A long time coming Made in UA

When one has spent more than ten years of their life in Ukraine and has made many different friends from many different walks of life, but primarily those who are involved in the development of contemporary Ukrainian cultural life you start to miss those friends a great deal when you are far away from that environment. This feeling started to come upon me surprisingly just this past Saturday as it was Mykolaya, or St. Nicholas Day, that day that St. Mykola brings children gifts. This longing for those friends happened the day after I got together with some guys I went to high school with, one of them I hadn't actually seen for nearly as long as it has been since I finished high school. While the three of us had one common bond it became apparent to me that I lived in a completely different world than they do. The time in Ukraine was like a self-imposed exile from my home in Canada in a new home with new people and in a new place, and there was nothing wrong with this, it was a period in which I needed to really live through it was more than anyone I knew in Canada could live through in a life time.

Now I am once again in exile, another self imposed exile that is required for work on a book that has been incubating in my mind for over a year and half now. I have started writing and there are are episodes of that book that are directly related to Ukrainian music, some of which I have mentioned in passing on this blog. But it has been an extremely long time since I have actually written something here, and when I did write it was not about a happy event, but the passing of one of those musicians that I met and who I considered my friend. All his friends will miss Andriy Valaha, but they must continue and move on.

So even though the album came out so long ago, and Mis'ko Barbara of Mertviy Piven', gave me a signed copy of it some time ago, when he told me about Dana and Shockolad, in the spring I never really had the time to sit down and listen to Made in UA. A compilation of songs to the poetry of Yuriy Andrukhovych, I knew that when I finally did sit down and listen to it, it would be when time was something I had and serious listen would be possible.

That time came over the weekend, as I was in the midst of writer's block, and jumping between writing an episode on my first encounter with my Ukrainian cousins in 1985, in Leningrad of all places, and an episode from nine years later which is related to Barabara, and other musicians from L'viv, when we all met in Ternopil, a city so different than Leningrad.

Now just a little about Made in UA. Just like I was searching for something contemporary and new back in the late 1980s, getting a little tired of traditional folk music, there were others who were searching for something new and refreshing on the Ukrainian music scene, and 20 years one of the bands to appear on the contemporary Ukrainian music scene was Mertviy Piven', sure there were others, but anyone who has been following what has been going in Ukrainian music there are probably less than a dozen bands or individual musicians that have been active all these years. One of them is MP, but also coming out of that boisterous period as the Soviet Union was crumbling there were others, Eduard Drach, Maria Burmaka, Plach Yeremii, and while I'm not going to mention those that went the way of the Dodo, there are few that made it on to the scene then that are still around.

If you want something that is a mix of the sometimes in-your-face poetry of Andrukhovych and something that regardless of their twenty-year history, pick up Mertviy Piven's Made in UA. I had fun listening to it, and there were even a few tunes that were a little contagious.

A funny thing happened to me at the Top...

Well once again I have found the energy and reason to write something related to music. Even though the Eurovision Song Contest is just around the corner, I've become fatigued by all of that hoopla. In fact I lived through it for the period it was here in Ukraine as the the English language Web Journalist in 2005. I saw all the ins and outs... and really, the only guys who I met who were really professional were the lighting crew from Sweden.

Well, you may be wondering what Top I have in mind as you read the title of this post. Top, has many different meanings, but maybe I it would be more apropos to say Spinning Top, after all that is what a Dzyga is. Hence, I was not at the top of Hoverla, Ukraine's tallest peak, but at 35 Virmenska Street (Armenian St.), in one of my favourite cities anywhere: L'viv'; where Dzyga is located. Prior to about 1995 it was located in the Powder Tower in L'viv. It was there that I met with the founder and friend of mine Markian Ivashchyshyn, in 1993, and I first heard the name Ruslana, as a performing artist. And a place I also ended up sitting until the wee hours of the morning with Pikardiska Tertsia's manager and friend Roman Klymovsky, at the end of July in 1994. But I think that that will have to be a completely different blog entry... [Someone remind me about the story of Vsevolod, coffee and Roman, and I will try to find the time! I'll also include some pics of Ruslana with Pikardiska Tertsia and Taras Chubaj and I will include them in that blog entry.]

Yes, nearly a month as passed, before I have sat down to recall what just happened at Dzyga.

An organizational meeting of the 20th Anniversary for a student organization, had just finished, where I was in attendance. That organization played an extremely important role back in the late 1980s and early 1990s prior to Ukraine's independence. At that time, I happened to be extremely involved in Ukrainian-Canadian student life, and the changes that were going on here in Ukraine, even though I was located thousands of kilometres away in Montreal. Earlier that day, April 16, I had met with an old friend Rozhyk, to work on some annotations for an commemorative photo album.

