Khvylyu Trymai

Great lyrics accompanying a soft sound. Talented band from Ivano-Frankivs’k. Khvylyu Trymai was founded in 1996. After unquestioned success in the festival Perlyny Sezonu-98 with their song Hey-Hi! and after a heavy rotation of their video clip for this song on Ukrainian TV channel Biz TV, the whole country began to sympathize with these cheerful guys with guitars.

Before winter 2003 the band had already recorded and nearly finished the final mix of their debut album, songs from which had already been showcased throughout different performances of the band. In addition, the band had already had two video clips for the songs Hey-Hi! (DVision) and Poletym… (V.Pryduvalov).

In February 2004 the band finally came to an agreement with the company Hunter Music, which is an exclusive representative of Sony Music in Ukraine, to release their debut album. The first album had several different work names like More (The Sea), Zyma proyishla (The Winter has passed) and others, but it was released under its first name Khvylyu Trymai (Keep the Wave).

Khvylyu Trymai frequently perform at various concerts in different cities and towns of Ukraine. For more information about the bands visit their web-site: www.trymay.com.ua

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ROCK STARS PLAY LEAD ROLE IN UKRAINE POLL

As Ukraine goes to the polls, the squabbling leaders of the three main parties are in danger of being outshone by the stars of rock and pop who performed at their rallies.

Svyatoslav Vakarchuk, lead vocalist of Okean Elzy, one of Ukraine’s most popular bands, has become a figurehead of President Viktor Yushchenko’s pro-western party.

Verka Serdyuchka, a transvestite who was runner-up in this year’s Eurovision song contest, has been performing at rallies on behalf of Viktor Yanukovych, the pro-Moscow prime minister, who has hired Paul Manafort, an American political consultant, to remake his hard-line image as an anticorruption reformer.

Yulia Tymoshenko, the firebrand leader of the third party, who interrupted her campaign to fly to London to meet her heroine Baroness Thatcher, has gigs by her British son-in-law Sean Carr, the lead singer of the Death Valley Screamers. He has a song in the Ukrainian charts.

Politics and rock music have become entwined in the former Soviet republic, where no big campaign meeting is complete without a concert.

The main contenders have spent millions of pounds hiring bands during an election in which, for the third time since 2004, the country has the choice of closer ties to the West or a return to the Russian orbit.

The rock phenomenon has its roots in the orange revolution three years ago after presidential elections were rigged by Yanukovych’s camp.

The protests went on for weeks in freezing weather and the demonstrators’ spirits were sustained by many of the country’s best known rock, rap and pop
artists.

The musicians who exhorted their listeners to support the orange pro- democracy campaigners led by Yushchenko and Tymoshenko were credited not only with entertaining the crowds but also with winning over new supporters.

When Ruslana Lyzhychko, the winner of that year’s Eurovision, publicly declared her support for the orange camp, there was a surge in support.

She went on to run successfully for Yushchenko’s party in parliamentary elections last year. Although she has since stood down as an MP, she sang at several election meetings during the latest campaign.

At a rally in the western city of Lviv, Vakarchuk, a rock icon in Ukraine, played to thousands, including pensioners, children and businessmen. Between songs, he explained why they should vote for the president’s party. He is expected to be elected an MP tonight.

The rap band Tartak, veterans of the 2004 revolution, play at Yushchenko’s rallies. Sashko Polozhynskyi, its frontman, said: “In Britain and the West, democracy doesn’t need rock bands to defend it. But in Ukraine we are still striving for true democracy.”

At a meeting last week Tymoshenko showed she has a strong singing voice of her own. She joined a backing band to perform a pop ballad that was one of the anthems of the orange revolution.

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Svyatoslav Vakarchuk unites Ukraine

As tired Ukrainians voters go to the polls on September 30 for the fourth time in three years, Svyatoslav Vakarchuk, front singer of the Ukrainian band Okean Elzy, who is also on the list of Our Ukraine bloc (Nasha Ukrayina), told New Europe “the main task of Ukraine is to unite everybody no matter what the colour of flag they have” to avoid another political stalemate after the parliamentary election.

What Ukraine needs is young blood in politics, he said. “In the nearest past we saw that some political leaders do not treat agreements between different parties as something saint. Today they sign it, tomorrow they resign, after that the sign it one more time. That is the morality of the politicians and it’s not a problem of one party; it’s a problem of this generation of politicians,” he said in Athens on September 24, the first stop of his musical tour titled “Ya yidu do domu” (I’m going home).

“At this time I don’t see a great difference between politicians in all the political camps. And that’s why our task is to take to the politics new coming leaders who will solve this problem and unite all the people no matter on what language they speak, no matter on what church they go, no matter what historical past they had. We are all Ukrainians and we need to be united,” Vakarchuk said.

The leading band singer and ardent ‘Orange’ supporter was one of the first people to gather with thousands of young Ukrainians in Kiev’s Maidan Square during the 2004 Orange Revolution.

Despite the mistakes of ‘Orange’ teams and people’s disappointment in the following years, Vakarchuk defended the ideals of the Orange Revolution.

