WE HAVE A COMMON LANGUAGE OF UNDERSTANDING - MUSIC

At the end of April 2022, a joint concert of Troiye Zillia and Daga Dana took place in the Progresia club in Warsaw. The concert was part of their Polish tour, and the special feature of the Warsaw concert was the collaboration with the co-founder of the Burdon band, Olena Yeremenko, who plays the violin and nickel harp.

In the conditions of martial law in Ukraine, the Troye Zillia band had to find a compromise version of the presentation of their music, drummer Serhii Krasutskyi and keyboardist Vitaly Maranchuk - permanent members of the band, could not leave Ukraine, so the musical support for Anastasiya Wojtiuk in Poland was made up of four Polish musicians. The band DagaDana also performed in Warsaw with a reduced lineup, as Daga Gregorowych was unable to participate in the event due to health problems. The touching culmination of the concert was a public telephone birthday greeting for Daga, which was joined by club visitors. She thanked everyone present, because every purchased ticket is a financial contribution to support Ukraine. After the concert, we talked with the musicians about the war, music, aid to Ukraine, and creative ideas.

Artists about their roots and origin

Anastasia: I am from Lviv. But my grandmother is from Konotop, this is the Sumy region, it is literally right on the border with russia, and my other great-grandmother is from near Tarnov.
Olena: I am from Kropyvnytskyi, where the first drama theater was born, in which, by the way, my grandfather and grandmother worked. I was comforted when "K-r-v-grad" was eventually renamed to Kropyvnytskyi, in honor of the person who made our city famous.
Dana: I'm from Ivano-Frankivsk.
Nastya: And today we played a joint concert under the hashtag #freeUkraine, who would have thought that we would perform together in Warsaw...

About war experiences, creativity, helping others and plans for the future

Nastya: War is a big tectonic change. It was as if there was a big explosion and we were all suspended in the air like molecules. No one knows what will happen next. But at the same time, we feel differently, we see our mistakes, we see the mistakes of Europe. Let's see where to go. We see a clear mission. War is also an aggravation of personal psychological problems. We imagine war as in school - tanks, black and white pictures from the chronicle, but this is also an exacerbation of trauma, and people try to silence them with daily activity. At first, everyone tried to do everything. We experience stress quietly, and art gives you time to look deep. Playing music today is very difficult, because you don't see the effect immediately, but the result is manifested in a long-term perspective. I conducted master classes with Ukrainians from Kryvyi Rih, Zaporizhzhia, and Bila Tserkva, we sang haivkas, and after they finished, they told me, "What cool things. Why haven't we done this before." That's how many master classes need to be held so that people understand. Works here for hundreds of years.
Dana: Since the beginning of the full-scale war, each of us has rushed into different areas to be useful to Ukraine. But already on the 27th, I realized that I needed to control my enthusiasm. We started a radio broadcast, talked about Ukraine in a peaceful context for a month, held an auction and collected approximately 750,000 zlotys. Everyone should do what he is a professional in.
Olena: I rushed to help everyone and very quickly realized that I could not do everything at the same time. In the end, I focused on music and moral and material help to those people whom I was able to help - a friend with a child moved in with me. My good friend, the violinist Mateusz Niwiński, suggested making a new program, it is already ready and is called Orkiestra Galicja. This is music from the lands of ancient Galicia. We take materials from the recordings of violinists who went to America and Canada at the beginning of the 20th century.

We, Ukrainians, have experienced this many times. It was not for nothing that there was such an onslaught on patriotism in the 90s. I also realized very clearly - never again, no connections with russia.

Dana: Now everyone needs to do everything they can, there are no big or small things, we all have to join in, but the most important thing is not to suffer.
Nastya: I realized that everyone entered the war with the baggage that he managed to collect in peacetime. And mine are folk songs. This is very strong luggage. Why is "Oh in the meadow red viburnum" so popular today? Because "we will win", "we will sow rye" and "everything will be Ukraine", that's why. And now it's time for new songs...
Olena: These songs will be born. Because people are now fermenting, boiling and one day it will flow into creativity. Maybe it won't happen in a month, not in two and not in a year, maybe those children who are 15 years old today will want to give something of themselves, and this will be their natural need. But it will definitely happen.
Dana: The band DagaDana is always in the process of finding its own musical language. The group and I met at jazz workshops, so the combination of styles in our music is natural. We don't have frontmen. Our music arises in communication. This is such a big cauldron, into which everyone adds spices to their taste. We visited twenty-seven countries with concerts, and at a certain moment we realized that we are interesting in China, in Argentina or on the island of Jeju, first of all, as bearers of our culture - in our case - Ukrainian and Polish. Playing with musicians on the streets of Kuala Lumpur, you suddenly realize that we have a lot in common - the language of sounds and rhythm, but at the same time everyone has something of their own - Ukrainian polyphonic, Polish mazurek, pentatonic singing or Mongolian throat, but most importantly - in you have a common language of understanding - music.