Overview:
The Ukrainian band will appear concert at the Old Dutch Church on November 19.
“What’s most opposite to music?” asked Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. “The silence of ruined cities and killed people.” The members of Kyiv band DakhaBrakha, who will bring their heady combination of Eastern European folk, cabaret, jazz, and rock to the Old Dutch Church in Kingston on November 19, are not remaining silent. Far from it.
With a name that loosely translates to “give and take,” in their native language, DakhaBrakha were called upon by their homeland to tour as its musical ambassadors. “We have friends, men and women, who are fighting right now,” says musician Marko Halanevych, whose group raises money as it tours to promote the deep Ukrainian culture that the makers of the ongoing war against their country are attempting to erase.
“I think one of the most powerful things that DakhaBrakha can offer is that they show both that there is a very rich past in Ukraine, and they show this by bringing together a diversity of musical practices from different regions of Ukraine, from different ethnic groups within Ukraine,” says Bard College ethnomusicologist Maria Sonevytsky about the theatrical quartet. “And they fuse them together in a beautiful way that also suggests a future for Ukraine. It gives the lie to Putin’s propaganda that Ukraine has no culture or history of its own.”
In an evening promoted by Bardavon Presents, DakhaBrakha will perform at the Old Dutch Church in Kingston on November 19 at 8pm. Tickets are $39 and $59.