Fortunately, a few years back I had scanned pictures I took during my first visit to Ukraine. That visit, was a reciprocal visit to the Ukrainian Canadian Students' Union (SUSK) invitation of a number of students from Ukraine to attend their annual congress in Ottawa, in August 1989, just two months after the Tienanmen student uprising, that left a number dead, and chilled relations between China and the democratic world. A year earlier, the leadership of SUSK had been at the founding conference of Studentske Bratsvo (Student Brotherhood) in the city of L'viv(May 1989); however, the organization included sisters as well. So what does this have to do with music.. it has a great deal to with it.

Amongst those that were invited to Canada during the summer of 1989, was to have been a young Maria Burmaka, who had been one of the laureates at the First Chervona Ruta Festival in Chernivtsi, where she performed Oleksandr Oles' poem, accompanied on guitar, Oj ne kvitne vesno. Unfortunately, Maria did not get her passport in time to make that trip, but a number of years later I met her in Montreal nonetheless; at a demonstration and ceremony to commemorate the 1932-33 Famine in Ukraine(Holodomor).

Oh yes, back to the brotherhood and Dzyga!

So what does Studentske bratsvo have to do with music? One hell of a lot...

I can't recall the year exactly, but I believe it may have been shortly after the student hunger strike on what was then the Square of the October Revolution, now Independence Square (Majdan) in Kyiv in 1990, which they organized the first Vyvykh [Whirlwind] festival in L'viv. This festival featured a variety of local musicians and others popular ones at the time. I recall from a VHS cassette that was couriered to me through undetermined channels at the time, that Plach Yermii was definitely performing. I particularly remember Litayucha Holova. But from what brothers and sisters tell me, there were also performances by Vika Vradiy, Mertvi Pivni, Braty Hadjukyny and others.

Then, there was a second second Vyvykh Festival, that I think happened in 1992... sometime in the fall.. but .. after 10 years in Ukraine.. and nearly 20 years later.. there is only so much one can remember.

So back to the TOP!

So this organizational meeting is winding up and Markian Ivashchyshyn walks in with some packages. He opens them and starts handing out copies of Spivanyk Studentksoho Bratstva, they were literally hot of the press. The ten or so people gathered around the table went silent, and started leafing through the 272 pages, published by the Students' Brotherhood of Ivan Franko L'viv National University. I was included amongst those flipping through the pages.

The collection of songs is divided up into five different sections: Comical Songs, Lyrical Songs, Patriotic Songs, Travel Songs, and a Pot Pourri as they say in French. Amongst the songs included I found many that students twenty years ago were singing. Songs by Tryzubniy Stas, Braty Hadyukyny, Viktor Morozov, Taras Petrenenko and songs by more contemporary bands like Khvyliu Trymaj, Flit and Skaj.

Anyhow, as the meeting came to a close a journalist friend of mine walked in. A tall son of a gun, and someone that I had lived through a bunch of shit with in the early months of 2004 when a friend of ours radio station was about to get closed down by the Kuchma government. He was handed a copy of the song book, and then he asked me if I was staying for some live jazz. How could I refuse!

We left for the other room at Dzyga , my friend sits down and leaves this song book, he has just received, sitting on the bench next to our table, stating that he has to meet a common friend of ours to take care of some things. In the meantime, a young lady sits down and starts leafing through the song book. I ask her to join us. She comments about the songs in the book, music and life in general. In a short while my friend returns, not alone but with his girl. We introduce oneself to one another and we partake in each others company.

While I often enjoy looking at a band as it performs, particularly when it is musicians that I know, or well known musicians, that evening I sat with my back to the band, enjoying the ambiance of the location, the people I knew, and the young woman with long reddish hair, pulled back over her shoulders. She seemed to enjoy, my recantation of my experiences with different musicians, their styles, and interpretations.

At one point, she says to me, “Excuse me, but I have to join my friends!” I, as I always do comply with anyone who is a pleasant, and seemingly good person.

About a minute later, my journalist friend smiles at me... he says... “Look over your shoulder!”
I glanced over my shoulder, and there stood the young lady, with the hair of a autumn sunset, that had been sitting with us for nearly an hour...

For those of you who want her number... it will cost you dearly!

Nothing like plagiarism... and IP rights ignored

Plagiarism seems to be a disease that is inherent here in Ukraine, and not even just here! Now before all you Ukrainophiles, jump down my throat for being anti-Ukrainian let me continue.

Have you ever been on the Kyiv metro? For those of you who have, you have most likely seen the advertisements for term papers, theses and the like! And you can purchase all of these for a price. Sure similar services have sprung up worldwide since the advent of the WWW created by Tim Berners Lee, but the wide extent that this exists not only in Ukraine's capital, but throughout the country, can only lead to the degradation of society as a whole.

Those who follow Ukrainian politics can surely remember the case of Volodymyr Lytvyn, who had completely plagiarized an article originally by Thomas Carothers published in the 1998 Winter edition of Foreign Policy.

