Rock Music Festival Promotes Ukrainian Language

Evhenia Mussuri
Kyiv Post

Residents and visitors to Lviv are getting a real treat. Lviv-based concert promoter Dzyga (Humming Top), founded by 1990 Verkhovna Rada student hunger-strike organizer Markian Ivaschchyshyn, has initiated the "Listen to Ukrainian Music" festival. In a country flooded by cheap pirated CDs and low-grade pop imports, the Dzyga organization, which also owns a string of Lviv cafes and a contemporary art centre, offers an island of respite. The concert series boasts some of Ukraine's best Ukrainian-language, alternative rock bands. Beginning January 24, the festival will feature a different group every week - kicking off with electronica trio Skryabin, and including dance music band Tanok na Maidani Kongo, Tartak, bard Victor Morozov, eclectic rockers Mertvyj Piven, Kyiv-based Mandry, vocalist Marijka Burmaka, a cappella group Pikkardijska Tertsia, Taras Chubaj's Plach Yeremiyi, and finishing up with supergroup Vopli Vidoplyasova. Moreover, the concerts will take place at the city's foremost and most-imaginative nightclub, The Lyalka, found in the spacious cellar of the historic Children's Puppetry Theatre. Concert sold out? No problem. Dzyga also plans to broadcast the shows on a large screen set up in the square outside the club.