A Future for Ukrainian Music?
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- 25 Jan 2023
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Part three of our Kharkiv-based correspondent, Ilya Kovalenko’s deep dive into the Ukrainian rap (and related) scene
Ukrainian music is really experiencing probably the biggest renaissance in its history right now, but just like any other field, it faces many challenges that have to do with how people in the country perceive it.
At the moment, the average local listener adores anything Ukrainian, whatever it may be, and I think it’s great when people are finally starting to be interested in and proud of their national product.
I see it as the first stage in the development of the Ukrainian music scene. Since we are gradually discarding Russian music, we have started to notice that there is a lot of Ukrainian music and there are alternatives for almost any genre.
It’s great to see that people have started to listen to Ukrainian music, but the next stage in the development of the Ukrainian scene is to separate the good Ukrainian music from the bad. It’s a time when the demand for Ukrainian music is soaring, people like everything that is simply made in Ukrainian. Maybe we need to think that there may be something wrong with some of this music?
“Sharovarshchina”
Yes, people support Ukrainian artists, but they often don’t notice that a particular artist is making music without any effort. Nowadays such a term as “Sharovarshchina” has gained popularity – it is a deliberate use of Ukrainian national symbols, historical events, stereotypes in the songs, which everyone has heard of, and speculations on the war theme.
As the result, the majority of mainstream and popular songs broadcast on radio, shown in commercials and promoted every day, sound like a set of pseudo-patriotic lines; repeating words such as “sharovary”, “sopilka”, “???”, and “??????”.
The song DELAMER – ?????? ??????? (rap ua) #??? #russiaterroriststate was released at the beginning of the full-scale invasion, with a large number of Ukrainian rappers joining in. The main motif of the song and the chorus sounds like, “Take up arms”. The video sequence shows footage of military action. But the interesting thing is that almost none of these rappers took up arms for real and such boasting may offend the military, who risk their lives every day to defend the country at the front. Read More…
