Crate-digging in Ukraine

An archival LP parts the late-20th-century Iron Curtain to find folk-rock, jazz fusion, disco, synth-pop & experimental music thrumming with Ukrainian tradition.

Kyiv-born Valentina Goncharova

Growing up in New York City in the 70’s and ‘80s in a nominally Catholic family with roots in Italy and Austria, in a neighborhood full of Russian and Eastern European Jews that flanked Irish, Chinese and Indian enclaves, and attending Jamaica High School with plenty of Puerto Rican and Caribbean kids, I understood I lived in a big world, even though my parents never had money for us to travel beyond occasional car trips around northeastern North America. Pre-internet, recorded music was my main cultural portal. I’d hear salsa on the radio. I’d walk to VP Records on Jamaica Ave. to dig for reggae LPs and hear clerks play the latest 12”s, titles often hand-written or rubber-stamped on blank white labels. And of course, before and after shows at CBGBs, I’d chow down on mushroom-barley soup and buttered challah at The Kiev on 2nd Avenue and 7th.

These flashbacks were triggered by a fascinating and beautiful new album, Even the Forest Hums: Ukrainian Sonic Archives 1971-1996. It collects recordings of Ukrainian music from the period before and just after the USSR’s collapse. These are fragments of an era, shards of near-lost culture that offer glimpses of parallel musical ecosystems familiar to few outside the Ukrainian community, and in particular its sub-communities of musicians and hardcore music fans.

The essential liner notes are by Vitalii “Bard” Bardetskyi, a Kyiv-based filmmaker, DJ, journalist, and record-store owner who’s been an evident mainstay of the Ukrainian music scene for decades. His 2021 documentary Mustache Funk was the beginning of what’s become a much larger archival project. The stream below, a bootleg I’m guessing, has no English subtitles. But the music needs none, and the vintage film footage is wonderful.

Despite the impressive research, the history of a lot of the stuff on Even the Forest Hums is still thin on the ground. Bu much of what makes the album so compelling is how the music speaks to us now, widening the lens on movements like folk-rock, prog-rock, jazz fusion, disco, synth-pop and new age by demonstrating how they ping-ponged around the globe, and how they served as vehicles for transmitting the beauty of individual cultural traditions that, at this very moment, land-grabbing wars and censorious internet demagogues threaten to erase.

For this reason, the physical packaging of this release — things you can hold in your hand — feels especially poignant. The LP and CD sets were produced by Light in the Attic, the Seattle-based archival label that’s been issuing all sorts of amazing music for over 20 years now. A portion of proceeds will be donated to Livyj Bereh, a Kyiv-based volunteer group working to rebuild in the regions affected by ongoing war in Ukraine.

But yes: the music. Listen to this, from 1996, which to my ears suggests a musical cross between Meredith Monk and Iceland’s Sigur Rós.

Bardetskyi writes about the artist in the liner notes:

Ihor Tsymbrovsky is an architect, painter, graphic artist, poet, and, finally, a musician from the wonderful western Ukrainian city of Lviv. This album, which I had the honour of producing, was recorded live in a few hours and in two takes, and it still provokes a heartbeat. Ihor, in love with the French poetic avant-garde of the beginning of the 20th century and Ukrainian futurism and neoclassicism of the last century’s 20s, developed a whole conceptual microcosm in his music featuring a shrill falsetto reminiscent of a boys’ church choir and a grand piano that sounds more like a dulcimer. Personally, I have no idea how to describe this music—extraterrestrial magic that feels almost the same as it might have three decades ago.

I was also knocked by this track from by Svitlana Nianio (ne: Okhrimenko), which also reminded me a bit of Meredith Monk. It’s a solo project by the singer in the alt-rock group Sugar White Death (Cukor Bila Smert), also represented on this set, with a song that will likely appeal to fans of Cocteau Twins and This Mortal Coil.

The album runs more or less chronologically, beginning with Kobza, a folk-rock band of sorts who suggest a Ukrainian Pentangle or Incredible String Band. Kobza became something of a watered-down franchise, according to Bardetskyi, as original members moved on (sound familiar, classic rock fans?) But their early records are excellent. “Bunny,” from their 1971 self-titled debut, is jazz-rock with flute and an electrified bandura, a Ukrainian instrument that recalls an autoharp.

Kobza, with their custom electric bandura.

