Another year of music, projects, inspiration, active work and fighting for freedom. Let’s wrap this year up together in this newsletter. The war in Ukraine goes on as you read this sentence. Without a doubt, this had an impact on our music industry, but never destroyed it.
2023 has returned some festivals in Ukraine, kept the ball rolling with touring and even started to welcome foreign artists back. You can find out more in an interview of our co-founder Alona Dmukhovska for beehype. Without a doubt, the situation remains extreme, but there are still hundreds of talented Ukrainian artists releasing new music, playing small gigs, communicating with the audience and growing momentum on social media. You can check out the yearly selection of Ukrainian music compiled by our team in this Spotify playlist.
Here’s a quick recap of things we’ve done to support Ukrainian music scene (and you can get inspiration from these ideas too!):
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Artists open for international booking: book them! :) We were glad to have Ukrainian artists playing at ESNS, ℅ pop and Reeperbahn this year. These performances didn’t come unnoticed and we appreciate interest in further cooperation.
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Artists remaining in Ukraine: we’ve launched an international cooperation project to allow Ukrainian musicians to create… well, pretty much anything with foreign colleagues! This came out beautifully, as we got 20 projects released this year - duo songs, videos, art projects, documentaries and more Link
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Emerging talents: you can’t export your music until you know the basics. Together with our partners RAW music (Romania) and Lala Sound (Slovakia) we launched Eastern European Music Academy. It gathers participants from over 10 countries and provides them with a great context of career development. We’re launching the third course early 2024, stay tuned for more!
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Every artist creating amazing music: we were as vocal as we could about it! From a cooperation with a Liverpool radio station Melodic Distraction and monthly Spotify playlist to over a dozen events and panels where we talked about Ukrainian music. No, we’re not tired and yes, we’re always ready to talk about it more!
There is no Christmas without a festive soundtrack and the legendary ‘Carol of the Bells’. As a reminder, we’re proud to remind that the world could hear this song because of Ukrainian composer Mykola Leontovych, who wrote this composition known in our country as Shchedryk.
If you fancy spicing up your Christmas playlist, we’ve got you covered:
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Kolyadky on Kydriavtsi - a great mix of traditional Ukrainian festive songs and modern interpretations by Ukrainian artists. You can spot there legendary Jamala, Tonka (remember them at Reeperbahn?), tiktok phenomenon Lily45, and others.
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Ukrainian Christmas Polyphony - if you’re craving for more authenticity, you’ll be blown away by these beautiful voices. Pure source of power saved through generations.
Reminder! Despite you might not see it in the news as often as you used to, the support is still needed and appreciated. If you’d like to support Ukrainian artists who keep on creating new music, please consider donating to Music Export Ukraine - we can come up with various ideas. Bank details can be found here.
Alternatively, you can take a look at trustworthy organizations of our beloved colleagues:
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Musicians Defend Ukraine - NGO that helps Ukrainian artists and industry representatives who joined Ukrainian army / volunteering
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Music Saves UA - NGO providing immediate humanitarian help to those who need it most right now in Ukraine
