Ukrainian Songs of Love and Hate

“This machine kills fascists” was written on the guitar of Woody Guthrie, an American folk singer from the 1950s. “These songs kill Russian fascists (rushists)” could be a subtitle of this project that started in 2022 between Ukraine, Germany, France and Austria: beats that bite, rhymes that kill, poetry and music united as a weapon. 

Pop music has always been an international language. A song can convey so much more than mere words can. Russia’s full-scale invasion has changed the lives of every Ukrainian, and musicians and poets are no exception. They are searching for words and sounds to tell their stories and raise their voices against what is happening in Ukraine. 

The Ukrainian poets Grigory Semenchuk (and his hip-hop alter-ego BRAT) and Lyuba Yakimchuk and the musician and writer Irena Karpa have teamed up with the Berlin-based musician and producer Yuriy Gurzhy to write and compose a soundtrack for the past year, which they will perform live at 34OST.

The artists

The poet, musician and cultural manager Grigorij Semenchuk lives in Lviv, Ukraine. He is the director of the NGO “Art Council Dialogue” and curator of the festival “Authors’ Reading Month” in Lviv. Semenchuk has published three volumes of poetry so far: “Internal Jihad” (2012), “More verses and songs” (2015) and “According to the original” (2021). He is also a member of the music projects “BRAT”, “LANDSCHAFT” and “DRUMTYATR”. Semenchuk is the editor of the anthology of contemporary Ukrainian poetry “Letters from Ukraine” (2016) and co-editor of the Australian-Ukrainian poetry anthology “AU\UA” (2012). Semenchuk’s poems and articles have been translated into nine different languages, and have appeared in German translation in “Wort”, “Literatur und Kritik” and the “Jahrbuch der Poesie”, among others.

The writer, screenwriter and singer Irena Karpa was born in Ivano-Frankivsk (Ukraine) and currently lives in Paris. Karpa worked as First Secretary for Culture at the Embassy of Ukraine in France (2015-2019) and is a curator of literary and art projects. The frontwoman of the band QARPA has been a TV presenter on channels such as MTV Ukraine, ICTV and Novyi Kanal and is a columnist for Vanity Fair, Deutsche Welle, NV, Radio Svoboda and Vogue Ukraine. She has published several books in Ukraine, including “Freud Would Cry“, “The Himalaya Pizza“, ”Good News from the Aral Sea“ and “How to Get Married as Many Times as You Want“. 

Lyuba Yakimchuk was born in the Luhansk region and currently lives in Kyiv. She is the author of several books of poetry, including “Apricots from the Donbass“, which highlights the experiences of people in the war zones and has won several prestigious awards, including the International Slavic Poetic Award. The book was voted one of the 10 best books about the invasion of Ukraine in Forbes magazine and has already been published in numerous translations. Yakimchuk’s poems have been translated into over 20 languages, and leading media such as the New York Times, BBC and CNN have covered her work. In 2022, she performed her poetry at the Grammys as part of John Legend’s “Free” performance dedicated to Ukraine. In 2015, the Kyiv-based magazine New Time named her one of the hundred most influential figures in the Ukrainian art scene.

Born in Kharkiv (Ukraine) and living in Berlin, Yuriy Gurzhy is the founder of Russendisko, RotFront, The Disorientalists and Kaminer & Die Antikörpers. Yuriy curated ten compilations on various European record labels, including “Russendisko Hits“, “Shtetl Superstars“ and “Borsh Division – Future Sound Of Ukraine“. Between 2009 and 2015, he recorded three albums and has toured extensively with RotFront. His latest productions are “Misto 2Go – New Donbass Symphony” (2021) and “Fokstroty” (2021, with Serhiy Zhadan). His first book “Richard Wagner and the Klezmer Band” was published in January 2022, and he writes a regular “Ukrainian War Diary” for the Berliner Tagesspiegel.

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The press says:

“For Ukrainians, poetry isn’t a luxury, it’s a necessity during war” (The Guardian)