Pie, Whip and sung poems of the Shot Renaissance in the de-occupied Kharkiv region: “Happiness that you cry from poetry”

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The Lviv band “Pyrig and Batig” played 10 concerts in the liberated villages of Kharkiv region. The final performance took place in Stary Saltov, located on the shore of the Pechenez reservoir. The Armed Forces of Ukraine liberated the village in May last year, but before the Kharkiv counteroffensive in September, the occupiers heavily raided it and caused great destruction. Despite this, people have already returned to the village. Dmytro Kuzubov attended the “Pie and Whip” concert in Stary Saltov and talked with the musicians and the audience about why all this is necessary. The photo from the concert was taken and kindly provided for publication by the Ukrainer project (the author of the photo is German Krieger). Glory to heroes! “Congratulations, Old Saltov, the pearl of the Slobojan region! Glad to see you, healthy and smiling!” – Maryan Pyrig, the frontman of the band “Pirig i Batig”, addresses the audience after the first composition based on a poem by Pavel Tychyna. The concert takes place in the yard of the local House of Culture. A banner with an inscription about the pearl of the Slobojan region and a photo of this picturesque place hangs on its facade. On the other side – a poster with a blue sky and a field of yellow sunflowers with a call to “love Ukraine” and “its nightingale language”. A hole from a shell fragment is gaping in a field of sunflowers. On the children’s slide, on which three teenagers are sitting, many holes are smaller. Mostly older people gathered for the concert, they sit on chairs near the stage. A trio of women sat on the carousel, one of them in a long azure dress with a pearl necklace around her neck. “It’s very nice for us that we managed to return to you this year,” continues Pyrig. “Glory to heroes!” – answer the audience. The children on the swing scream louder than everyone else. Maryan thanks them. But it continues with a composition based on a poem by the Lviv poet Bohdan-Ihor Antonych. Photo: Herman Krieger, Ukrainer Next, “Pirig and Whip” performs songs by Vasyl Vysyvany, Volodymyr Svidzinsky, Yevgeny Pluzhnyk, Mykola Voronoy, Grigory Chuprinka and several compositions from the Cossack Baroque period. Before each one, Maryan talks about the author. During the performance of “The Generous” by Mykola Leontovich, some of the audience move their lips, repeating the words to Pirog, the woman on the carousel beats the rhythm on her knees. And Ivan Franko’s “Death of a Soldier”, which the band dedicates to all those who died in “the fight against the evil occupier, predatory neighbor”, everyone listens with special concentration. The musicians end the performance with “Thoughts” by Taras Shevchenko. Spectators get up from their seats and go to the stage. A woman in a flowered scarf hands the musicians a box of berries. “Fresh raspberries, the land of Saltiv gave birth!” – she advertises her gift with a smile. Another woman gives the musicians roses. Maryan Pyrig hugs all the audience one by one. That’s what he does at every concert. Photo: Herman Krieger, Ukrainer Read also: “The feeling is like Kyiv of last spring”: How Kharkiv comes alive despite everything “They were fed with scratched music all their lives” For Olga Oleksandrivna – a woman in a flowered scarf, who gave the musicians raspberries from her garden – during during the war, simple things took on a special meaning: “As soon as I left (for evacuation), I was walking through the bazaar along Merefi, and there were these berries… My tears are so heavy, I know that I’m losing it all!” By education, Olga Oleksandrivna is an accountant, she taught at the local vocational education center. Already after the de-occupation of Stary Saltov in May of last year, she was forced to leave her native village due to constant shelling: “That side – the left bank behind the bridge – remained under occupation, and all the fire was on us, all weapons (Russians) were raised and pounded on Saltov. Then it became very scary here, of the 3,500 people, almost no one remained. Everyone was already running away.” The woman returned to the dilapidated village in September after the Kharkiv counteroffensive, when the Ukrainian Armed Forces liberated the other bank of the Pecheneg reservoir from the occupiers. Now she lives in the country, because the apartment, although it survived, has no communications: “Also, there are no windows, like a homeless person there, but at least some amenities, a fire, a stove. And there is everything in the garden… Not that I need it so much, simply as a psychological release, that I am doing the work that I like, which was before the war. Because it was so painful last year.” Photo: Herman Kriger, Ukrainer During the “Pie and the Whip” concert, Olga Oleksandrivna’s face almost never left her smile. On her neck is an ornament with a trident. When asked about her impressions of the concert, she again breaks into a smile. At the same time, she claims, pro-Russian people in Stary Saltov still remain – mainly among people her age and older: “These Soviet aunties have not been found anywhere. It is, as they say, Moses led the people through the desert for 40 years, here, too, 40 years must pass so that these people have changed. We have a lot of good people who are Ukrainian at heart, they just can’t express it, because the neighbors put a curse on them. And now I got great pleasure from listening to real Ukrainian songs. They have been fed with recorded music all