While Ukrainian continues to struggle politically with Russia, as it has for centuries, the quartet DakhaBrakha - playing the Neptune Theatre on Saturday (Sept. 26) - makes an incandescent case for the protean power of Ukrainian culture.
Decked out with white lace dresses, foot-tall black wool hats & cascading strands of black bead necklaces, the three women of DakhaBrakha arrive on stage looking like visions from a rural village wedding. Steeped in the folkloric culture of their Ukrainian homeland, they've created a beautiful body of music as gentle as the first stirrings of spring & as raucous as a vodka-fueled wake.
Multi-instrumentalists Olena Tsybulska, Irnya Kovalenko, & Nina Harenetsha deliver striking polyphonic vocals, while accompanying themselves on everything from cello & accordion to hurry gurdy, piano & sundry percussion implements. The founded the band in 2004 & were quickly joined by Marko Halanevych on vocals, tabla, didgeridoo, accordion, & trombone. As they've toured the world, they've picked up instruments & rhythms along the way, while holding fast to the traditional songs they've been immersed in since birth.
"Every song has a traditional source recorded in a Ukrainian village," says Marko Halanevych, speaking in Ukrainian through an interpreter. "Some songs are changed very much with unusual arrangements, & some not so much, but we always use traditional Ukrainian songs."
Halanevych hails from a family of intellectuals in west central Ukraine & earned a degree in philology before gravitating to theater. He was working as an actor at the Centre of Contemporary Art when he fell in love with the three women who were performing as the Dakh Sisters. He's taken up various instruments during the band's travels, adding new textures to their arrangements.
"My first instrument was the Indian tabla," Halanevych says. "At the time I had an accordion in my kitchen so I brought that in too. I'm self taught, & I produce sounds & notes as the song needs."
Part of what makes the group so unpredictable is that they treat instruments as a means to an end, rather than something to be mastered in an of itself. It's a punk aesthetic that doesn't so much reject the pursuit of virtuosity as sidestep it in favor of sonic collage.
That's in keeping with the group's name, which means "give/take" in Ukrainian. Likely there will be a lot of both going on at the Neptune.