The plagiarism by public officials clearly erodes public trust in them, but what does that have to do with the music industry in Ukraine, readers may ask. It has everything to do with it, as well as those who purportedly provide insight to the industry.

Over a year ago I was listening to one of the local Kyiv radio stations, and it was not long before I heard at least three songs that were clearly ripped off melodies. One of these was a song by Scriabin, in which the very catchy melody of Peter Gabriel's Games without Frontiers simply mixed into the song, and their were others, but that is one that stuck in my head.

Though this is not the only instance that touches on the realm of intellectual property. A number of years ago my friend Myroslav Levytsky, noted that a film which had been produced simply used his compositions as part of a soundtrack to a documentary film. Recently, a TV show aired on Tonis on the green tourism used the music of another musician and group I know well, and while they don't exist any more, they still hold the rights to the material and should be compensated for its use. In neither of these cases was there reference to the music, the composer or band which holds the copyright. Surprisingly enough, one of the productions was done in the west, by our diaspora. However, there was a case of a young film maker from New York who about a year and a half ago asked me to speak to Foma of Mandry to use a 15 second piece of one of their songs. Foma, agreed after I told him of the subject matter, the song, and how much would be used, including mention in the credits at the end. How civilized and professional for a change!

Now back to the material that caught my eye! But before I continue I must digress. Back in 1999 when I arrived in Ukraine, I would frequent a place called the Cowboy Club on Passage in downtown Kyiv. Currently, this same locale houses Dockers ABC.

There I got to know the members of a band called Unity. The lead vocalist was a woman named Gaytana. There were many nights that I sat with the band after their sets and often left at the crack of dawn. Time passed and the Cowboy Club shut down. Later I would run into Gaytana at Art Club 44 on Jazz nights on Sundays. Over the years we became friends, and in the spring of 2003 or 2004, after not seeing her for a long time, I had been cast for video shoot for Marija Burmaka's song Dity Sontsya which Marika, and kindly gifted to Gaytana. Unfortunately, Eddy Klym of Lavina Music's ego somehow nixed the video, even though have earlier agreed with the concept and took an hour or two out of his busy schedule to bring his daughter down for the shoot on the banks of the Dnipro River, early on an April Saturday morning. It was cut down from a creative piece, to a piece concentrating on T&A, primarily those of Gaytana.

So it would come as no surprise to you dear readers, that when I saw the blog entry Gaitana (Part I) on Ukrainian Musical Matters it caught my eye.

As I read the material, and as an information specialist/librarian by training and knowing the style of writing of many publications in Kyiv having worked in journalism here, I wasn't so concerned about the material, but as to its source. Clearly, Orest at Ukrainian Musical Matters didn't have lunch with Gaytana at the Soho Steak House. So as I went through the article I was waiting for some type of citation. I found none! So here it is! The material was originally published in What's On a Kyiv-based publication.

So Orest, please explain to us all your position of ethics, IP rights and the rest! After our last little foray into the politics of language, and you clarifying to me who you are, I am starting to think that maybe plagiarism is genetic. Though it could have been simply an honest mistake!

Ukrainian Music for Charity

Just over a year ago I was introduced to a fellow from Vienna Austria who is involved in an interesting project called East-Beat. At that time he asked me if I could help him contact various music labels and musicians here in Ukraine in order to do everything in a legal manner.

After a number of meetings with him we were able to get a number of agreements signed and things started moving forward and agreements to date have been signed to include the music of Vopli Vidopliassova, Iryna Bilyk,Haydamaky, Okean Elzy, Mandry, Marija Burmaka, Skrjabin, Nedilya and Ocheretyany Kit on the CD.

After a number of visits to Ukraine Fritz managed to get some great support of Oleh Skrypka.


Last week Fritz, was in Kyiv and we got together for some brainstorming on his project. Fritz also has an alter ego known as DJ Prutsky, working out of the Ost-Klub in Vienna, spinning Ukrainian artists and promoting Ukrainian music and artists.

The thing that pleases me the most is that Fritz is doing all this for charity, a Children's Hospital in Khersonska oblast near Odessa., and at the same time promoting Ukraine.

“I want to work for a substantial change in the way Westerners look at Ukraine. This includes also Western media. People in countries like Austria, Germany, France, UK should become much more aware of the fact that there is a country in Europe which can contribute a lot to the positive development of this continent in many ways. Lets get away from the simple, old-fashioned, biased view on the East, which goes back to Soviet times. Soviet Union is gone, Ukraine is here. This country is neither Soviet, nor is it Russia. Lets take a look on the many innovations Ukraine has to offer."

Friedrich Zindler, aka Fritz

I think that Fritz is doing a great job in what he is doing, and I hope that anyone who reads my blog will find a way to contribute to the project. Either in kind, by linking to the site, by sending a donation, or by purchasing the CD when it is available.