Here’s a video blog of my time in Lviv.
There’s a venue tour and some music clips, and you can find out more about the venue and musicians below:
Traven:
https://www.instagram.com/u_travni/
https://t.me/u_travni
miw:
https://soundcloud.com/miwmiwmiwmiw
Re-read:
https://re-read.bandcamp.com/
https://www.youtube.com/@re-read
Закрите Суспільство та його друзі (Closed Society and Its Friends):
https://open.spotify.com/artist/7iU0WFXShQgDwitqjNTixy
https://www.youtube.com/@zakryte_suspilstvo
The most important component of this video is the interview section. Several local musicians were generous enough to share their thoughts with me about what it’s like to participate in a music community during wartime. Some also had messages for those of us on the outside — some cheerful and courageous, some requests for empathy and aid, and some warnings that none of us in North America and Western/Central Europe are immune to the tough circumstances they’re living through.
The first interview subject is Artur. He’s involved in the Lviv community as a performer, but he also has experience with cultural scenes in other smaller towns in Ukraine’s east, closer to the line of contact between the AFU and Russian Federation troops. He says that young people tend to cluster in hub cities with good air defense like Kyiv and Lviv where niche communities enjoy relative stability and protection. This leaves scenesters stuck in the smaller towns isolated. “They want to feel alive, but…in Mikolaiv, no one smiles.”
Next, Katja describes one benefit of the war: people now tend to show more interest in Ukrainian bands than previously. This is unfortunately offset by how difficult organizing concerts — and even rehearsals — can be, especially for her band as Re-read’s pre-war drummer is now participating in forward operations against the RF. “It’s not a government fighting another government…it is, but it’s also normal people — the people who we know, our fathers, our friends, they are fighting for what they love.”
Towards the end of the video you will see an interview from Timothy, a punk musician who expresses traditionalist values that might surprise some of us on the left. We discuss the artistic identity crisis he faced at the start of the war. Along with Katja, we then briefly discuss the tension between punk and traditionalism, and how that tension changes when one’s society and culture face existential threats. “Europe faces the same problem [as Ukraine],” Timothy says, “but on an even bigger scale.”
Later this week I’ll upload footage and interviews from Kharkiv, and also start to dip back into analysis. What’s going on here? Alternative music communities are playing strange new roles in the larger picture of Ukraine’s war effort, and that war effort is also changing the views and functions of a cultural avant-garde that used to map neatly onto the left-right divide. For better and for worse, Ukraine’s music scene might be a glimpse of our subcultural future in North America and Western/Central Europe. Ignoring developments here would be very comfortable, but also very inhumane to Ukrainians and very irresponsible to ourselves.