Hope, Love, and Devotion Part 2

Seeing DakhaBrakha at The Local in Saugerties was incredibly exciting and poignant in all the most important ways. The world-music quartet from Kyiv, Ukraine stopped in Saugerites as part of a world tour that brought them to large music venues and festivals the world over. And all of us in the audience had the remarkable experience of seeing them at The Local, a 99-seat music venue and arts center in Saugerties, NY.

Seeing their faces, their costumes, their whimsey and their grief so closely while they perfomed their incredible funk/folk/soul sounds, their Ukrainian «ethnic chaos» was mesmerizing. The musicians interspersed their riotous, glorious sounds with anti-war, anti-Putin commentary, with their obvious longing for peace in Ukraine, adding a dimension of meaning and possibility to the months of grim reportage we have all been ingesting. The result was moving and almost literally breathtaking. As was their solidarity with us, their rapt audience.

The evening was introduced by Maria Sonevytsky, author of Wild Music: Sound and Sovereignty in Ukraine (Music/Cultures Series, Wesleyan University Press, 2019) who gave us context and key ideas through which to experience the concert. In fact, I would say this was pure experience — political, sonic, historical, visual, theatrical, communal, poetic.

The whole experience reminded me, in our moment of ravishing virtuality, artificiality and analog plasticity, of just how profound a shared artistic experience can be.

— Caroline Crumpacker