Both at home and in Europe over the last year, ONUKA has shot to critical and popular success. But front-woman Nata Zhyzhchenko’s greatest achievement might be fusing Ukrainian antiquity with electronic modernity and giving an answer to the days. Zhyzhchenko, the best woman for the band ONUKA, is among the brightest pop music social phenomena of twenty-first century Ukraine. She actually is a musician with the capacity of harmoniously folk that is blending with metropolitan noises. She actually is an actress whom also produces pictures and principles just as much as she does tracks. And she actually is one of many heroines regarding the 2017 Eurovision Song Contest in Kyiv, the singer whoever record album “Vidlik” has now reached the maps in ten nations.

Growing up when you look at the 1980’s and 1990’s, Nata’s life ended up being defined by two urban centers positioned 150 kilometers apart: Kyiv and Chernihiv. The administrative centre had been boiling with loud life, as the more provincial Chernihiv (located near the edge with Belarus) held greater silence and nature. But both populous metropolitan areas had music. Small Nata (she shall be known as “Nata” for the remainder with this article) ended up being a soloist in a metal musical organization situated in Kyiv. Along with her grandfather Oleksandr Shlyonchik, a builder that is renowned of instruments, lived in Chernihiv.

A large town in addition to a tiny one, worldwide occasions and life far from turmoil, scenes of concert halls and a property where her ancestors worked, the rumbling of rhythm as well as the murmur regarding the chamber melody — these dualities formed Nata’s perspective, which mixes the traditions regarding the hundreds of years plus the innovations of the epoch that is new. And with this conference of past and future, ONUKA was created.

Your Ex Utilizing The Panpipes

Whenever Nata had been four yrs old, her grandfather taught her to relax and play the panpipes. By the chronilogical age of five, she had currently toured with a few bands that are local. At nine, she ended up being doing being a soloist with different orchestras. At ten, she won the “New Names of Ukraine” musical contest. Nata’s parents, additionally performers, encouraged their daughter’s musical endeavors.

Early, young Nata attracted the adult attention that is world’s the grade of her musicianship. People praised and admired her. It had been over these very early years, that she began creating her very very first works on the synthesizer.

But she had the classic “gifted childhood”: as she expanded older, individuals lost fascination with her. Nata describes the problem similar to this: “When just a little woman is a virtuoso from the panpipes, it is cool — there’s a ‘wow’ impact. But once it is a 15-year-old woman, no body is interested”.

It absolutely was perhaps maybe not a transition that is easy Nata. She had not been straight away capable of getting accustomed the proven fact that she ended up being not viewed as a young child and thus people reacted differently to her abilities. But Nata’s teenage years additionally aided her development that is creative in methods. During this time period, she grew closer together with her elder bro Oleksandr, that would later on be her bandmate.

Up until the chronilogical age of fifteen, Nata’s life had been full of people music. But Oleksandr launched her eyes to very different phenomena: Pink Floyd and Depeche Mode. It absolutely was then that Nata’s desire for modern music formed. Therefore, a stage that is new of life started, but that failed to imply that the last years had been crossed away. Her experience of tradition never ever stopped. And she maintained connection with the peaceful and city that is cozy of, where she nevertheless arises from time for you time.

“We prepare food with grandmoa and now have supper when you look at the air that is fresh the garden”, Nata claims of her time in Chernihiv. That litttle lady who invested section of her youth out of the hubbub for the pulsating city has not yet gone away. She lives in inside ONUKA; she’s part from it.

Picture due to ONUKA administration

Electronica and Tomato Jaws

Oleksandr had been eight years over the age of Nata, but their interests and their social group became a supply of guidance on her. She frequently invested time during the recording studio she learned the process of creating modern electronic music with him, where. Her sibling also provided her lessons that are DJing. Now Nata begun to make documents and wished for doing on phase.

In 2005, whenever Nata had been 20, her brother invited her to join their musical task, Tomato Jaws. The band recorded a record and performed concerts, including some at the popular Kazantip festival that is rave Crimea. Certainly one of Tomato Jaws’ compositions had been even released by an archive label in Ireland. The group toured abroad, and performed in the exact same phase as such globe electronica stars like Telepopmusic and Apparat.

During this time period, Nata made the decision: as opposed to trained in vocals during the music institute, she’d learn studies that are ethnocultural. While examining the depths of contemporary sound along with Tomato Jaws, she additionally learned the origins of Ukrainian tradition. This experience aided her to more subtly and accurately convey the vibrations of her indigenous land in music.

Regardless of the popularity of Tomato Jaws, electronic music ended up being far from conventional in Ukraine about ten years ago. The audience was taken by it time for you to realize that individuals with laptop computers onstage may also be music artists. After having a rise of appeal, Tomato Jaws fundamentally dropped into decrease and dissipated. By 2013, Nata had been beginning her very own task.

By that time, something crucial had also occurred: Nata came across the DJ, noise producer and musician Eugene Filatov, creator associated with the project “The Maneken”. Filatov later became her spouse together with producer of ONUKA.

ONUKA and “Misto”

ONUKA is made by three individuals: Nata, Eugene, additionally the well-known costume that is ukrainian Lesia Patoka. Their new music and image stressed the mix that is particular through their tracks: a variety of the archaic therefore the contemporary. In the 1st photo that is ONUKA, Nata wore her panpipes as a headdress. No body before her had were able to look therefore urban and fresh, while emphasizing a link aided by the folk tradition.

Between December 2013 and October 2014, the team circulated its song that is first and video, recorded a mini-album, had its very first concert, and debuted its major record. In addition, the war had started in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas area and Ukrainian culture started initially to quickly break up numerous areas of its patrimony of Soviet awareness. A basic fascination with much deeper social origins started to develop. The brand new generation of young Ukrainians who just knew the era that is soviet the tales of their moms and dads recognized ONUKA’s unique rhythms as away from that history. Significantly less than a year after being created onuka had been collecting one thousand people for a concert.

The rise of any pop artist is built on the success of at least one of his or her songs in modern music. For ONUKA, that song was “Misto”. It had been created in torment. “At first it had been in English, then in 2 languages. We rewrote the writing 3 times. When it comes to first-time in my entire life, it took me such a long time to pick the ultimate version”, Nata bride thai free explains. Finally, the track had been recorded in Ukrainian. A few months later, it can be heard everywhere — in the radio, to get, on general public transportation, booming away from vehicles from the road.

ONUKA’s music became a brand new channel that is cultural connected Ukraine along with the rest around the globe. She talked to her audience in English and Ukrainian. But her communication had been understandable with no interpretation: through rhythms, melodies, timbre, images. The echo of historic musical kinds resonated with all the noise associated with the twenty-first century, connecting the current to your future additionally the future. Such a note is understandable without terms. And, during summer of 2015, ONUKA successfully performed in Budapest at Sziget, one of many biggest festivals in European countries. ONUKA had been going west.

Picture due to ONUKA administration

Chernobyl and “1986”

A cataclysm of global significance that haunts the country to this day in April 2016, Ukraine commemorated the 30th anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. For Nata, it had been a acutely individual occasion. Her dad took part in “eliminating the results associated with accident”, to make use of the previous euphemism that is soviet the cleaning work. The now dead town of Pripyat near Chernobyl, evacuated following the accident the most appealing places on earth on her. “On a international scale, individual progress is evil”, Nata claims. “In every peoples connection with nature there is certainly a negative side effects. Just it acquires a different scale depending on which technology will be used”.