Ukraine’s live music scene and the acts keeping it alive

Being awake at 3.30am in a hotel in a foreign country isn’t unusual for musicians on tour. Being woken at that time by air raid sirens and anti-aircraft units shooting down drones is not so normal, however. In fact, in the case of The Tiger Lillies, it could be counted as almost unique — for the British trio are among the first international bands to perform in Ukraine since the Russian invasion last year.

Their gigs took place in Lviv and Kyiv last week. “I think those were probably the most amazing concerts we’ve ever done,” their frontman Martyn Jacques says. Active since 1989, the vaudevillian inventors of what has been dubbed Brechtian punk cabaret have a cult following in eastern Europe. 

The last time they played Ukraine was in 2014, after the Maidan Revolution and Crimea’s annexation by Russia. They were invited to return by the same promoter, Yougin Kibets. He hopes to use the band’s successful appearance to attract other foreign acts. “Tiger Lillies will be my breakthrough to write to a lot of agents, saying that you can see we did our first live show,” he explains.

Jacques felt “apprehensive and excited” before leaving for Ukraine.

“I had a fair amount of anxiety before going there,” bassist Adrian Stout says. “But I told myself, people are taking their kids to school all the time. We’re not going to the front or somewhere that’s being mortared on a fairly regular basis.”

Yet the risks were real. Less than a week before they arrived, a Russian cruise missile strike on an apartment block in Lviv killed 10 people. Their visit to Kyiv took place during three successive nights of drone attacks. That’s when Stout found himself jolted awake in the early hours before seeking refuge in the underground garage that doubled as his hotel’s bomb shelter. The band’s show earlier had luckily passed without interruption.

“If there had been an air raid in the middle of the gig we might have had to stop and we wouldn’t have known quite how to deal with it,” Stout says, talking by video call from London, a double-bass propped against the wall behind him. “Some people were saying we could carry on, some were saying we should probably leave.”

“Yougin said that most Ukrainian bands just carry on playing,” Jacques adds, speaking from Berlin, where he lives. “That’s what I would have done.” 

The show must go on — except when it can’t. Having struggled back to life after Covid, Ukraine’s live music industry was shuttered again in the first months of Russia’s full invasion last year. The first shoots of renewed activity came with charity concerts in the spring of 2022.

We had a siren during the concert. But nobody is reacting now. They try to live in the moment

Pop singer LAUD, real name Vladyslav Karashchuk, performed one in Lviv that May. He’s currently on a solo tour, which began this April. The tour is called I’m Ukrainian. “Now everyone is working and our music industry is really very active. Ukrainian artists are very motivated and the people are very motivated to listen to and support them,” he says, speaking by video call from a café in the centre of Kyiv.

Aged 25, he first emerged as a finalist on a television talent show in 2016. He has released two albums, and has a new single out, a synth-pop number that carries the hint of a Ukrainian version of The Weeknd.

He’s playing in Kyiv next week at the sister venue of the one where The Tiger Lillies appeared. “I really enjoy playing nowadays because people are really hungry for positive vibes, for new Ukrainian music and Ukrainian artists,” Karashchuk says. “They are really tired of bombs and sirens and so on. They want that moment for pleasure and to relax.” 

His tour has taken him across the country, including cities not far from the frontline. In April, he played what he describes as the first big concert in Mykolaiv since the invasion. Recently he did a gig in Zaporizhzhia, close to some of the war’s fiercest fighting. 

“It was a really nervous situation,” he says. “They have six or seven sirens a day, every time there’s a chance of getting some rockets or bombing. We had a siren during the concert. But nobody is reacting now. They try to live in the moment.”

Live music might afford Ukrainians a momentary opportunity to forget the war. But gigs can’t escape what Anastasiya Vaganova calls “the new reality”. She’s the programme director of the Caribbean Club, the Kyiv venue where The Tiger Lillies appeared. Based in the Netherlands with her daughter, she devises its schedule of events remotely. 

“Everyone understands that now we have to defend our land from the Russian invasion, we have to support our country,” she says. “We as promoters, artists and musicians can do that in a way through arranging shows, but the focus is different.”

I can’t do heavy rock music now because all of the audience for live rock music have joined the army, it’s like their credo

A midnight curfew in most parts of the country means that gigs usually finish by 10.30pm. Emigration has disrupted the numbers of both concertgoers and givers. So has armed service. The members of Antytila, a famous rock band due to start a US tour in September, enlisted as medics on the frontline in Kharkiv last year.

“I can’t do heavy rock music now because all of the audience for live rock music have joined the army, it’s like their credo,” says Kibets, The Tiger Lillies’ promoter. He talks by video call from an animal shelter in Kyiv. It houses numerous abandoned cats, rescued from conflict zones in Ukraine by the charity that he set up after the 2022 invasion. 

He used to promote about 70 shows a year, specialising in non-Ukrainian acts. That traffic has almost completely dried up, including of course the Russian stars who were formerly popular in Ukraine. Boris Grebenshchikov, a founding father of Russian rock, was a frequent visitor.

In May last year, Bono and The Edge of U2 played a surprise set in a Kyiv subway station. They were joined by members of Antytila in combat uniform. A Kyiv show due to take place this March by Slovenian band Laibach was billed as the first proper gig by a non-Ukrainian band. But the date was cancelled after the art-rock veterans made remarks about a “cynical proxy war” between “superpowers”, construed in Ukraine as belittling the national fight against Russia.

Since then, a scattering of international acts have made appearances. In May, Slovakian musician Michal Kaščák performed at The Caribbean Club. A fortnight before The Tiger Lillies’ shows, Kigets organised an orchestral concert by US video game composer Paul Romero. In June, British hip-hop stalwarts Stereo MC’s played a DJ set in Kyiv. Dance music DJs from Europe and the US have also made appearances at clubs.

The Tiger Lillies are one of the first bands from outside Ukraine to play a full-scale gig. Their new album Ukraine has been inspired by the war. But they kept its songs off the setlist on the basis that Ukrainians didn’t need to be serenaded about their war. An exception was a new track about Vladimir Putin with a rousing chorus of “We’re going to be so happy when you die”. That met with a big singalong. 

Their journey back from Kyiv to the Polish city Rzeszów took 20 hours, including a seven-hour queue at the border. “The logistics are quite complicated,” Stout says. “You need a driver who knows the roads, you’ve got to organise the hotels. People obviously don’t do it thinking they’re going to make a lot of money. But if you have an audience there and they haven’t seen you play for a long time, then I think people should go.”

The band will be donating most of the proceeds from their Ukraine gigs to charities. Their Kyiv booker is doing the same with half of his share. But Kibets is keen to project an air of commercial normality. “I’m not against paying for shows. I’m selling tickets. I can pay,” he insists. “It depends on the fee.” 

For a moment, Kibets sounds like he could be a promoter from anywhere. Ukraine’s live music circuit will be really back on its feet when “the show must go on” is replaced by its close cousin: business as usual.