Serhij Fomenko, leader of the band Mandry fully opens as a romantic poet and national melody stylist in the debut album Romansero pro nizhnu korolevu. Today, all songs of the band are perceived as absolutely classic for their genre. Anatoliy Sukhyi, the leader of Rutenia, reveals his talent as a nontrivial poet of Kyiv student underground of the 1980s. His works contain unique poetic elements of the student resistance of the 1990s. The leader of the Vij band is distinguished by a deeply mystical worldview and peculiar charisma. The album Chorna rillia, which has been successfully republished for many years, remains perfect from the point of view of the accumulation of images and ideas. The nonconformist poet of a different type, Kuzmenko of the Skryabin band (Kuzma), enriched the modern stage with a whole range of poetic findings that are present in the albums Mova ryb, Kazky, Ptakhy, Khrobak. The amusing adept of the West Ukrainian vernacular, Kuzma has enriched the treasury of rock-poetry with hundreds of colorful jokes. Two dozen of albums in twenty years of the band’s existence are the result of the fruitful work of Kuzma and his band. However, the gothic-folk-industrial band Komu Vnyz towers as a separate and real mountain in the history of Ukrainian rock. The famous hit based on Shevchenko’s poem Subotiv was written by Andriy Sereda and presented to his father for his birthday already in 1983. This song-anthem has been greeted with huge respect since the first performance at Chervona Ruta in 1989. In general, Komu Vnyz have the greatest accumulation of spiritual power, identity, and innovation in everything they do as musicians, arrangers, and performers. They are still occupying the place of ideological non-conformists that no one could take for such a long period. These musicians have never tried to adapt to a current system of subordination in the show-business but always moved in their own direction. In kastus is an perfect example of their quality.
Ethno-rock discourse For 12–14 years now Ukraine has witnessed the birth and dynamic development of a musical trend that can be called “ethno-fusion.” The founders and adepts of the style include the widely famous Haydamaky, Perkalaba, Burdon, AtmAsfera, Ocheretianyi Kit, Drymba da Dzyga. They are the ones who represent the main
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