“The lessons of history teach us the revolutions never yield immediate results. We have many, many examples where at first the revolutions were treated by people as a panacea for all problems but then came some disappointment. It was the same in Ukraine with the Orange revolution. Certainly your demands for the revolution are very high and then, if it doesn’t work out, you are disappointed, but what I think is that in spite of this disappointment, we have done a great job because the mentality begun to change. Before that we were a typical post-Soviet society. That was a society partly breaking the rules of the Soviet country, but not breaking the Soviet mood. And after the Orange Revolution, people began to understand that from this time they were the masters of their future and that is very, very important and that may be the main goal of the revolution. Talking about political and economic changes, they certainly don’t come immediately after the revolution,” Vakarchuk said. “Now we have this unstable situation. That is why we have different elections because there is internal fight in Ukraine for the future.”

The Okean Elzy singer laughed when New Europe pointed out that during a July journalists’ trip to Ukraine a 75-year-old woman, Maria Tsymbal, in the village of Viktorivka, said she would vote for the Yulia Timoshenko bloc because of its leader’s notorious hairstyle. “Yes, people like leaders. It’s normal for every country,” he said. “But the problem is that sometimes the parties give you the same things in their programmes. The problem is not that people don’t know the content of these problems, the problem is this content is the same.”

He said that Regions Party, Yulia Timoshenko Bloc and Our Ukraine block, are more-or-less centrist parties with left or right leaning tendencies. He said that unlike Europe there is also a second dimension in addition to right or left and that is pro-European or pro-Russian.

Vakarchuk said the party he supports, Our Ukraine, wants to build a strong country that participates in European structures.

He explained that while most Ukrainians are familiar with the EU, they are confused over NATO. “About the EU they are more certain. About NATO the situation is even funny because if you ask them: ‘Do you like NATO?’ They say, ‘no.’ But if you ask them: ‘Do you like North Atlantic Treaty?’ Sometimes they say, ‘yes.’”

He said the issue of NATO in Ukraine is very complicated. “Firstly, there were 50 years of Soviet propaganda. It’s absolutely normal that for Soviet people who were born at that time NATO was treated like an enemy. It was the same thing like for Americans when the Warsaw Treaty was treated like an enemy. It is normal. But after 1991 what happened? In some countries like the three Baltic countries or Central European countries like Poland or the Czech Republic the propaganda stopped and people were allowed to have a lot of information about then real situation in the North Atlantic Treaty and that’s why in some years after that they managed to take the right decision,” Vakarchuk explained.

“In our country we have lack of information about NATO. It doesn’t matter if the information negative or positive but there is a lack and people do not know different things. Sometimes I have meetings with students…and I ask them a question: Do you know if the NATO forces are present in Iraq or not? And 95 percent of students with high education, they think that NATO is present in Iraq as an organisation. Only five percent thinks that is not. And when I say to them that they are absolutely incorrect and only the United States separately or British armies are present there and not NATO they are very surprised. If students are surprised, imagine other people…We are not ready for a professional discussion. We need to have much more time top learn about NATO. But it is very strategic thing about Ukraine.”

Regarding the EU, Vakarchuk told New Europe it is not as controversial from the point of view of Ukrainian structure. “European Union is clear because it is a union of economic and political union of western countries,” he said.

He noted that joining the EU and NATO are fundamentals of Ukraine’s foreign policy. “This discussion needs to be treated as a civilisation choice. That’s why I think the first problem for us is the problem of NATO and only the second is the problem of the European Union because we are very far from the European Union. I’m absolutely honest and clear about that and it’s not a question of some politicians from Europe like (EU External Relations Commissioner) Benita Ferrero-Waldner or somebody else who need to say to us that it is an unreal situation. We need to understand it ourselves…We are Europeans and that’s why we need to solve such unpleasant problems like visa problems,” he said.

He lashed out at western embassies denying Ukrainians visas for convenient excuse. “In our country some people are very angry about what some embassies of European Union countries do, especially Schengen countries about visa. Sometimes the behaviour of these embassies is not the behaviour of partners,” Vakarchuk said, adding that the EU should step up and solve this problem.

He stressed that it is in the interest of the whole Europe to have a strong Ukraine. “Europe must be interested in a strong Ukraine and if somebody is not interested, it’s because of internal European problems and when Europe will be absolutely strong by itself, the next step will be to take Ukraine in,” he said.

Regarding relations with Russia, Vakarchuk said Moscow often tries to use gas prices to influence Ukraine. “It concerns not only Ukraine, it concerns all of Europe especially Eastern and Central Europe,” he said. “In the highest level, Russian politicians they don’t accept the 100 percent independence of Ukraine. They understand the political independence of Ukraine because they understand that the time has come and we are a separate country. But they do not want to accept the whole independence. That is why they try to influence us with economic rules, but the stronger they do it, the stronger we become. I’m very happy that two years ago Russia gave us market prices for the gas because the earlier they do it the earlier we will become stronger and we manage to do something without these dictations,” he said.

The Okean Elzy lead singer downplayed concerns about divisions between Ukraine’s east and west. “We are an ethnical country,” he said. “Other problems are historical and maybe sometimes political but these problems can be solved with the help of new leaders,” he said.

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