| After [the 2013 Euromaidan protests] and the war, Ukrainians started to ask each other what it was that made them who they were. They understood that going to Russia meant churning out pop music. And going to Europe meant doing it like people do it in Europe. So instead they bought recording equipment and started looking for their own thing, their own breath of fresh air. |
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 | | Ukrainian rapper Alyona Alyona at Eurosonic Noorderslag in Groningen, the Netherlands, Jan. 16, 2020. | | (Kenzo Tribouillard/AFP/Getty Images) | | |
| quote of the day |
| "After [the 2013 Euromaidan protests] and the war, Ukrainians started to ask each other what it was that made them who they were. They understood that going to Russia meant churning out pop music. And going to Europe meant doing it like people do it in Europe. So instead they bought recording equipment and started looking for their own thing, their own breath of fresh air." | | - Alyona Savranenko, aka Alyona Alyona | |
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| rantnrave:// |
Alyona's Paradise
ALYONA SAVRANENKO, better known around Europe as ALYONA ALYONA, discovered her calling when she heard COOLIO's "GANGSTA'S PARADISE" at age 12; her fate was sealed some time after that when her father came home from a work trip with a copy of THE EMINEM SHOW. Alyona's head was full of words—Ukrainian words—and rappers, she quickly learned, got to use a lot more of them than pop singers did.
There weren't a lot of female rappers in central Ukraine though, or anywhere in Ukraine for that matter. "Yuck! Women must make borscht" was a typical reaction to her early efforts. There were concessions at first, as this excellent 2019 profile by Vogue's LIANA SATENSTEIN explains. Alyona kept her music mostly to herself while she worked various day jobs including kindergarten teacher. Later when she started sharing her music, she rapped in Russian, which wasn't her first language but was commonly spoken in Ukraine and was the language of the much more established music industry in Moscow, where the records her friends listened to were made.
But Ukraine's Euromaidan protests of 2013 changed that. A wave of nationalism came with a growing interest in the Ukrainian language, and Alyona was free to be the poet she wanted to be. "It's a beautiful, soft, tender, more poetic language," better suited to rapping, she told the Independent. "I want to rap about everyday life, in my own language," she offered to the New York Times.
Although the title of her 2019 debut album, PUSHKA, has a mildly vulgar meaning in local slang, she raps clean, avoiding both the language and the themes of the American rappers she first fell in love with. Her subjects, in raps whose "lightning-fast flow" reminded the Times of AZEALIA BANKS, are the ordinary Ukrainian lives of herself and her friends. Her music can sound minimalist tough or bubblegum sassy—or, if the story warrants, serious and somber, to take one particular track that resonates in February 2022. This week, the cover images of many of her videos on YouTube, which have millions of views, are blue and yellow cards with the message, "While you are watching this video, ukrainian people are dying from russian attack. STOP IT!" At the top of her YouTube page is a video message asking for military and humanitarian aid for her country. "I urge all of you to... not allow Russia to seize our country," the English translation ends, "because after they will go to your home."
There are tens of millions of people under attack in Ukraine. Alyona Alyona is but one of them. A huge tip of the hat to this crowdsourced spreadsheet of Ukrainian artists and labels and, especially, this Twitter thread by Bard College professor MARIA SONEVYTSKY for leading me to some of the artists whose stories and music I'll be sharing in the coming days.
Rest in Peace
NICKY TESCO, lead singer of British punk/new-wave band the Members, whose calling card was the 1979 single "Sound of the Suburbs."
| | - Matty Karas (@troubledoll), curator | |
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| Music | Media | | | | | | Suggest a link  | | "REDEF is dedicated to my mother, who nurtured and encouraged my interest in everything and slightly regrets the day she taught me to always ask 'why?'" |
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