Ukraine List

First of all, I apologize for the neglect of this site in the last several months. I will finally be relocating to Kyiv in about ten days and hopefully things will improve.
With that said, Gogol Bordello can always bring me out of my hole.
The band has been all over the TV and radio in the […]

_______________

Magnatune, whose selling line is “We are not evil” has a good podcast of church music by a number of Ukrainian groups. In reality it is much more than a podcast though as you can click on any of track hyperlinks and then use the flashplayer to listen to all the songs off of fifteen […]

_______________

I’ve had a draft post about Gogol Bordello languishing since the beginning of January, so I thought I would finally polish it off. And since Eugene Hutz is one of the co-stars in the movie Everything is Illuminated, I thought I’d just combine the two topics.
Anyhow, I went to see Gogol Bordello in mid-December at […]

_______________

I thought this was an excellent photo of an accordion player playing in the Kyiv metro. It was taken by Neil Navneet and is on TrekEarth.

Of course this accordion has keys, but many musicians in Ukraine play what’s called the bayan — or button accordion. This site, says that the accordion originally came from Germany […]

_______________

As Christmas season here, many of us, especially those in North America, will be hearing a ubiquitous holiday song that comes from Ukraine. “Carol of the Bells,” that rhythmic bell-like song is based upon a Ukrainian folk song. Since then the song has been Anglicized and has been been on TV shows, hundreds of commercials, […]

_______________

Here is photo from TrekEarth that was taken by Victor Velund in August of 2005. There isn’t much description for the photo other than it is of a wedding band.
I like the working feeling of this photo; these are working people who use their tools of trade to make a living. The photo could just […]

_______________

Well, I was searching around for a topic for today — and now it is no longer today but the next day. Anyhow, I wanted to do something about music, so today’s topic will be Gogol Bordello, a Gypsy-punk-Ukrainian-emigre-fusion-cabaret band. Well it is a bit hard to characterize. One source described Gogol Bordello’s new […]

_______________

Today I went surfing a bit on YouTube and found a really interesting video. Of course, what made it so amazing was the new music overlay. YouTube has partnered with Warner Music to provide music on top of video content. Anyhow, the video is of a boxer, Vitali Klitschko, winning a fight, and the video […]

_______________