Every Kyiv resident knows the National Art Museum of Ukraine.
The large carved marble lions at the entrance have greeted visitors for the better part of 130 years. Inside, its vast Ukrainian art collection spans from the 12th century to modern times.
But the museum, also known as NAMU, has started to fall apart. The previously glorious lions are eroding and the rundown facade of the building has been covered up with tarp.
This is a common story with Ukraine’s old sites. While they’re popular settings for foreign film productions, without state support and public awareness, many buildings are waiting for their turn to crumble.
But recently, musicians have shed new light on these problems. A live music series, Zmova, got thousands of viewers to pay attention to historical locations in need of funding by filming sessions in them.
“These locations are popular for big productions for huge Ukrainian projects and foreign ones,” one of Zmova’s creators, Katya Voychuk told the Kyiv Post. “But the people who live nearby don’t know about them because those videos come out for a completely different audience.”
It’s not the project’s only purpose. Led by concert production company Kontrabass.promo, Zmova (“conspiracy” in Ukrainian) also showcases promising but little-known Ukrainian musicians, supporting them during the coronavirus pandemic.
For almost a year, local artists have been deprived of earning money from music. Concerts have been canceled and royalties make up only a small fraction of income in a country where paying for content is rather the exception than the rule.
“[We wanted] to show the diversity of new Ukrainian music,” Voychuk said. “Zmova shows rap, jazz, electronic and rock music.”
The four-part series funded by the Ukrainian Cultural Fund, premiered on Jan. 19, featuring beautifully shot films of artists performing at the National Art Museum, Volodymyr Vernadsky National Library of Ukraine, National Cinematheque of Ukraine and the Mansion of Countess Uvarova.
Pandemic push
Kontrabass.promo specializes in concerts featuring alternative Ukrainian music. After the pandemic broke out, the company’s plans along with many other cultural events that required mass gatherings were put on hold. But they adapted to the world’s new requirements and created the online festival Intercity Live that showed alternative Ukrainian music and was streamed by 200,000 people from all seven continents.
According to Kontrabass, that was Ukraine’s largest online festival so far, providing unprecedented exposure for the little-known bands. The previous in-person concerts for beginner musicians would have a capacity of 200–300 people. Thanks to Intercity Live, they gained more popularity after being introduced to thousands.
After the festival, Voychuk and Kontrabass’s founder Yurii Bazaka wanted to continue promoting new Ukrainian music online and diversifying the sparse Ukrainian YouTube library, this time with aesthetic post-production. And the idea of Zmova was born.
Yura Bazaka and Katya Voychuk of concert production company Kontrabass.promo, who founded the live music series Zmova, pose for a photograph in Kyiv’s HVLV club, on Jan. 30, 2021. The project features four sessions by little-known but promising Ukrainian artists filmed at Kyiv’s historical buildings that need support. (Volodymyr Petrov)
Jazz at National Art Museum
The offbeat format of the videos is what makes Zmova stand out from other live concert projects. In the intros to their videos, the artists themselves narrate what their music means to them and the significance of the location where they are performing. Meanwhile, the different directors for each film, shoot the artists in their particular style. After a short monologue of a musician, the concert starts.
The first Zmova video, featuring the jazz group Hyphen Dash, starts with the band’s drummer trying to enter the art museum but failing due to the construction barrier. He must enter through the side door, the employee passageway and the elevator to reach the main floor of the museum. Then the monologue starts.
“The function of music is to transmit experiences and emotions,” the band’s members say. “And in the preservation of memories, which you can return to at any point in your life.”
The experimental jazz that the group plays serves as a soundtrack for the viewers looking at exhibited portraits and paintings.
“If painting is static conservation of time, then isn’t the National Art Museum an arrangement of those fragments of time — in space? Similar to an arrangement of musical structure,” the monologue goes on.
The museum does not receive funding from the state, and no major overhaul has been provided in the past two decades. To stay afloat, it has launched a charitable foundation that can receive donations for the restoration.
“It is falling apart, these sculptures, the lions are falling apart too,” Bazaka said. “The museum needs help.”
Rap at Vernadsky Library
Zmova’s second video premiered one week later. It captures Kharkiv rapper Kurgan at the Vernadsky Library.
Kurgan is known for his down-to-earth brutally honest attitude that translates into his lyrics. His style cuts through societal fluff and roundabout politeness.
“We chose the most contrasting artist for the library,” Bazaka said.
Kurgan walks alone in the large library room and starts with the first track of his 2018 mini-album “The Library of Bizarre Knowledge.”
“It’s not everyday someone offers you to read rap in a reading room, especially at the Vernadsky Library,” Kurgan told the Kyiv Post.
The rapper says he joined the project because he loved the concept and was curious to see the inside of the library. Just like many musicians these days, he also had a lot of free time to fill.
“I really liked the process. I think there should be more projects like this,” Kurgan said. “There’s a lot of interesting artists that don’t end up on the recommended page on YouTube.”
The video has reached over 35,000 views beating the first one by over 10,000.
“We never had such a massive reaction to a project,” Voychuk said.
Although Ukraine’s biggest library doesn’t lack for funding, it is slowly becoming obsolete. Despite their appearances in trendy music videos and commercials, the huge halls of Vernadsky barely get visitors in the digital era. Zmova tried to reshape the institution’s image.
“We wanted to show you can come not only to the reading room, but that you can hold concerts, exhibitions and conferences there,” Voychuk said.
Electronics at National Cinematheque
The National Cinematheque of Ukraine is over 80 years old and has created all sorts of films and animations throughout its history. The list includes famous animations “Doctor Aybolit” and “Treasure Island,” popular Soviet films and even Soviet propaganda.
But for the past few decades, it remains unused. There has been no state support and the studio went bankrupt.
“We have a strange Soviet building, it isn’t the most beautiful and not the most presentable,” studio director Taras Bosak told the Kyiv Post. “So it was interesting to see how Zmova would film it.”
Bosak says the studio hopes to use the film for its own promotion, showing that it can be used as a setting for modern projects. That fits perfectly with the main goal of Bosak, who was hired just a year ago, to revitalize the building.
The director aims to restore the studio’s main function, so that modern Ukrainian films are created there.
“I want to try everything possible so that the studio would stay a studio and at the very least be a cultural location,” he said.
Zmova’s video in the cinematheque showed experimental electronic group Ragapop that includes two members of the acclaimed Dakh Daughters band.
To match Ragapop’s theatrical performance with elements of drama, Zmova chose one of the building’s screening rooms with red audience chairs.
The studio’s premises have much more to offer. Right now, they are in dire need of renovation but its management is open to cooperation.
“The pavilions are crumbling, the water freezes in the pipes and they are now trying to restore everything on their own,” Bazaka said. “The pavilions you can shoot in have great potential for Ukrainian cinema.”
It’s a wrap, for now
The final video of Zmova was filmed at the gorgeous 110-year-old estate of Countess Uvarova and is set to release on Feb. 9.
Although the series has come to an end, Kontrabass is hoping to create a second season if they receive funding so that there is more quality Ukrainian music on YouTube.
“Right now whatever is out there is more blogger-based, a lot of politicalized ones, or huge pop stars with huge budgets, and that’s why they have a lot of views,” Voychuk said.
“Alternative Ukrainian music on YouTube practically doesn’t exist. It’s a good niche to leave a mark of local music in the bigger sphere,” Bazaka said.
