their lineup includes a typically rock rhythm section – bass guitar and drums, whereas the solo is performed on the dulcimer and the violin, the latter masterly played by Serhii Okhrymchuk, a charismatic participant of numerous multi-genre projects. Polikarp members perform in national costumes and for the most part preserve the national tunes, adding to them a real rock charge, at times the complexity of art rock, and the dizzying tempo.
Certainly, the Ethnic Tuesday reached its culmination during the performance of the DrymbaDaDzyga formation. The band has existed for three years only, but it has every chance to become a star in its style. Its combination is simple, though impressive: hard rock on the verge of post-punk, hard core, and at times even metal rock, and Inna Prokopchuk’s authentic vocals. This fusion is impossible to resist. Club Kyiv was raving. DJ Binghi, who closed the concert with refined electronic interpretations of Balkan melodies was essentially performing before an empty hall – the audience had pushed itself to the limit during the performance of DDD and broke up to get a break.
The audience deserves a special mention. Most of these young people were wearing embroidered shirts and Ukrainian national costumes, which did not look primitivistic at all. Nor did they resemble a walking museum. Rather, they looked like a community of modern elegant and well-educated guys, purely urban, advanced youth, for whom folk tradition is a living and relevant kind of art.
Regarding the conditions in which the Ethnic Tuesdays are going to be held – Kyiv’s interior fits perfectly with this kind of parties: it has enough space and is comfortable at the same time. Also important is that fact that the organizers provided high-quality sound, which caused no complaints.
So, the first Ethnic Tuesday was a success. If the same level is maintained, the declared purpose of the project – “to implement and popularize in Ukraine, specifically in Kyiv, ethic culture as an inseparable element of modern life” – will be quite accomplishable.
