DakhaBrakha is an “ethno-chaos” band from Kyiv, created in 2014. They have gained a following around the world, have toured extensively, and have even performed an NPR Tiny Desk Concert and as well as on KEXP. “Having experimented with Ukrainian folk music, the band has added rhythms of the surrounding […]

Burdon, formed in 2002 in Lviv, is a great example of a band that preserves and promotes folk music, allowing a new generation of people to enjoy and cherish the music of their ancestors. “We’re using acoustic folk instruments for the best reproduction of atmosphere of old dances which didn’t […]

“Presenting six young people who have created their own version of Polish folk punk! This band has found a welcome in the homes of elderly village musicians who see their traditions disappearing before the onslaught of urban life. They have taken these youngsters under their wing and have taught them […]

Lviv has always felt like my native town; however, in recent times none of my ancestors were from here. But in the last few years I discovered that my direct ancestors on two sides of my family (Polish and Austrian) did live in Lviv – though over 200 years ago, in […]

“If the real Jewish music of Transylvania is gone, this disc makes sure it will not be forgotten.” – See more here.

My paternal grandfather was born in the village of Lybokhora (Turka District), the “capital” of Boyko instrumental music. His parents, who were from the Sambir and Lviv regions, moved to this Carpathian village in the early 1900s to direct and teach at the local school. This is a picture from […]

“Z wysokiego pola” (From the High Field) is one of my favorite songs by Orkiestra św. Mikołaja. The melody of the song is Hungarian, while the text is a Polish ballad from the region near Zamość— an ancestral land.  In the early nineteenth century my great 4x grandfather had an estate in Zalesie. […]

Last month, Smithsonian Folkways released an album of ancient songs from the Chornobyl region, songs all but forgotten due to the nuclear disaster that wiped out the nearby villages. Fortunately, some of these songs have been preserved thanks to ethnomusicologist Yevhen Yefremov and Ensemble Hilka: “Under the musical direction of Yevhen Yefremov, an ethnomusicologist […]

We sing certain Ukrainian songs in the diaspora that are unknown or have been forgotten in Ukraine. I think the most powerful and saddest one is “Mamo.” It’s about a boy who during WWII was in the Majdanek concentration camp. (The camp was named after the Majdan Tatarski district in […]

Lviv, like most cities in the nineteenth century, needed chimney sweeps to keep chimneys clean from the soot that accumulated from burning coal. The bas-relief of a chimney sweep on Anhelovycha Street is one of the only reminders of the era of chimney sweeps. At the beginning of the twentieth […]