M1 music television station blends a modern, innovative style with a mix of the traditional (01/04/04)

M1 music television station blends a modern, innovative style with a mix of the traditional

by Roman Woronowycz
Kyiv Press Bureau

KYIV - With a coffee-colored complexion and dreadlocks extending to mid-spine, Myroslav Kuvaldyn does not have the appearance of your typical Ukrainian, if such a thing in fact exists. He projects alternative lifestyles in his dress and in his ideas.

On the other hand, Karolina Ashion, all 5 foot 9 inches of her stylishly outfitted body, lets you know with a flash of her brilliant smile and glimmering almond-shaped eyes that she is indeed an average, successful young adult, Ukrainian-style.

The 28-year-old Ukrainians, both of whom have Nigerian fathers, are two of the brightest talents of Ukraine's very popular music television station, M1.

Obviously, neither one of them can be said to embody the channel's "krov z molokom" theme, a traditional Ukrainian description for the purity and beauty of a fair-skinned Ukrainian maiden.

The channel's "krov z molokom" motto, and its allusion to innocence, is a striking juxtaposition to the sexually charged subject matter that dominates contemporary music videos, which the music channel's on-air tag - a flow of red ooze that slowly covers a white background and the M1 logo - effectively projects.

Karolina and Myroslav are two examples of how far previously Soviet-dominated Ukrainian radio and television has come in the last 13 years. They work for a television channel that since its inception in 2001 has presented the newest Western norms and traditions of musical television - very much in tune to the standards set by the grandfather of music television, MTV.

M1 is up-tempo, with hyperactive VJs filmed with irregular, quickly changing camera angles in the style pioneered by MTV. It supplies a steady diet of video clips of pop music acts, interspersed with top-10 ratings shows and show biz news to a Ukrainian audience that reaches all corners of the country, the first such channel to do so.

But what makes M1 most interesting is that it is the first Ukrainian music entertainment program to offer a mass venue through which Ukrainian musicians can express their talents and publicize their music. It succeeds by mixing a dose of the disrespectful with a dollop of mainstream.

In their attitudes towards music and from their outer appearances as well, Karolina and Myroslav reflect the wide variety of Ukrainian demographics the music channel is attempting to incorporate. Karolina, who reads show business news for M1 and has a half-hour program on the latest gossip from Hollywood and other entertainment hot spots, presents a bright and bubbly persona. In person, she is slightly more reserved, but gives off the same positive, feel-good attitude she presents before the camera.

The Sumy-born Karolina, whose Ukrainian is impeccable, likes Whitney Houston, but also listens to Norah Jones, Justin Timberlake and Bryan Adams. She explained that her musical tastes are open to everything from hip-hop and electronic to mainstream rock. She emphasized, however, that the song, and not the singer or the genre, usually first captures her attention.

Tall and athletic Karolina, who has a degree in economics and was a team handball star in high school, was "discovered" in classic fashion by M1's executive producer, Oleksander Asauliuk, as she sat with her mother in a Kyiv café drinking coffee in 2000.

"He just came up to me and said that, with a face and smile like mine, I should be on television," said Karolina.

Karolina said that M1 Music Television appeals to a wide-ranging viewer spectrum because it puts the onus on quality, whether that means classical rock or avant-garde productions.

A marketing specialist might complain that by being so inclusive, M1 threatens to satisfy no one and leave itself without a strong viewer base, but that would ignore the fact that Ukrainians in general are more apt to listen to the songs that please them, as Karolina admits to doing, rather than to a specific genre they have chosen to embrace, as Americans tend to do.

That allows M1 Music Television to draw on several musical wellsprings, sticking to the standard, heavy dose of Russian schlock pop offerings - which remains the most widely heard type of music in Ukraine - but also presenting a wide spectrum of global tastes, from the outlandish and the radical to the mainstream, including international acts ranging from Ricky Martin, Whitney Houston and Enrique Iglesias to Robbie Williams, Garbage, Pink and Eminem.

Yet there is room for popular Ukrainian rock acts like Okean Elzy, Vopli Vidopliasova, Ani Lorak and Tango Na Maidanyi Kongo.

Karolina's colleague at M1, Myroslav, who tends to the more avant-garde and less mainstream in his musical tastes, expressed much more displeasure with the music channel's video offerings than she. He admitted a particular frustration over the fact that Ukrainian acts get so much less airplay on Ukrainian television.