The freedom of modern improvised music informed the sound of Shapoval Sextet, a sort of Ukranian cosmic jazz outfit. On “Oh, Get Ready, Cossack, There Will Be A March,” a live recording from 1976, the horns search, swing, howl and groove alongside funky organ grooves and wah wah guitar. Vodohrai’s “Remberance” (1978) feels like it could be a Hubert Laws or Bobbi Humphrey track, although the kinetic hand drumming gives it Slavic flavor. Both group’s were projects of saxophonist Aleksandr Shapoval, a musician from the central Ukraine industrial city Dnipro — the target of Russian missiles this past summer.

Hand-drumming also powers “Play, the Violin, Play,” a giddy string-draped disco number spun from a folk song that indeed bears passing resemblance to “Fly, Robin, Fly,” as the liner notes point out, but with a wild array of voices that made me think of musical theater.

The oddly-named Er. Jazz is “jazz” in a loose and modern sense, with odd vocal chants and Slavic melodies (Asian ones as well) adding tension and texture to the mix. Their performances were a signature part of Kyiv in the late ‘80s. Bardetskyi’s description reminded me of Moondog’s street performances in New York City in the ‘60s:

“Er” stands for “erotic,” but the name of the group can be misleading; in fact, there isn’t much eroticism or jazz in the music. “Erraticus,” probably fits better here—wandering, nomadic. Initially, the group was referred to as Er. J. Orchestra, being rather a neo-hippie commune. Theatrical performances of the collective and spontaneous street jams sometimes gathered more than a dozen musicians on one stage and were accompanied by dance groups, poetry readings, slide shows, and video installations. Indeed, it would be difficult to imagine Kyiv of the late 80s without this travelling musical attraction; Er. J. has become an integral part of the city as has Andriyivskyi Descent, the main tourist street of Kyiv on which the group would especially like to set up camp. The meditative sound of “Jazz” was mainly acoustic, embracing Slavic and oriental melodies, elements of progressive and jazz-rock, and diverse ethnic instruments.

I was equally intrigued by the music of Yarn, a group that featured Oleksander Yurchenko, a major figure in Ukrainian new music who Bardetskyi compares to Arthur Russell. “Viella” is a hymn played on modified Ukrainian “cymbals” — not the familiar percussion instruments, but rather forms of cimbaloms, the Hungarian hammered dulcimers, whose roots extend back to the 7th century BC via the Babylonian santur, which seeded the Chinese yang ch’in, the Middle Eastern kanun, the European harp and harpsichord, and on and on. The Ukrainian cymbal is a unique cultural signifier in its own right. But its sonic connection to global music history is a reminder of how connected we all are — a connection present even in the the most cherished elements of our individual tribal cultures.

You can find more of Yurchenko’s music on the Bandcamp site for the Ukrainian Shukai label, producer of archival deep-dives by a number of musicians included on Even the Forest Hums. (Shukai is co-run by Bardetskyi and some of the other folks who worked on the new LP.) Also recommended is Shukai’s parent label, Muscut, which distributes new music from Ukraine, Estonia, and elsewhere — there’s some very cool stuff here. And if you’re interested in hearing more specifics about how Even the Forest Hums came together, a fascinating tale, there are excellent stories posted in The New York Times and Rolling Stone.

Below you can check out a short promotional film, put together by the label with help from Bardetskyi, which fills out the picture, followed by a streaming playlist of the album.

ENDNOTES: The archivist spirit of this project reminds me of what Ian Lynch of the Irish prog-drone-trad group Lankum has been doing on his wonderful podcast Fire Draw Near, which dives deep into histories of Irish song via lost and forgotten recordings. Lankum have two long-awaited U.S. dates next month, both in Brooklyn. Catch ‘em if you can; they’re an absolutely amazing live act. (I’ll be there for at least one show if not both.) I’m woodshedding a column devoted to new Irish trad music for later this year, since there’s so much good new stuff; stay tuned.

Finally, our friends over at Music of Africa posted about a new compilation LP of 1960s & ‘70s recordings by the legendary Hallelujah Chicken Run Band, the outfit that trained the young Thomas Mapfumo — aka: Zimbabwe’s Bob Marley and then some. As always, the Substack is worth a read, and a listen. Enjoy. - Will

Pick of the Week - Hallelujah Chicken Run Band (Zimbabwe)