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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.
Politics, from that point onwards, would be a major element of the band's raison d'etre.
The group began this very public interface of songwriting and civic spirit when they played several gigs in support of opposition candidate Viktor Iushchenko, together with Ukraine's winner of the 2004 Eurovision Song Contest, Ruslana. Vakarchuk felt a growing need to play an active role in society, which led - ultimately - to his election two years ago as a member of the national parliament. Thus he represented the center-right, pro-Iushchenko party Nasha Ukraina ("Our Ukraine").
Within a year, though, he had quit the post and went back to making music. The results of that swift and somewhat unexpected return to the stage were publicly revealed at the very end of 2008: a solo show, together with a chamber orchestra, all under the overarching title of "Vnochi" (At Night). Since that time, the concerts have been performed in various cities as part of an unhurried 15-city tour, reaching Moscow in May of this year. A CD has also been released, from which our five embedded tracks come.
When these shows first began, they were advertised as a "collaborative project between the representatives of Ukraine's finest artists. It's all designed to help cultivate relevant Ukrainian music once again - and make an initial step towards filling some 'blank spaces' in our national art scene." Together with other members of his band, plus well-known Ukrainian jazz and rock luminaries, Vakarchuk hoped to erase some of the prejudices that often dissuaded people from experimenting across or in between their established genres. Democratic policies had become a more liberal attitude towards stylistic crossovers, too.
This desire to expand or penetrate time-honored boundaries was also expressed geographically. Although "Vnochi" is undoubtedly imbued with a strong sense of national pride, Vakarchuk often made a point of stressing that the songs arose during quiet spells on tour and - therefore - had been conceived all the way from Lake Geneva to the hotels of New York. Likewise, the recording and mastering had been done in Kiev, Brussels, and LA.
Multiplicity and unity became the dual metaphors of the day, continually informing one another.
In some of the springtime interviews from this year, as the press expressed their growing interest in this move from politics back to music, Vakarchuk made the observation that - in his mind - the national media had done little to encourage a sense of national community. Journalism had become nothing more than a search for the most negative, depressing aspects of a story. Music, he felt, was fast becoming one of the few places where a positive worldview could be cultivated and shared.
The public agreed. Vakarchuk had initially been concerned that "Vnochi" was not a concept that would/could be widely popular. "To start with I was under the impression that public taste today is just a reflection of mass media. Low-grade stuff. After all, Okean El'zy play much simpler music [than my new solo material]; it's easier to understand and that's why we have so many fans. I was pleasantly surprised, though, to discover that people around Ukraine really do want a lot more than whatever they currently get from the TV or radio every day. The people responsible for the format of [Ukrainian] music stations have clearly got things wrong."
These programmatic statements about right and wrong regarding the national media led to more specific discussions of politics. Vakarchuk was asked whether he had conceptualized any clear notion of a "national idea" following his parliamentary experiences. He had - and tended to express those ideas once again in terms of optimism, rather than an endless, if not masochistic obsession with prior losses. "Personally I think that a 'national idea' should be based on an optimistic outlook and our social achievements or victories, rather than focusing on pain and tragedy. It shouldn't be grounded in bitter experience, no matter how important or tragic events once were. Take the example of ancient Rus', say, which would later become modern Ukraine. That's the kind of example people could learn from: a political state that displayed high degrees of self-assurance and administrative expertise..."
These do not sound like the views of somebody who has left politics forever. In fact Vakarchuk has been, on occasion, somewhat coy about the subject when asked in interviews this year. Divorcing quotidian ethics from long-term political enterprise is not simple. For example, he recently made some rather critical comments about the relationship between Russian rock music and the current administration in Moscow. Vakarchuk said that it was possible to play at state occasions in Moscow only if one was an evident supporter of Putin and Medvedev, whilst those same politicians would never broadcast songs that expressed an opposing or "subversive" viewpoint. In other words, he juxtaposed the inclusive metaphors of his crossover work in "Vnochi" with the exclusive worldview of the Kremlin.
He then maintained that the famous stars who had sung for President Obama at his DC inauguration had not been publicly stigmatized as musical lackeys in the United States. This is evidently a moot point: all such stars were obviously invited to perform by the new administration: many of them had indeed done direct canvassing for the candidate in previous months and were, no doubt, seen as musical sounding-boards by conservative voters.
These and other issues serve to show how problematic it is in Russia or Ukraine to marry music and a sense of national pride. In the West, as we know, such themes are virtually absent in popular music: it's simply not seen as the correct venue for flag-waving. It is neither fashionable nor profitable. And yet in Slavic lands, the Soviet genre of "civic" songs still endures. It is extremely difficult, however, to express such pride without the implicit invocation of an adversary. Vakarchuk, by way of example, was recently confronted by a Russian journalist, who asked why the Okean El'zy website has a statement regarding the Ukrainian famine of 1932-1933 (or "holodomor") and the fact it should not be forgotten - in the name of national unity.
"My own family suffered in the famine. Personally, I think that the objective reality of those events is not something to be debated. It's another matter, however, to transfer that tragedy to the realm of politics... I certainly wouldn't do so in the name of making accusations against Russia. Back then we all lived in a totally different country... To accuse Russia of causing the famine would be to use to speculate about events. Nobody in Ukraine is going to do that. What happened, simply happened. That's all there is to it. To deny, though, that in the '30s the Ukrainian peasantry was forced to its knees at the cost of millions of lives would be unjust."
He continues: "Today Russia and Ukraine need to extend a hand to one another. Russia, as a friendly neighboring territory, needs to acknowledge that the famine did indeed happen, whilst Ukraine needs to state that it has no claims against its neighbor. Sooner or later, we'll all reach the point where we learn to listen to one another." As can be seen, it's extremely difficult to make statements about domestic history and not encounter a negative reaction elsewhere, given the international nature of the web, the band's trilingual site, and the popularity of Okean El'zy far beyond the suburbs of Kiev.
Today Russia and Ukraine need to extend a hand to one another. Russia, as a friendly neighboring territory, needs to acknowledge that the famine did indeed happen, whilst Ukraine needs to state that it has no claims against its neighbor. Sooner or later, we'll all reach the point where we learn to listen to one another.
The genre of the civic song emerged in Soviet culture with minimal debate and zero commercial competition: it could easily make itself both important and widely-heard. To boot, it was nationally contained, since Soviet popular culture was not part of the Western European marketplace. Today's marketplaces, however, are infinitely more porous. Viewpoints are widely heard - and less easily contained. A statement made in one nation for one audience is bound to reach other ears. Patriotism expressed in that initial locale will inevitably be seen as provocative by one's neighbor.
Hence the difficulties and pointed questions.
Vakarchuk's album is a very impressive achievement: a stirring testament not only to the power of his trademark, rasping delivery, but also to the sense of pride he has for domestic music-making. That same pride came as a result of some moral convictions he gained after a year in the byzantine world of national politics. Having distilled his views on the media and national history to a simple, timeless opposition of ethical consequence, he went out on to the stage and once again became a musician. Given his fame in two nations that share a tragic history of mutual conflict, however, this means that expressions of local allegiance can ruffle neighboring feathers.
Although an evident champion of optimism and inclusion in public spheres, Vakarchuk's songs of unity unavoidably need to be shaped in the second person plural: "we" need more a positive, forward-looking value system. This means, with equal inevitability, that such ideas can cause a few problems and be interpreted as antagonistic, especially when one starts touring... Vakarchuk may find, whatever his admirable desire to foster an apolitical, public-spirited aesthetic, that the uneasy union of pop and policy amid Russian audiences could nudge him back into local parliament.
In which cases, expressions like the one below will no longer be possible in public.
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