By ALISA SOPOVA
War, revolution and resistance to Russian interference has inspired Ukrainian popular music for decades, creating a national soundtrack of proud anthems, but also lamentable pap.
The most recent entrant into the Ukrainian catalog — listeners can decide for themselves in which category it belongs — is the ballad “1944,” by the politically inclined performer Jamala. She is an ethnic Tatar who sings about Soviet abuses under Stalin in her native Crimea, a full 70 years before the peninsula was annexed for Russia by President Vladimir V. Putin.
Jamala won a television competition to represent Ukraine in the 2016 Eurovisionsong contest in Stockholm in May, provoking some outrage in Russia. The Eurovision contest rules prohibit overtly political songs. But fans of Jamala, and Ukrainians upset over the insurrection by Russian-backed separatists in the eastern part of the country, say that political music has a place in a country at war.
Here are some recent examples of popular protest songs born of Ukrainians’ frustrations with what they view as persistent Russian interference in their country.
‘Together We Are Many’
Only months after the 2004 Orange Revolution, when Ukrainians took to the streets to dispute the results of an election widely believed to be corrupt, Ukraine hosted the 2005 Eurovision finals in Kiev. A band called Greenjolly performed a hip-hop song, “Razom Nas Bahato,” or Together We Are Many, an anthem of the Orange revolution protesters who helped overturn the election of Viktor F. Yanukovych, a trusted ally of Russia. The group’s musical career was short-lived: Greenjolly finished 19th out of 24 acts.
‘The Glory and Freedom of Ukraine Has Not Yet Died’
At the 2004 Eurovision contest, Ukraine won the television competition behind the performer Ruslana, for her song, “Wild Dances.” Though that song did not have a nationalistic or political message, Ruslana became famous a decade later for her passionate performance of the Ukrainian national anthem on a stage at Maidan Square during the 2014 uprising against former President Yanukovych. Ruslana’s performance is widely considered one of the most beautiful renditions of Ukraine’s anthem.
‘We Were Cheated’
The Orange Revolution brought mounting disappointment in politicians and inspired the song “Kynuly,” or We Were Cheated, by Skryabin, one of the top bands in Ukraine.
‘Fighters of the Light’
When Ukrainians again took to the streets in 2014 in the Maidan uprising, to again force Mr. Yanukovych from office, they composed a new soundtrack that included the battlecry “Voiny Sveta,” or Warriors of the Light. The song, sometimes translated as Daybreakers, was by the Belorussian punk rock band Lyapis Trubetskoy, whose lead singer, Siarhei Mikhalok, lives in Kiev.
Though much of the Maidan pop culture was in Ukrainian, “Voiny Sveta” is actually a Russian-language song.
‘The Piano Extremist’
Another musical hero of Maidan in 2014 was a man known as the Piano Extremist, an anonymous performer who played protest songs on the street in Kiev wearing a Balaklava. He has since composed piano pieces about the war in eastern Ukraine, including one dedicated to the battle of Ilovaysk in August 2014, in which Ukrainian forces were surrounded and suffered a crushing defeat at the hands of Russian-backed separatists.
‘Not Your War’
Okean Elzy, Ukraine’s most popular band, released “Not Your War” in April 2015 in response to the increasingly dire conflict between Ukrainian forces and rebels backed by Russia that has left thousands of Ukrainians suffering. According to the band’s leader, Svyatoslav Vakarchuk, the song is intended to convey the idea that, for many centuries, it is others who have imposed war on Ukrainians.
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