War songs

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This article was published 16/03/2024 (841 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Many writers have found putting the horrors of war into words a difficult task.

Winnipeg composer Tetyana Haraschuk learned a similar lesson while setting her thoughts about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine into music.

It’s proven to be a heavy burden.

Haraschuk, 26, was born in Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital, and moved with her family to Winnipeg in 2006. Many of her relatives, including her grandmother, remained in Ukraine, so when Russia attacked on Feb. 24, 2022, she became flooded with worry and concern.

The graduate of the jazz studies program at the University of Manitoba’s Desautels School of Music — Haraschuk’s main instrument is the drums — was so devastated by what was happening and by the images from Ukraine she was seeing that she had trouble sleeping and lost track of time.

Once her grief began to fade, she set her sights on a musical project that has included interviews with Ukrainians in Winnipeg and Warsaw, Poland, where her grandmother and cousins joined thousands of other refugees fleeing deadly missile attacks and destruction.

“That was a fascinating experience, because a year of time turned Poland into a serious hub for Ukrainians,” Haraschuk says. “Everywhere you went you would hear Ukrainian, you saw Ukrainian colours, you saw Ukrainian people.”

The two-year process from original idea to recording tracks at the No Fun Club studio in the West End this week has given her the sense she has witnessed the terror through other people’s eyes.

“The interview phase last fall was one of the hardest moments of my life. It really takes a chunk out of you. It was a very dark moment in my life because I felt all the feelings they experienced. It was borderline traumatic, I would say.”

She will release Until the Sun Comes in August, but it will be more than just a new record— she calls it musical documentation.

Haraschuk will offer a sneak peek of her songs Wednesday at the Handsome Daughter with Steppe Kolektyv, a new city group that plays Ukrainian folk music, opening with traditional songs about spring and of hope.

“It’s like writing an article, but I’m writing it into music. I’m trying to funnel all of the emotion and all of the stories of the people who I interviewed into pieces that are themed,” she says.

The project will also be part of an upcoming CBC documentary produced by Winnipeg’s Ice River Films.

Director Sam Karney teamed up with Haraschuk when she visited with Ukrainian refugees in Poland and has the challenge of editing hours of interview footage into a 45-minute special titled Voices of Freedom.

“I don’t really speak much Ukrainian, so maybe some of the emotion was a little bit lost on me in terms in their speaking,” says Karney, who’s heritage is Ukrainian and Métis.

“You could tell by the way they were speaking they were very emotional. I think it was a very cathartic experience for a lot of these people.”

The music in Until the Sun Comes will be different from Haraschuk’s past recordings. Her 2021 debut, The Intentions of Honesty, Kindness and Perseverance, and a 2023 EP, Someone You’ve Never Been, mix her jazz trio’s percussive sound with her love of progressive rock. Ukrainian folk music also plays a part in her new tracks.

Besides her trio — bassist Devon Gillingham and guitarist Kyle Cobb — Haraschuk has enlisted a string quartet and musicians who specialize with instruments associated with Ukraine: the bandura, which resembles a lute; a tsymbaly, which is similar to a dulcimer; and a sopilka, which is a kind of recorder.

”The music I wrote for this album and the music we will be playing (Wednesday) is definitely jazz-influenced but it really draws on the scales and the tonalities of Ukrainian folk music,” says Haraschuk, who earned a masters degree from the Berklee College of Music’s campus in Valencia, Spain, on top of her U of M degree.

“Similar to American folk music, sometimes it’s not an even a 4/4 song throughout. You have maybe some extra beats in some places. It’s a beautiful thing in music when things are not even, when things are not so perfectly aligned. That’s something I love with Ukrainian folk music.”

Haraschuk, who speaks Ukrainian and conducted the interviews, decided to take a break from the project last year to cope with the difficult emotions it evoked within her.

The scope of the album and the documentary, which will include her music, also played a factor.

Until the Sun Comes is the biggest project in Haraschuk’s short career and she began to feel the pressure of doing it right, not just for herself but for the people she interviewed and for Ukraine as a whole.

“I didn’t know what the direction was. I was very sad and in a very bad place. I didn’t know how it could end,” she remembers.

“It’s a very ironic statement because that’s where the war is at right now. We don’t know how it’s going to end.”

Alan.Small@winnipegfreepress.com

X: @AlanDSmall