Ukrainian electro-folk duo ONUKA spent final summer time touring European live performance halls and headlining festivals. Now, on account of a latest wartime directive, they need to stay inside their house nation — so the band boards trains and buses to gigs at underground shelters, in addition to buildings close to metro stations, in case Russian missile assaults interrupt the music.
“These shelters can accommodate as much as 1,000 folks. It’s a giant concrete room with some seats,” says Eugene Filatov, 41, ONUKA’s producer, who performs along with his spouse, frontwoman Nata Zhyzhchenko, 39, and 5 bandmates. “Folks nonetheless want this cultural life.”
The group lately downsized its 2025 touring ambitions on account of a late-February announcement by Ukraine’s tradition ministry: As of March 3, male Ukrainian “journalists and tradition professionals” of draft age will not obtain advice letters for touring overseas. So ONUKA is performing nearer to its Kyiv house, readying a brand new album, the long-delayed Ukrainian Constructivism, for launch subsequent month, and spending extra time with the couple’s youngsters, 4-year-old Alex and 1-year-old Lina.
By Telegram name from Kyiv, three days after U.S. President Donald Trump‘s chaotic and disturbing Oval Workplace information convention with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Filatov and Zhyzhchenko focus on the long-term influence of Russia’s February 2022 invasion on their household and music. (Filatov, who has an “training sector” deferral from army enlistment as a result of he’s a lecturer at Ukraine’s Chernihiv Music School, additionally responded to follow-up e-mail questions.)
Once we beforehand spoke in 2023, ONUKA was nonetheless touring the world. Nata mentioned, “If you end up outdoors, particularly when your youngster or mother and father or household is right here, it’s very laborious to simply accept.” How is your loved ones? Is all people OK?
Zhyzhchenko: Our youngsters are protected. They’re all proper. The primary evening, in maternity hospital, [Lina] spent the evening inside. That was the worst evening for us. I feel she’s a battle child. She determined to return to our household in a rustic that’s at battle, in a metropolis at battle, within the evening.
“Battle child.”
Zhyzhchenko: This era of youngsters are completely battle children. They’ve one other mentality, and that is their route, that is their life, that is their routine. We don’t have to check our childhood with their childhood, as a result of they’re one other era. They’re a battle era.
In our previous interviews, you’ve spoken of Russian missiles disturbing your lives. Are explosions nonetheless taking place the place you reside in Kyiv?
Zhyzhchenko: It’s nonetheless occurring. Now we have one other form of weapons. It’s like flying scooters.
Filatov: It’s like huge drones. Each evening, there are a pair hundred of them. We typically hear it.
Zhyzhchenko: It feels like a scooter, and they’re flying at nighttime. That’s why the sound spreads very brightly, and bodily that’s the reason we are able to outline them from just a few kilometers. Once we are mendacity in our beds, it’s some form of huge noise scooter sound within the sirens of evening.
How terrifying.
Filatov: Thanks for the American people who find themselves supporting Ukraine. We really feel way more protected, as a result of American methods are actually, actually large and actually useful. It saves our lives. The explosions occur principally each day, someplace, in some cities of Ukraine.
Zhyzhchenko: It doesn’t cease.
Filatov: It’s form of a lottery.
Zhyzhchenko: A number of weeks in the past, some piece of this drone collapsed close to our home, and it injured the put up workplace. That is the put up workplace —
Filatov: — the place we take our packages principally each day.
Zhyzhchenko: Even just a few instances a day. It’s shut right here to us, lower than a kilometer. Now we have this acceptance. It’s our actuality.
Filatov: Life goes on, anyway.
How can you play reveals below these situations?
Filatov: Performing in shelters is a comparatively new follow for Ukrainian artists. In Kharkiv, all cultural occasions happen completely in venues which have shelters — no theaters or live performance halls function except they supply a protected house.
Zhyzhchenko: The whole lot occurs below rockets. Now we have to take that reality.
What do the shelter performances really feel like?
Zhyzhchenko: It’s a really nice feeling, as a result of you realize your efficiency gained’t be interrupted. You must evacuate folks for those who hear the siren. In a shelter, it’s a must to not interrupt your efficiency. It’s some form of consolation and really assured feeling.
How do you get to the reveals?
Filatov: We often journey both by prepare or by bus with the entire staff. Trains can typically be the quickest possibility, particularly when border queues are lengthy, however touring by street offers us extra flexibility. So, we simply belief our luck and hope for a easy crossing. Generally, although, it turns into fairly an journey — like [summer 2024], once we needed to journey continuous for 2 days from a pageant in Poland simply to make it in time for Atlas Weekend in Kyiv.
Who takes care of your children when you find yourself performing outdoors of Kyiv?
Filatov: Now we have a help system that features nannies, grandparents and kindergarten. They take turns relying on the circumstances.
Do your children get to see any of the performances? What do they suppose?
Filatov: They’re actually small. Our small lady doesn’t even perceive, for now, what’s occurring. Our boy, Alex — it’s unhappy to note that within the kindergarten, for instance, they’ve some video games, they usually [name] the video games after the weapons, or the missiles, or the drones.
Zhyzhchenko: When they’re in kindergarten, they go to a shelter, and it’s some form of ritual. They name this shelter “the cave.” He says, “We had been within the cave as we speak, and we attract there,” or singing some music on this cave. It’s not so terrifying for him, as a result of it’s his actuality. Nobody is panicking, as a result of we have now adjusted to it. The primary security is the conduct of elder folks and adults round this example.
How are the remainder of your loved ones — mother and father, grandparents, siblings?
Zhyzhchenko: Everyone seems to be protected. Everyone seems to be working with the nation and charity causes and everybody volunteers. However inside our musical staff, some individuals are on the entrance line. … Everybody has some family members or pals who [have] died and these deaths are nearer and nearer.
Who’re you referring to, “inside our musical staff”?
Zhyzhchenko: Our graphic designer was on the entrance line and now we have now no reply [from] him. This can be a laborious scenario, how one can perceive that nothing is OK. You simply need to see when this particular person was on-line the final time, and also you see that this date isn’t altering. It’s laborious to understand that possibly he’s captured, possibly he’s in hospital. However I feel the fact is way worse. We try to undergo along with his command, and get details about what occurred to him.
What did you make of the Feb. 28 press convention with President Zelensky and President Trump?
Zhyzhchenko: All individuals are very upset about what’s occurring. However I feel all that is momentary. The whole lot adjustments a lot. It’s like a curler coaster. Some days we’re greatest pals, the following day we’re enemies, the following day we’re supporters, the following day it’s very chaotic.
I do hope all folks on the earth perceive that Russia invaded Ukraine, and we’re the sufferer and we’re standing. … We defend all Europe, as a result of all the pieces can be altering, very quick and horrible, if Ukraine falls. I actually consider we are going to stand and we is not going to fall and we are going to survive.
If I wished to depart, I would depart Ukraine. However I’m right here with my little children. I truly really and sincerely consider on this curler coaster life.
