12-13/01/2023
Although I regularly go to parties as a DJ, I have the impression that I myself have forgotten how to party properly. I’ve just lost interest. During the pandemic period, I didn’t leave my studio for weeks and then the Great War came to my homeland and it became almost impossible to think about anything else, to switch off.
Maybe that’s exactly why I agreed when my colleague Miriam, with whom we played together at Disko Kosmopolit a few years ago, invited me to be her guest DJ at SO36 on Friday – I want to see if I can still do it. I have announced that I will only be playing Ukrainian music that evening. And all Berliners who want to wish me a happy birthday could come to my DJ set, because I’m not planning any other party.
On January 12th, I wake up and realize that after the appeal for donations I posted on Facebook the night before, the desired amount has already been raised overnight – I couldn’t have asked for a better birthday present! Now I can order a generator for the Kharkiv racetrack.
My mother said she would bake my favorite apple pie for me – one more reason to go to Potsdam! Despite the trains rattling by, I can hear a familiar melody playing under the subway arch on Schönhauser Allee, played by a street musician on the keyboard… How do I know it? In a few seconds I’ll figure it out, that’s “Obijmy” by Okean Elzy, probably the most famous Ukrainian band of the past 20 years.
“Obijmy” means “hug me” in Ukrainian. In 2022, Coldplay covered the song, and there was also this video of Svyatoslav Vakarchuk, the band’s lead singer, performing the song with a string quartet on the ruins of the Palace of Labor in Kharkiv in mid-April. There on the fourth floor was the studio of Zhadan i Sobaky, where we recorded the children’s choir for our album “Fokstroty” in the summer of 2021…
Written nine years ago, “Obijmy” remains highly topical, simply because of the first line. “The day will come when the war will be over,” she says. Still, hearing this song on a street in Berlin where you’re more used to Oasis’ “Wonderwall” or Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” is somehow surreal.
My mother was born in the city of Novoshakhtinsk in the Donbass, she moved to Kharkiv with her parents only in the 1960s. She has been in Germany for 27 years, learning the language here, but her interest in Ukraine was limited.
But in the last few months it’s different, our conversation is mainly about Ukraine and Ukrainians – her school friend fled from Kharkiv to Bavaria with her family. She takes care of them as best as she can from afar and is committed to helping the war victims who ended up in Potsdam. My mother used to work for the Jewish community for years as a social worker. She knows her stuff, she can and wants to help.
In the evening in the pizzeria around the corner from me, I overhear a customer talking to the woman at the counter. I apologize and ask if any of you actually mentioned DakhaBrakha. Yes, the two confirm with a smile, I heard you right, they met at the DakhaBrakha concert. She thinks the Ukrainian band is great, says the woman, she must have seen them live eight or nine times.
On my way to SO36 the next evening, I stop by Space Meduza, the most Ukrainian bar in Berlin, where Mavka plays, a singer from Kiev who mixes folk and electronic music in her songs. Today she is accompanied by three exceptional musicians. I would have liked to have stayed longer, Ukrainian folk songs in krautrock and funk guise sound fantastic, but unfortunately I have to move on.
Never before has Ukrainian music been as present in Berlin as it is today, I think to myself as I roll my DJ case through the streets of Kreuzberg. However, when I think about the reasons, it’s hard for me to be happy about it.
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