RED DOOR 31

More documents

Info

MUSIC FEATURE BY OLENA POHONCHENKOVA Fighting a colonial war means rethinking the past and reorganizing ties within the present. For a long time, one could even say for the time of its existence, Ukrainian music has been kept in the shadows of its Eastern European counterparts, all mixed up in western optics. This optics alongside the post-Soviet colonial narrative about ‘brotherly cultures’ where the ‘elder brother’ is highbrow, knowledgeable and deep while the ‘younger one’ is a funny and awkward ‘simple folk,’ always a few steps behind, has distorted the image of Ukrainian culture not just from the outside but also from within. Ukraine is not a country of distinct music taste: the roots of unfussy listening habits can be traced back to overall social apathy and the lack of a fully functional civil society typical for post-totalitarian countries. The problem gained the most resonance after the full-scale invasion when Russian musicians (and not even the good ones) kept their high positions in Ukrainian streaming charts. The fact proved that ‘not really thinking’ about such things equals colonial thinking. Although the awareness of an average Ukrainian listener is growing day by day, the problem goes deeper than that. I’ll bring out a few problematic areas, each of them a starting point for rethinking the big picture. For many Ukrainians, making music goes hand in hand with the search for their identity. Unfortunately, they usually stick to an easy way of finding one by incorporating the decorative elements of Ukrainian folk music into their sound. The tendency goes back to post-Great Purge times when after a decade of Stalinist terror, the social strata of artists, cultural actors and intellectuals of soviet Ukraine was completely wiped out, once vibrant Ukrainian culture reduced to ‘safe’ folk art. As a result, for many years (2022 is not an exception), we’ve had all these Eurovision contestants in embroidered costumes and flutes in the song mix. But the superficial folkiness goes beyond export acts. Musicians that come from the more underground, ‘artsy’ scene use this very means of self-exoticization either as the ‘perk’ of their sound or as a way to cater to an audience that’s been mingling in the pot of colonial forgetfulness and cultural ignorance for decades. Another issue is one of specific genre clicheés that many countries in the region have shared since the Soviet era. Those are especially strong in rock and synth music, since its Eastern European blueprints were set in the shared Soviet past, namely during the time of perestroika. Since then many Ukrainian musicians embraced the cold monotonous sound with a distinct bassline, preferably with lyrics sung in Russian, probably the stiffest of the Slavic languages. With the 2000s postpunk revival and minimal synth coming into fashion, this kind of music got another reboot, and although there are genuine synth-based acts, and many post-punk artists switched to Ukrainian language after horrible Russian war crimes, the problem of Russian imperial legacy is much more complex than that of a shared language. Even the scene that started out as underground and anti-establishment embraces the model of colonial dependency that affects its sound and songwriting decisions. Issue number 3 might very well be the one shared by many economically underdeveloped post-colonial countries that look up to the west in search of creative solutions. Many indie musicians (the term used broadly) get a little bit more attention and sell more tickets to their shows by simply being secondary. 036
WHY YOU DON’T KNOW A THING ABOUT UKRANIAN MUSIC People are used to the sound of Radiohead and Arctic Monkeys, and those bands don’t come to Ukraine that often (and even if they do, they only play in Kyiv), so why not make something similar but worse? Music of this kind rarely makes it beyond Ukraine and says nothing to Ukrainians about themselves, nothing good at least. These are just a few obstacles for Ukrainian music to fully embrace all its capabilities that, alongside postcolonial amnesia and the overall obscurity of the European East, make your chances to come across worthy Ukrainian music little to none. Within the country, there’s a bunch of small underground communities, each with genuine musical thinking, that have very little connection to one another and no context to hold on to when reaching out to a wider audience. The situation, however, started to change in the past few years, and with all eyes on Ukraine now, lots of great Ukrainian music gets the chance to be heard while the country’s colonial ties are breaking up for good. Problems posed here require more than one person and a lot of time and effort to be solved. However, Ukrainian communal action which has already proved effective in this war can work just as well in the realm of culture. This is my small part of the fight. 037
Page 1 and 2: RED DOOR 31 LUCKY 13 - WINTER ISSUE
Page 3 and 4: SUBMIT CONTENT to RED DOOR MAGAZINE
Page 5 and 6: Happy 13th anniversary, and to all
Page 7 and 8: Art by Jessa Dupuis 07
Page 9 and 10: 09
Page 11 and 12: Den organfrie krop Du er allerede o
Page 13 and 14: LET’S ROCK! An art book by Nikola
Page 15 and 16: LY DE ANGELES I KNOW WOMEN When we
Page 17 and 18: 017
Page 19 and 20: WE WANT YOU! DID YOU KNOW THAT WE A
Page 21 and 22: For the past two decades, Knud took
Page 23 and 24: Drømmen By Knud Sørensen “Drøm
Page 25 and 26: THE NEON REBEL I asked Nick to desc
Page 27 and 28: LIVE Gold Coast 10.12.2022 CARNAGE
Page 29 and 30: “The Artists must be singularly p
Page 31 and 32: Illustrations by Martin Andersen ww
Page 33 and 34: 033
Page 35: Year of the Would-Be GOAT Are you t
Page 39 and 40: 039
Page 43 and 44: 043
Page 47 and 48: SOLO DUET, by Janet Lees, UK A poet
Page 49 and 50: TRANSPARENCY OF THE SOLE By Diek Gr
Page 51 and 52: LOST ARAB by Carine Koleilat, UK Wh
Page 53 and 54: THANK YOU FOR 13 YEARS OF RED DOOR
Page 55 and 56: There are beautiful things happenin

RED DOOR 31

You also want an ePaper? Increase the reach of your titles

Delete template?

Save as template?