DAKHA BRAKHA at WOMADelaide

By Roma & Rostyslav Becker

So much anticipation surrounded Dakha Brakha’s 2016 return to WOMADelaide after a five year hiatus. The New Zealand WOMAD 2016 artists’ page pays homage to their international breakthrough in Adelaide 2011 and “ascent in the international music scene after being discovered by Australian WOMADelaide.” So, the curious and the converts with fond memories of their 2011 appearance, gathered around the intimate Novatech Stage to see the band with the impossibly high fur hats and colourful costumes.

Their Friday night appearance on a balmy autumn evening that followed an oppressively hot day, started with Marko Halanevych’s greeting, “We are DakhaBrakha and we are from FREE UKRAINE.” The seated audience basked in the languid surrounds of the Botanic Park soothed by Dakha Brakha’s warm, rich harmonies evoking the ancient soul of the Ukrainian spirit. They also invoked nature in their spring Vesnianka employing a range of percussive instruments and clever vocalisations to the accompaniment of the local residents (the Botanic Garden is, after all, adjacent to the Adelaide Zoo), and the fruit bats hanging upside down just above the stage. The frivolity stopped abruptly with Nina Garenetska’s chain-saw cello bowing of a Hutsulskiy Rap Kolomeyka and her broad Hutsul accent gave a hint of what was to come, “Are you happy … Then let’s Dance.” Once the WOMADelaide crowd was up on its feet, there was no stopping the frenzied rhythms as Olena Tsybulska and Iryna Kovalenko pounded out ferocious beats on Djembe and Darabukha while Marko Halanevych and Nina Garanetska kept driving the rhythm on accordion and cello. They call their musical style ethno-chaos, which is a convenient way of describing what happens when traditional roots Ukrainian folk music collides with the potent force of tribal rhythms from around the globe. While DakhaBrakha may travel the globe collecting ideas and music for future projects, there is no denying that they are deeply grounded in their Ukrainian roots with Marko Halanevych proudly holding aloft a Ukrainian flag at the end of the concert.

On Saturday, they appeared on the Main Foundation stage, an honour accorded to the stars of World Music, and since DakhaBrakha has been exciting music aficionados around the world since 2011, with highly successful appearances at the WOMAD UK, Sziget Hungary, and the legendary Bonnaroo Festival in the US, it was indeed now their turn for the main stage. Rolling Stone Magazine did in fact call DakhaBrakha, “the best breakout band of Bonnaroo,” and lavished other compliments like; they “went into Bonnaroo as unknowns but ended up with one of the most receptive crowds of the weekend.” These festival successes along with an appearance on the BBC’s “Later… with Jools Holland” made them one of the “must see” bands of WOMADelaide 2016, and the crowd came out in thousands.

A sea of people swayed, some waved Ukrainian flags and then erupted into frenzied dancing and rapturous applause under the searing Adelaide sun.

Despite the heat, they gave their friends, fans and the curious, a closer look at their trade mark fur hats and gorgeous costumes bearing traditional motifs created by the legendary Ukrainian animator Sashko Danylenko for their Karpatskiy rap video clip, as they autographed their CD’s next to the Mr V Music Store, a WOMADelaide institution. It was during one of these signings that Marko Halanevych was heard to calmly correct a well-wisher, “We are not from THE Ukraine, we are from FREE Ukraine.”

This is what defines DakhaBrakha, they are one of the voices of the new, post-Maidan, Free Ukraine – exciting, experimental, global and democratic with a strong sense of social justice. It is this sense of fairness and responsibility which saw band members being heavily involved in ecological and heritage issues in Ukraine, participating in the Revolution of Dignity, while raising much needed funds for disadvantaged children affected by the war in Donbass, as well as raising awareness to painful issues like the unlawful imprisonment of the Ukrainian Member of Parliament, Nadia Savchenko in a Russian prison. Their conscious and deliberate decision to attend the WOMADelaide media call dressed in their Free Savchenko t-shirts says so much about their awareness of the artist’s obligation to make the world a better and fairer place, and this is after all, one of the guiding principles of the global phenomenon that is WOMAD.