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In August last year, Sviatoslav Vakarchuk released an album by the name of "Vnochi" ("At Night") that was recorded together with a chamber orchestra and some of Ukraine's most famous musicians. The reason for this high-level, prestigious collaboration was, in the words of Vakarchuk, to "make Ukrainian music relevant again." The project attracted interest not only because of its lofty goals, but also because of the singer's fame in his homeland. Back in August, we sketched this man's cultural clout as follows.
"Sviatoslav Vakarchuk is both lead singer and frontman of Okean El’zy (“Elza’s Ocean”), arguably Ukraine’s best-known rock group of recent years. The child of an academic family, Vakarchuk received a schooling that was rich in music, but ultimately he went on to follow his father’s footsteps and become a physicist. This leaning towards academia would last until the mid-90s, at which time that early passion for music came once again to the fore. Okean El’zy was born in 1994 and would, over the following decade, become a major presence not only in the nation’s music scene, but also the events surrounding the Orange Revolution."
This week sees another milestone in Vakarchuk's laudable gameplan. A Kiev entertainment magazine summed up the new fuss with admirable brevity: "After a three year break in which he steeped himself in his solo project 'Vnochi,' had a year-long stint as a people’s deputy, and completed a PhD in Physics, Slava Vakarchuk has returned to what he does best – fronting Ukraine’s biggest band." Okean El'zy (or "Elzy," depending our fussiness) have, a few days ago, released their new studio album, by our count their seventh - if we ignore pirated and bootlegged CDs, of course.
After a three year break in which he steeped himself in his solo project' Vnochi,' had a year-long stint as a people’s deputy, and completed a PhD in Physics, Slava Vakarchuk has returned to what he does best – fronting Ukraine’s biggest band.
The new album is called "Dolce Vita" and an evident cause for joy.
The title comes, at least initially, not so much from a worldview as a landmark of Italian cinema. As with the earlier solo project, Vakarchuk aims to make a few statements here about Ukrainian show business. "Music in Ukraine has turned into a bubblegum affair. Somebody has chewed it up, yanked it out of their mouth, and now handed it to someone else for another chew... All music shows now look the same. They're no longer designed to find the best musicians or to make the best music. They do nothing more than whip up some kind of desire within the public for fame. Trouble is, though, that the desire to to sign autographs on public transport has got nothing to do with becoming a good musician or actually making good music..."
Voyeurism has replaced virtuosity.
Hence the desire on "Dolce Vita" to create a synonymy between notions of the "good life" and simplicity. In an attempt to "remove as much makeup as possible" from the recording process, Okean El'zy made the new CDs using the maximum number of first takes. This attitude towards performance is currently being used to structure an equally "spontaneous" series of concerts around Ukraine, Russia, Belarus, Western Europe, and North America. This tour, when finished, will have consisted of more than 70 shows.
The Kiev entertainment magazine What's On just conducted an interview with Vakarchuk in order to discuss the new album further. This chat helped to strengthen the connection between "Vnochi" and the 2010 Okean El'zy recordings. Moving from the context of a chamber orchestra back to guitars and amps, Vakarchuk had the following to say: "There's a degree of fear associated with the move [back to the studio]. Not a fear of success, since the public will decide that, but fear of the year ahead. We've loads of plans... and they're pretty grand! I only hope that we’ll be able to handle it all. We’ve got 70 to 100 concerts ahead of us, all the way from Sakhalin in Eastern Russia, to Moscow and Kiev... then we're off to London and Paris, plus San Francisco."
Despite all of the international travel and a willingness to move widely, Vakarchuk went to great efforts to reject one specific influence: that of Russian rock. The band, he insisted, finds its energy elsewhere.
"Our roots are in raw rock music. As for influences, there are lots and lots. But it seems fair to say that the most obvious thing we're not influenced by is Russian rock. The so-called style of 'Russkii Rock' certainly influenced the majority of bands in our generation... but not us. It’s kind of strange, really, because the members of Okean Elzy now come from all over Ukraine, with one of us being from Serbia, even, so it’s not just four guys from Lviv as it used to be... I suppose the one thing that links us all is our love of The Beatles. There’s never been a musician in Okean Elzy who didn’t love The Beatles. There are, of course, other outfits, like Led Zeppelin, The Stones, and Radiohead for example, but The Beatles have always been something like our backbone."
