Oleh SKRYPKA: The cultural boom is the result of the freedom of the past five years

Unlike the previous year, when the July Ukrainian festival called Kraina mrii (Dreamland) lasted for one day only, this year’s show comes back to its ususal two-day regime. It will last July 10 through 11 on Kyiv’s Spivoche pole (Singing Field). Today the author of the concept behind this and other events carrying national coloring, legendary musician and an old friend of Den/The Day Oleh Skrypka is working on casting performers who will appear on the festival’s grounds. This year they will come from Ukraine, Russia, Belarus, Latvia, and Lithuania.

The stormy festival life that has captured the Ukrainian space in the past years, according to Oleh, is the result of preceding years he calls “freedom.”

“We have now the result of that freedom,” the musician said in his interview to The Day. “And the number of festivals, performers, interesting actions that are taking place today, as well as the change in the minds of people, is the result produced by those five years of freedom.”

In anticipation of the festival, The Day has traditionally invited Skrypka for a cup of coffee and interesting conversation that the readers will be able to read in detail in one of the next issues of The Day.