Ukrainian Warfare Diary (168): Of Cultural Continuities

9/9/2023
Today I’m in Cologne for 2 occasions. The primary happened yesterday. One of many organizers gave me an handle that appeared acquainted for some cause. It’s solely after I’m standing in entrance of the “Orangerie Theater” that it happens to me once more – within the fall of 2022, my fellow musicians and I carried out our efficiency “The Songs For Babyn Yar” right here. One in every of them, Mariana Sadovska, was a part of the Urbäng! Competition that targeted on Ukraine, and I got here from Berlin a day early to see Serhij Zhadan and expertise his venture Linija Mannergejma reside.

The dramaturge Anastasiia Kosodii can also be there – two days after our efficiency there was to be a staged studying of her play in regards to the scenario of the captured Crimean Tatars in Russia on the pageant. We had usually missed one another in Berlin over the previous few months. I’m even happier to see her once more. We chat within the courtyard because the corridor doorways open and the viewers flows in. After I’m inside sooner or later, I can’t see Anastasiia. I discover her outdoors, smoking. She obtained information that an previous acquaintance of hers died close to Bakhmut. The band begins within the corridor. We stand on the steps in entrance of the doorway and are silent.

Love, not struggle

At present I get up in a hostel room that’s a lot too cramped and that the organizers have booked for me. It’s on the fourth flooring, proper beneath the roof, it was 30 levels outdoors yesterday, it felt like 40 inside. The bar on the bottom flooring of the hostel had now been remodeled into the breakfast room. I drink my espresso and uncover the inscription on the blackboard behind the counter: “We serve Kiev Mule Make love not struggle (with Ukrainian vodka)” A peace signal is drawn subsequent to it.

I’m wondering who this slogan is definitely aimed toward. Ought to the individuals of Cologne or the hostel visitors take it to coronary heart? The Russian armed forces would definitely have most popular that the Ukrainians now not go to struggle, as this might enable them to attain their objectives extra rapidly. However maybe this concept just isn’t clearly understood in Cologne.

Constructing on custom

At 11 a.m. I arrive on the Ludwig Museum with my guitar for the sound verify. The exhibition “Echo of Ukrainian Modernism” has been working right here since June and I’ve heard so many constructive issues about it. This weekend the Ukrainian Institute and the Federal Company for Civic Training put collectively a powerful supporting program and I’m proud to be part of it.

After I watch this system, I remorse that I can not take part as a spectator. Yesterday, the Kiev thinker Vakhtang Kebuladze gave a lecture, after which Mariana Sadovska accompanied the 1929 movie “The Earth” reside.

At present I can current the continuation of the Fokstroty venture to the viewers with my colleagues Irena Karpa and Lyuba Yakimchuk. The curator Oksana Shchur and I’ve been engaged on it for months. What started in 2021 as a setting to music of the poetry of Ukrainian futurists from the Twenties is presently growing into one thing utterly new: the songs printed by Serhij Zhadan and me on the primary Fokstroty album in 2021 at the moment are with new lyrics in English, German, French and Yiddish Mistake.

Final night time I had a dialogue in regards to the new Jewish sound in Germany within the courtyard of the Orangery Theater. At present I notice that our method hardly differs from that of our Jewish musician colleagues. All of us attempt to proceed the custom that was cruelly interrupted within the Nineteen Thirties. Think about if Jewish musicians, artists and authors had survived the Shoah. Think about if Ukrainian tradition had not been nearly utterly worn out within the Nineteen Thirties.