Ukraine's rock 'n' roll autumn

by Khristina Lew

LVIV - The cultural thaw in the last years of the Soviet Union spawned a thriving underground music scene in Ukraine. Independence has literally pulled alternative groups out of basements and set them center stage.

Music festivals like Chervona Ruta (1989, 1991, 1993, 1995), Vyvykh (1990, 1992) and the Alternative (1994, 1995) were springboards for many of these bands into the mainstream. Some broke up and were replaced by new ones, while others began recording albums bankrolled by private individuals and Western interests.

Music industry standards for the rock 'n' roll genre have yet to move into Ukraine. Few record companies outside of the National Audio Company, which recorded pop diva Iryna Bilyk's latest album, exist. The payment of royalties for music broadcast over the airwaves is unheard of.

Ukraine has no record stores that sell contemporary rock music per se. Cassettes may be purchased at street kiosks, but the selection consists mostly of Western fare - Eagles albums recorded in the 1970s and pirated recordings of bands currently popular in the U.S., like Nirvana.

Most new music gets introduced into the mainstream via the tried old tradition of taping a tape off a friend. Bands that do sell cassette tapes charge 200,000 karbovantsi, which is slightly more than $1. The only time bands see any substantial amount of money is when they play concerts or record music for television commercials.

The only way to hear new music is to inhabit obscure cafes or, more likely, go to concerts.

Autumn appears to herald the rock concert circuit in Ukraine. On September 14-15, the International Music Yarmarok in Kyiv, which imported 70 representatives from musical instrument firms in the United States, Japan and Europe, showcased Kyiv bands Aktus, Braty Blues, Komu Vnyz, Vsiak Vypadok and Lviv's Plach Yeremiyi playing their Western instruments.

The Yarmarok (fair), organized by the Ukrainian-British music joint venture Komora, also put on concerts by ex-Rolling Stone guitarist Mick Taylor and his All Star Blues Band and guitarist Snowy White, who played with Pink Floyd during "The Wall" tour.

Across the country in Lviv, the oblast's Ukrainian Cultural Fund and the newspaper Express launched the second Alternative Festival of Independent Music on September 15-17. The two-day concert, held on an indoor tennis court at the Spartak athletic club, catered to Ukraine's young people and attracted 5,000.

The show on September 16 featured the hard-core band Rokovi Yaytsia, formed in Donetske Oblast in 1994, whose lead singer performed in little more than his briefs; five-year-old 999 from Lviv whose alternative sound resembles a ride on a circus carousel; and Plach Yeremiyi, voted Ukraine's No. 1 band in 1995 by the Kyiv music magazine "Out." (The straight-up rock 'n' roll of Plach Yeremiyi, formed in 1990, blew out power for 10 minutes that Saturday night.)

On Sunday, five-year-old Mertviy Piven, also from Lviv, took to the stage and played its grunge set to poetry. Komu Vnyz, together since 1988, trained in from the Yarmarok in Kyiv to play haunting art rock rivaled by chants for the crowd's favorite, the song "Nachtigall." The British band The Ukrainians, which incorporates Ukrainian folk elements into its rock 'n' roll, closed the Alternative.

From September 18 to 24, Komu Vnyz and Plach Yeremiyi toured Lviv Oblast with the "Youth for Christ" tour, which culminated in an outdoor concert set against illuminated gargoyles in front of St. George Cathedral in Lviv.

While much of Ukrainian contemporary music cannot be considered "alternative" in the Western sense of the word, for Ukraine's new generation of music aficionados it is fresh. Guitarist Peter Solowka of The Ukrainians, whose father was born in Ukraine, complained that most of the music he heard at the Alternative copied sounds from the West and was unoriginal.

Tell that to the thousands of Kurt Cobain-shorn, bell-bottom clad teenagers waving T-shirts and flags at the Alternative's smoke-filled Spartak.

Copyright © The Ukrainian Weekly, December 17, 1995, No. 51, Vol. LXIII

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