You Should Watch This

By now most of you probably know about my semi-obsession with the band DakhaBrakha.  I personally think they are the most amazing Ukrainian band I have ever heard.*  They play mostly what I would call "folk" music, but what they refer to as "ethno-chaos."  I wrote a paper about them for my ethnomusicology class, so I have both an academic and a personal interest. 

Anyway, the point of all of this is to say that you should watch this video:
http://vimeo.com/14950124

The song and the video are both beautiful.  Sorry, I don't off the top of my head have a translation for the title, nor can I tell you what the song is about exactly.  If I thought about it more I would tell you about how the imagery and the lyrics (in other songs) have clear connections to Romantic Nationalism, modernity, nostalgia, and avant garde**.  But not today.  I will add, however, that I find the video a tad bit creepy, especially starting around 4:50. 

Enjoy!!

*But never seen - they have a tendency to be in places either right before or right after I am there.  It is very sad.  Although, I did see Nina (if you watch the video she is the girl with the braids) in L'viv during the summer. 
**The band originated at the Center for Contemporary Arts in Kyiv (DAKH). 

ДахаБраха

Title refers to a Ukrainian band - in the Latin alphabet that would be DakhaBrakha. I thought I'd post something about them b/c:
a) they are good
b) they are Ukrainian
c) I found a new favorite song and finally
d) b/c I cannot sleep.
I slept late this morning, but only b/c I couldn't sleep last night. I woke up in the middle of the night after this horrible nightmare that I was at my grandmother's house and a plane crashed into it. No one died or anything, it was just extremely vivid. I had a few other weird dreams as well.

Anyway, more about the band...
I would classify them as "ethno-rock" or "folk-rock" - they classify themselves as "ethno-chaos." Not sure what that category means, but basically they reinterpret Ukrainian and East European folk music with their own very unique style. They are from Kyiv and affiliated with a Contempory Arts center there DAKH*. Their theater background is probably obvious from their shows, but I have never seen them in concert. I only learned about the band this summer, though apparently my friends saw them last summer at a festival. For more information, here is their website.

In other news,...oh, wait there isn't any other news. Not really, not anything of interest. However, I managed to be fairly productive today. Graded all the mulitiple choice tests. I hope my students aren't the only ones who had a hard time. Checked out a million books from the library b/c I have decided to become interested in Critical Theory. Hm..and that is about it besides wrestling with some Russian text that I needed to put online for my classmates, which I cannot read so really have zero clue if I copied the correct pages (microfiche were invented by a sadist or a lunatic).

So, goodnight. I am still wide awake, but hopefully all the rest of you are sleeping peacefully!


*A clue to where their name comes from, but also Dakha Brakha in Old Slavonic means "to give" and "to take". In modern Ukrainian, it would be "Daty" (дати- to give) and "Braty" (брати - to take). From their website:

The meaning of “giving” is obvious - to give music, joy, celebration, the whole spectrum of emotions, feelings and reflections that fresh music and singing bring with itself.

But where “to take” from? The energy can be taken not only from a native “source” but from anywhere...

Modern ethnic music needs a sort of reconstruction and in a way it means to search roots, to move back in time. But if one belongs to the urban culture and has no initial experience of the traditional life, how can he find these roots?