Zrada Redefines What It Means to Be a Ukrainian Band
It’s Kaitlin here — you’ll hear from Hannah and our guest later — but I’m going to start of this post with a little story.
While I think Ukrainian dance is one of the coolest things around, when you’re growing up and everyone else is in all these mainstream exciting extracurriculars — indoor soccer! hockey at all times of year! martial arts! guitar lessons! and so on and so on — it’s easy to feel like your hobby of Ukrainian dance isn’t the coolest. You spend every Monday (or whatever) evening in a school gym, church hall, or community centre doing dance moves it seems that no one outside the room has ever seen before to music they’ve definitely never heard of.
So though I loved to dance, I didn’t consider myself cool because of it.
That is, until I heard of Zrada.
My Godmother gifted me Zrada’s self-titled debut album, released in 2009. It was probably the first Ukrainian music I heard outside of dance class and the Ukrainian church I’d sometimes bless Easter baskets at. I listened, I danced, and I thought about this group of young guys who were obviously very cool, seeing as they were in a band, and I realized, “So celebrating Ukrainian culture is cool.”
They not only inspired me to continue celebrating Ukrainian culture, but they also opened up my mind to what Ukrainian music can be. As I discovered more Ukrainian bands, I started to appreciate the music at dance class even more. Music is a huge reason why I love Ukrainian dance and is a big reason why I still dance today.
So I’d just like to thank Zrada for encouraging me to continue celebrating Ukrainian culture in a way that felt right for me, which was through dance, because I don’t know what my life would like — and I don’t want to know what my life would look like — without it.
Our Q&A with Zrada
Andriy Michalchyshyn from Zrada joined us to talk about the Winnipeg-based band’s latest release, The Old Ways, which is out now on Spotify and Bandcamp. Hit play on the EP, and read on to learn about the inspiration behind this new release!
What’s Zrada’s origin story?
Around 2005-06, there were a few of us who played in a wedding/polka/zabava band called Taran. We just kind of wanted to do something different. I suppose we were inspired by bands like Haydamaky, Okean Elzy, TNMK, stuff like that.
We were naive. We were in our 20s, and we thought, well, this will make sense, right? People will want to see this. We approached another friend of ours. We didn’t really know what we were doing, to be honest with you. We practiced in a basement, wrote some really weird songs, and we’ve been doing it ever since, figuring it out as we go, but I think the main ethos of the band, the mission statement, was about going against the polka/zabava stuff. Our MO was to do something to make people who are not Ukrainian want to listen to Ukrainian music, so we needed to do something to incorporate many different styles that we all like, just get it out there to people of all cultural backgrounds. And that’s what we’ve been doing for over 20 years now.
What was the inspiration behind the band’s name, Zrada?
We were just sitting around thinking of what word would sound cool. There might have even been some dictionaries involved. At the time, we didn’t realize the negative connotations that the words Zrada has in Ukraine and other Eastern European countries. If you Google “Zrada,” all these bizarre things come up.
So, that’s the origin of it. We picked the word, and I don’t think we realized the full ramifications of the word, but you know, we own it now. Plus, it’s not that hard to say, and it’s easy to write in English.
“Ukrainian music, like all folk music, has its own magical powers.”
You mentioned one driving force for Zrada is to introduce Ukrainian music and culture to a wider audience, which you do through modern-sounding music. How do you avoid straying too far from traditional Ukrainian music while you blend it with these newer styles?
I don’t think you can think about it. The one thing that has remained consistent is that everything we sing is in Ukrainian. The lyrics have to evoke a folk/traditional sort of feeling. The stuff that I write, I always try to make it sound like a narodna pisnya (folk song). If you were to sing it with a guitar, if you stripped everything away from it, could this pass as a song? So I think if you get that root melody and feeling you can really add anything you want to it. And maybe that’s it — maybe as long as there’s that kernel, deep down, you can really layer stuff on top of it.
Ukrainian music, like all folk music, has its own magical powers. When you grow up with it, you hear a certain chord change into another, and you get goosebumps, you start crying. There’s this thing that happens with the sound of that melody. As long as there’s that, I really think you can go pretty far. I’ve never consciously thought about the balance. I just think if you get a bunch of creative people in a room, something good is going happen.
How is your new EP, The Old Ways, different from your previous releases?
It’s probably the hardest sounding stuff that I think we’ve ever done. It’s bloody fast. It’s aggressive. But I think the songs still have that kernel of a folk melody in there. We’ve gotten into prog rock. We’re old men now, and we’re deciding that we want to just become prog rock musicians. There’s some pretty trippy stuff in there, which I like, and hey, if that’s the way the band is going, then that’s the way the band is going. I think we’ve moved away from the polka punk stuff to more experimental styles.
Where did you learn all of the folklore and traditions that appear in your music?
Mariya Khymynets created the cover art for The Old Ways.
I would say we’re not really dogmatic about it. In the second song, “Nightingale,” there’s all these references to Ivana Kupala, and that’s something that I grew up doing as a part of Plast — we made wreaths, we jumped over fires. It just kind of gets in your blood. It’s in the air, and you want to get that back out there. A lot of the imagery, a lot of the wordplay, a lot of the mischievous nature of these pagan rituals, we plunked back into that song. At the end of that tune, there is this talking, and that is a recorded audio of the last Molfar, or the last mountain wizard in the Karpaty, Mykhailo Nechay, and so we put a little bit of audio of him talking about how he used to do his magic rituals.
I think the rest of it just filters down from growing up with folk music — all of us in the band, we know different parts of it. It happens organically. There are no rules to folklore. I think you just you kind of pick it up as you go. I would say some people might disagree with me, but that’s how we approach it.
I do get it, because folklore is sacred; it’s what separates your people perhaps from another people, especially in a time of war.
I thing for some things, yes, we shouldn’t shouldn’t mix them up, but I think in the arts, you’re allowed to do that because it thrusts it into the modern world, and it makes you think about things in an experimental way. When these traditions were being developed, no one was following a rulebook — they developed organically. It happened in a mysterious way. And so I think the arts can always contribute to make more mystery.
What keeps you motivated to continue making music and celebrating Ukrainian culture?
If I had to look at it from the outside, there’s clearly something in all of us. There’s a need. It’s like breathing. Playing music makes me think about my ancestors, and it makes me think about the journeys that were taken to make me where I am now in this country. And if it inspires other people then, that is a double bonus. If people are listening to it and thinking about, “Hey, what was happening in the forests of Ukraina 800 years ago?”, I’m going to be a happy boy if that’s what they’re thinking about.