From mustache funk to subversive folk, to disco, country, and goth vibes: a double album collects music from ’70s-to-mid-’90s Ukraine.
Even the Forest Hums: Ukrainian Sonic Archives 1971–1996,
Light in the Attic
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Ukraine’s modern history is a story of resistance in the face of decades of oppression and great hardship, from the iron rule of the Soviet era to today’s ongoing Russian onslaught. In parts of the world that are so often in devastating circumstances, from Gaza to Sudan to Syria to Afghanistan, it is often difficult for onlookers to see the human side of the situation—to learn about the people as individuals, not just statistics, and appreciate their art, music, poetry, and culture. In the US, there is widespread awareness about the war in Ukraine, but the country’s eclectic musical history is less known.
Even the Forest Hums: Ukrainian Sonic Archives 1971–1996 is the first comprehensive look at Ukrainian rock, pop, and funk music from the years before and shortly after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. Much of this collection was impossible to find until now—a hidden history, familiar outside of Ukraine only to a small coterie of record collectors. A few of these dedicated crate diggers—including Light in the Attic label boss Matt Sullivan, David Mas, Mark “Frosty” McNeill, and members of the Ukrainian label Shukai—pieced the double album together over the course of five years.
A lot of this music wasn’t underground when it first came out—some of it was actually mainstream. The Soviet recording industry was conservative and heavily controlled, allowing only certain approved musicians to record in state-run studios. Still, musicians found subtle but defiant ways to push back against authority. “Many compositions collected here were performed for mass audiences,” explains the Kyiv-based music journalist, DJ, and filmmaker Vitalii Bardetskyi in the extensive liner notes. “However, some of the artists managed, even under difficult ideological circumstances, to build a whole aesthetic platform which was essentially anti-Soviet.”
By the early 1970s, Ukraine was still trapped in the rigidity of the Soviet regime, but surged with the creative energy of a youthful population. Though the Soviet system stifled rebellion, the local music scenes were teeming with life. Folk songs were often permitted under Soviet strictures, so some musicians were able to use folk in subversive ways. Bardetskyi coined the term “mustache funk” to describe the idiosyncratic genre that emerged under the boot of the Soviet Union during this time. (His recent indie documentary on the topic is a must-see.) Mustache funk was a strange Ukrainian variant that bore traces of the traditional music of the Carpathian mountain highlanders known as the Hutsuls. This wasn’t funk in any conventional sense of the word, but something refreshingly alien and different, at least to a US audience. Radical sonic ideas were also bubbling up in nearby countries, like the Krautrock scene in Germany, with bands like Neu!, Cluster, Can, and Kraftwerk paving the way for new German sounds. Ukrainian mustache funk was less cool and more ungainly than the streamlined, minimal ecstasy of Neu!, for example, but just as interesting and unique.
Even the Forest Hums reflects this furious crash-collision of creative ideas in Ukraine that were happening under the radar. The range of genres, instruments, and concepts is dizzying. Mustache funk is well represented, and rustic Ukrainian folk music makes appearances, too. A relentlessly tacky saxophone solo emerges out of nowhere. Vadym Khrapachov’s “Dance,” one of my favorite tracks, has the throbbing pulse and undulating bassline of a prime Giorgio Moroder disco tune but then inexplicably breaks down into a twangy country-guitar hoedown by the end. Krok’s “Breath of Night Kyiv” reflects the popular, big-hair side of ’80s music, with a glossy sheen reminiscent of the music from the original Miami Vice.
Some of the tracks sound prescient and cutting edge; they could easily slot into a DJ set in a hip Brooklyn warehouse in 2024. One of my top tunes, Kyrylo Stetsenko’s “Play, the Violin, Play” (featuring Tetiana Kocherhina), layers snippets of violin over minimal disco beats, for a modern sound that is still fashionable today. Ihor Tsymbrovsky’s “Beatrice” is a timeless and melancholy piano ballad. Svitlana Nianio’s “Episode III” continues in a similar vein, featuring soft, sad vocals over spare and morose piano figures. Omi’s “Transference” has a deep, dark goth undertow, like Siouxsie and the Banshees crossed with the ’80s rock band Bauhaus.
By the late 1970s, the Soviet regime had cracked down on the mustache funk scene. Many top musicians faced repression. “The leading composer, Volodymyr Ivasyuk, was most likely killed by the KGB; others were banned, managed to emigrate, or, avoiding inevitable oppression, moved to metropolitan Moscow,” writes Bardetskyi. “The once prolific scene was almost completely colonized, appropriated, and largely Russified; the state radio and TV waves were occupied by banal VIAs [Soviet bands] and cheezy schlager singers.”
By Mikhail Gorbachev’s leadership from 1985 to 1991, and the accompanying concepts of perestroika (restructuring) and glasnost (openness), the Soviet Union was on its last legs. In the mid-1980s, underground scenes in Kyiv and elsewhere began to reflower. The 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster became a tragic emblem of Soviet decline. A few years later, a second musical revolution emerged. “Kyiv was buzzing like a beehive,” writes Bardetskyi. “Hundreds of local punks, goths, hippies, metalheads, and gurus of yet known beliefs spent time in downtown coffee shops and cafes around squares and ancient places.” In the late 1980s and early 1990s, art and music thrived, as new squats, venues, and DIY spaces were created. Now this freedom has been curtailed once again.
It is nearing the three-year anniversary of Russia’s assault on Ukraine, and the pressure shows no sign of abating. One can only hope that Ukraine’s punks, goths, hippies, and metalheads will someday dwell in peace once more. “Music has always pulled Ukrainians out of the abyss,” writes Bardetskyi. “When there is no hope for the future, there is still music.” As Even the Forest Hums demonstrates, no matter how tightly a regime tries to control a population, their creativity, individuality, and spirit will live on.
Geeta Dayal is an arts critic and journalist specializing in twentieth-century music, culture, and technology. She has written extensively for frieze and many other publications, including the Guardian, Wired, the Wire, Bookforum, Slate, the Boston Globe, and Rolling Stone. She is the author of Another Green World (Bloomsbury, 2009), a book on Brian Eno, and is currently at work on a new book on music.