This love for Western music is then slotted into some more philosophical observations, specifically with regard to the CD's title. Vakarchuk says this title is most important in one line from the new album that reads, in English, "For some people, life here is like prison, for others it's the dolce vita.'" The singer explains: "Basically we're saying that everything is the same for everyone, and it all depends how you see it. We all live here and you choose whether to make your life into prison or 'the good life.' It’s your choice."
Basically we're saying that everything is the same for everyone, and it all depends how you see it. We all live here and you choose whether to make your life into prison or 'the good life.' It’s your choice.
The journalist asked whether there might be a contradiction in using an English outfit to express one's sense of independence from Russian culture, maybe even one's patriotism. Vakarchuk explains himself in ways that help to justify several new songs and metaphors that celebrate the Ukrainian countryside and its folk culture. His patriotism is expressed more successfully through physical, rather than political geography. That same national pride, he continues, is an "intuitive state." He recently remarked: "I have always - and will always - consider Ukraine as a part of Europe, mentally, culturally and certainly geographically." A deep-seated empathy with rolling landscapes and cultural vagaries trumps any "defensive" love for a political territory.
By extension of the same idea, being "Ukrainian" sometimes becomes a paradoxical call to being "nowhere in particular." The album's third track, for example, is a loud celebration of the "Sky above the River Dnieper." Not the riverbanks, not the river, even, but the sky above it. Kinship is felt for a realm that lies both over and beyond the politically delimited, physical landmarks below. In this outlook, being Ukrainian requires something more than the mapped spaces of Ukraine itself.
Nationalism is no longer a black and white notion.
Vakarchuk finds a musical equivalent of his skyward gaze in music that's equally "here and/yet elsewhere." He embraces a sense of selfhood that - because it is partly absent/elsewhere - remains an embodiment of potential.
An intuitive love for one's nation needs both the visible spaces of an immediate landscape and "other" places or possibilities that are elsewhere and unseen, yet felt to be present. Those places come to represent a feeling of potential; they have yet to be known and/or realized. In precisely the same way, one's love (at home) for music made elsewhere - even in another tongue - becomes the raison d'etre of a worldview grounded in possibility. In loving that which is not immediate, close by, or local, one speaks to what might be.
In the interviews around the new CD, Vakarchuk and his fellow musicians say on many occasions that although they'd rather avoid the current political crisis at home, it's impossible to ignore. The band feels that today's "chaos" in parliament has to be addressed and passed through en route to fully-fledged democracy. Their hope and love for their homeland, in other words, is driven by something absent - by that which is not. Their faith, once again, comes from a romantic gaze to the skies above the here & now.
At the risk of invoking some heartfelt though rather clunky cliches, we could point out that 50% of the nation's flag is dedicated to things intangible. The yellow and gold division of the Ukrainian flag - shown below - comes from equal cultural weight given to both tangible (albeit unbounded) wheat fields and the unlimited profundity of the sky (in both senses). Precisely half of the country's biggest, boldest metaphor is made from nothing in particular - and the ineffable, endless hope thereof.
And, on that note, at the end of a long interview dedicated to his patriotism, Vakarchuk is asked how he likes to spend his free time. What, in other words, does he do to make himself feel most at home in Ukraine. His response? "I like doing nothing! ... Mostly, I like doing nothing." The happiest, most treasured form of a dolce vita is one of endless possibilities, a life of places yet unseen and social options as yet untried. How do we maximalize the number of those options? We do nothing, a state in which anything is possible.
Hence the love for a music that's not here and a sky that's not fixed above one (politically geographic) location. As our singer said earlier: "Everything is the same for everyone, and it all depends how you see it." Under one, overarching sky, a search for the dolce vita begins with the simplest of options: a downcast, shoegazing view of the ponds and puddles, or a hopeful glance skywards.
To nowhere in particular.
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