Myroslav, who was born in Dniprodzerzhynsk and grew up in Poltava, where he graduated from the Poltava Pedagogical Institute, is a strong proponent of Ukrainian music. Before plunging into television as a VJ - which he still considers temporary employment - he was part of the musical group, The View, which mixed reggae with Ukrainian folk sounds to create music with a lilting, rhythmic quality that made the group popular in the mid- and late 1990s. Unfortunately, the unstable Ukrainian market and extensive CD and cassette tape piracy, still a large problem today, forced the members of the act to go their separate ways in search of a bit of financial security.

"Once you are older than 25 years of age, living on altruism becomes difficult," explained Myroslav.

Myroslav and his main writing partner went into production and song writing before Myroslav landed his deal with M1 Music Television. Nonetheless, the 28-year-old said he is still writing music and is currently finishing work on a CD, with songs in three languages - Ukrainian, English and Russian - an album he will release once he feels that the CD market has stepped out of the economic shadows.

Myroslav said that today it is still difficult for a musical act in Ukraine to become financially successful.

"To this day, musicians continue to make a living on their performances, because most of the CDs that are purchased are still bootlegs," explained Myroslav.

The M1 VJ also expressed displeasure with the timidity and the lack of creativity among Ukrainian pop acts. He strongly criticized groups that continue to copy what they hear coming out of Europe or Moscow. He called the practice a direct expression of their insecurity or lack of talent.

"I believe that Ukrainian bands are too timid in utilizing Ukrainian folk roots, the influences that surround them. They are simply scared," Myroslav noted. "If you look at all the great changes in music they started from cultural influences."

He gave examples of how Afro-American music developed into rock 'n roll, which became hugely popular in Great Britain at about the time the British added their native skiffle to the mix.

"Katia Chili, Skriabyn, when V.V. sings - they are not just singing European rock, it is Ukrainian rock music," explained Myroslav. "I believe good music incorporates cultural roots. Bands need to incorporate their own national identities not just weakly mimic what was played 10-20 years ago."

Repeating Marshall McLuhan's axiom that the medium is the message, Myroslav expressed his conviction that if an exclusively all-Ukrainian musical channel existed it would eventually find an audience. He noted two parallel reasons that Russian music continues to remain popular among Ukrainians some 15 years after Moscow's monolithic grip on the country began to deteriorate.

First, he pointed out that whereas in the U.S. record companies and band managers are banned by law from paying radio stations to spin their CDs or for music channels to broadcast video clips, in Ukraine and Russia it is not only legal, it is standard practice and the main way radio and music television earn a profit. The second reason Russian music dominates relates to the first: because the Moscow music industry has been around for years - it is a continuation of the Soviet music industry - it has the money to throw around and the latest technology, which former republic capitals like Kyiv are only now acquiring.

"Russian producers order hundreds of broadcasts of their videos, of course they're going to become popular," explained Myroslav.

Both Karolina and Myroslav noted that Russian talent is beginning to record music and video in Ukraine, which means that real capital is beginning to circulate in the Ukrainian music industry as well.

In keeping with its wide open format - and perhaps to keep one of their most popular on-air personalities satisfied - M1 has given Myroslav a 30-minute program, "Pop.UA.," during which he presents his "alternate viewpoints," to the top-20 most popular videos in Ukraine, most of which are Russian in origin.

It is a loosely constructed show during which Myroslav - dressed in top hat and carrying a walking stick like some sort of musical Blackstone while calling himself the "minister of music" - scrutinizes the music videos that Ukrainians are watching and gives his impressions, mostly negative, while allowing phone-in viewers to speak their mind as well.

M1 also broadcasts a more typical top 20 music video countdown, but in unconventional fashion. Instead of your stereotypical fast-talking, high-energy VJ introducing each video clip, M1 has opted for a show called, "Rusalky in Da House" in which three Ukrainian beauties dressed as mermaids repose upon several large boulders and laconically discuss and then introduce the current most popular video hits.

It looks a bit odd and even contrived at moments, but somehow it is effective. And perhaps what makes M1 work in the end, in similar fashion, is its willingness to work at all points of the musical and demographic spectrum, to introduce new ideas as well as to work with old ones, but to concentrate on innovation, even when at times contrived, so as to avoid "formula" as much as possible.

Or perhaps it is simply the presence of Myroslav and Karolina that help it all look and sound so good, because in the end they are the essence, if not the embodiment, of "krov z molokom."

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