| I am an artist. My voice is louder than most. I have played my music all over. It is the soundtrack of resistance... My voice as a social figure, as a musician, as someone who has influence over the young people, is the most important thing I can give my country. |
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| Ukrainian rock band Okean Elzy performs on Kyiv's Glass Bridge on Feb. 22, 2022, two days before Russia invaded. |
| (Yevhen Liubimov/Future Publishing/Getty Images) |
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| quote of the day |
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| rantnrave:// |
I'm the Okean
I'm not here to tell you a song can stop an incoming Russian missile, because it can't, but I am here to tell you the song is stronger than the missile in every other way. "Boat, oh my little boat," Ukrainian rock singer, activist and politician SLAVA VAKARCHUK sang with two members of his band, OKEAN ELZY, to a small crowd on Kyiv's Glass Bridge a month ago today as Russian troops prepared to cross the border. "It will overcome the wave / It will overcome the shallow / It will survive the storm." (I'm relying on the internet for my translations here.) Preserved on YouTube, it's a great performance—three men with two acoustic guitars on a pedestrian bridge, performing with a passion and a presence and an unwavering faith in the power of their own music that could translate to MADISON SQUARE GARDEN with little trouble. Here's more from the same afternoon, a singalong with an OASIS-like chorus that appears to translate to "Everything will be fine."
Okean Elzy, which has been together for nearly 30 years, has an outsize presence in Ukraine. The band and the country "have grown up together," ALEX W. PALMER wrote in the New Yorker in 2015. "Okean Elzy may be the closest thing Ukraine has to an enduring national institution." OE was the first major Ukrainian act to break through in Russia after the fall of the Soviet Union and made it "cool to sing in Ukrainian, and cool to wave the flag."
Okean Elzy also may have helped topple a government. The band's concert on Independence Square in Kyiv during the anti-government Euromaidan protests in December 2013 attracted "tens of thousands of fans who abandoned a rival, pro-government event to attend [Okean Elzy's] show instead," the New York Times reported. "With that, many said at the time, momentum on the street shifted decisively to the opposition." Two months later, President VIKTOR YANUKOVYCH was gone in Ukraine's Revolution of Dignity.
Slava Vakarchuk has an electric presence onstage, but fronting a rock band was far from his only option. He has a Ph.D. in particle physics. He served in Ukraine's parliament briefly, in 2008, but quit to protest corruption. There was talk of him running for president in 2018—the year another popular entertainer, VOLODYMYR ZELENSKYY, ended up being elected. But he imagined a different role for himself. "I'm not a politician," he had told a wounded soldier in 2015. "I'll fight with my words and my music."
And that's exactly what he's doing in wartime—while "working as a truck driver, bringing children and women to safety, going back and forth," as he told a reporter for the Indian current affairs magazine Open three weeks ago. He's also been bringing food and medicine to cities on the front lines of the war. Along the way, he's still stepping out to perform wherever he feels music is needed. Music is its own kind of food and medicine. Here he is in a Kharkiv subway station, leading a singalong of the Ukrainian folk song "CHERVONA RUTA" for the people sheltering inside. Here's an impromptu performance for people trying to escape to Poland, at a Lviv train station.
Vakarchuk wrote a poem in his car, he told NPR last week. It's about the hatred he feels now and that he's never felt before. "It's toxic," he said. "I want to get rid of it. But the only way to get rid of it now is to win the war."
It's Tuesday
And it's the sixth anniversary of PHIFE DAWG's death—a day that's being honored with the release of the A TRIBE CALLED QUEST rapper's first posthumous album, FOREVER. It was executive produced by Phife's manager and touring DJ, DION LIVERPOOL, with the help of notebooks Phife left behind filled with "a lot of blueprints and clues... like, these intricate notes of producers he would want, features he’d want, liner notes—everything was just oddly laid out.” Phife worked on the title track three days before he died, Liverpool tells the New Yorker, and one of his last requests was for how the song, and the album, should end: "Affect my voice like it’s going into eternity.”
Rest in Peace
Gospel singer/songwriter LASHUN PACE, who started out with her family group, the Anointed Pace Sisters, and moved on to a solo career marked by indelible moments like this... Contemporary classical composer LYELL CRESSWELL, a New Zealander who spent most of his working life in Scotland.
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| - Matty Karas (@troubledoll), curator |
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OPEN Magazine |
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| ‘Kyiv now fights for the future of all human beings’ |
| By Rahul Pandita |
| On the day Russia declared war on Ukraine, the country’s biggest rock star, Svyatoslav ‘Slava’ Vakarchuk, got on to Kyiv’s glass bridge in a show of solidarity. As people gathered around him, singing along, Slava said that the people of Ukraine were together and “We shall overcome.” |
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Pollstar |
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| Pollstar & VenuesNow’s Women Of Live 2022 |
| These women have not only claimed their own seats in the business, but they’re bringing along chairs for others and providing opportunities for the next generation. |
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The New Yorker |
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| Giving Phife Dawg the Sound of "Forever" |
| By Charles Bethea |
| Dion Liverpool, who co-produced a new posthumous album by the beloved Tribe Called Quest rapper, calls it the most challenging project he's ever worked on. |
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The Signal |
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| To Lose And To Pretend |
| By David Katznelson |
| Everywhere I am going these days I see kids with Nirvana tee shirts….no other bands in sight. And I am pondering: how did this come to be? |
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| there's a leak in this old building |
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Lexical Tones |
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| Lexical Tones: Royalties vs Royalties vs Royalties |
| By Jamie Leigh Sampson |
| ADJ•ective Co-owner and #ADJCC member Jamie Leigh Sampson compares various types of royalties, as we continue this series exploring the entrepreneurial side of being a composer in the 21st century. |
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PetaPixel |
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| Photographer's 3,200 Undeveloped Film Rolls Hold History of Rock 'n' Roll |
| By Phil Mistry |
| Much of photographer Charles Daniels' work was shot in the late 1960s at the Boston Tea Party, a Boston club where the Grateful Dead, Neil Young, Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, The Who and other stars played. He was the club's emcee and he kept his camera handy as he schmoozed with the musicians. |
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Mixmag |
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| Bigger vision: Joy Orbison is ready for the next step |
| By Patrick Hinton |
| 13 years into his career, Joy Orbison feels like he's just getting started. The London DJ/producer speaks to Patrick Hinton about dealing with hype, coming into his own as an artist, and pushing things forward. |
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| what we're into |
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| Music | Media |
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| “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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