their lives, so a big thank you to my friends from Lviv! “. “Happiness that now you are crying not from bread, but from poetry” The idea to conduct a tour of the de-occupied cities and villages of Kharkiv region arose among the participants of “Pie and Whip” in April. Then, after the concert in Kharkiv, the volunteers invited the musicians to Stary Saltov, on Easter they played in the same place as now, near the House of Culture. “We saw that people were very interested and it responded to us. The idea appeared to play a tour in such de-occupied cities,” says the current percussionist of “Piroga” Lesyk Omodada, known primarily as a member of the indie band Tik Tu. Photo: Herman Kriger, Ukrainer Omodada has previously collaborated with “Pie and Whip” – they have known the band’s frontman for a long time, in January they played concerts together in Berlin and Reykjavik. Omodada turned to his friend, Kharkiv musician and volunteer Oleg Kadanov, with the idea of ​​the tour. He connected the musicians with Vasylisa Haydenko, a representative of the ArtDacha charity fund. There they helped to build logistics and coordinate concerts with local authorities. The Ukrainer project began filming the tour. The tour started on June 24. At five in the morning, the musicians arrived in Kharkiv, and already at 12 they performed at the first location. That day they played in Slatina and Tsirkuny. Vasylisa Haydenko has many memories associated with the last village, which was de-occupied by the Armed Forces of Ukraine on May 7, 2022. “From the first days of de-occupation, we brought everything to Tsirkuny to provide for people’s physical needs – food, hygiene, medicine. When we distributed fresh bread, grandmothers cried,” she recalls. “And then a year has passed, we come to them. We have an improvised stage, we set up benches, and the woman next to me starts to cry. At some point, she turns to me: “Thank you very much for not forgetting.” She remembers me since last year. I say: “It’s so lucky that now you’re not crying over bread, but over poetry.” that we unite so that they feel our support. And that we are extremely grateful to them that they persevered and share with them the pain they experienced.” “Ukrainian culture has been destroyed for 101 years, but the enemy has not changed” Maryan Pyrig has been performing sung Ukrainian poetry since the early 2010s. First he did this with the project “HICH Orchestra”, then also with “Pie and Whip”. His mission is to popularize not only literature, but also the Ukrainian language. because the border is close. We speak to people in a delicate way with certain historical information. And at the same time, we remind you that this has not been going on for nine years, but 100,” says Maryan. Pyrig calls Kharkiv the “poetic capital of Ukraine,” and the Slovo building the “temple of poetry.” With the beginning of a full-scale war, he focused on on the poetry and authors of the Shot Renaissance. Now, when a century has passed since the beginning of those tragic events, Maryan sees a historical parallel between the crimes committed by the Soviet authorities against Ukrainian culture and those committed by Russians in the occupied territories today.” In 1921, Hryhoriy Chuprinka and Mykola Leontovych were killed, he emphasizes. – And yesterday we performed in Izyum – there in 2022 Ukrainian poet Volodymyr Vakulenko was shot with two bullets. Ukrainian culture has been destroyed for 101 years, and the enemy has not changed.” Before this tour, the frontman of the band had not been anywhere in Kharkiv Oblast, except for the regional center. After all, he visited the region “on a sad occasion”, but at the same time in historical times. In particular, he is interested in decommunization, which still going on here. “There are very beautiful old names here. For example, we played in the village of Chkalovsky – but its old name is Nezhurilivka, Korobochkine is actually Korobchyne, Shestakove is Nepokyrite. On October 18, 1941, a great tragedy occurred in Shestakovo. Ukrainian writers from Kharkiv, in particular Volodymyr Svidzinsky, were burned at the stake, they were led by stage on the road to Kupyansk – it sounds like today. At the concert in Shestakovo, one grandmother still remembered those times, we just hugged and cried – I’m dry, because there are no more tears.” During the tour, “Cake and Whip” performed both in the open air and indoors. The program, says the leader unlike usual concerts, the band’s performance here was intuitive. “You look at the people and they themselves dictate to you what you should recite now, everything is on some mystical level (happens), it’s like entering a church,” – smiles Maryan . In Shevchenkov, “Pie” played near the Shevchenko monument, including Shevchenko’s poetry. Before the concert, children approached the musicians and said that they hoped they would not sing in Russian. And during the concert itself, the audience held an awning over the band members from the rain. After At the concert in Korobchynoy, one of the spectators sent a message to the musicians, in which she wrote that the performance “still sticks in my head” and inspired her to deepen the study of native folklore. “Just for the sake of this girl alone, it was worth doing,” adds Pirog Vasylis. “At every performance there are people who cry, who approach, who thank for the Ukrainian word.” Pirig did not expect that the residents of the de-occupied territories would welcome the musicians so warmly. He was especially impressed by the people themselves and their resilience. Between concerts, he talked a lot with the locals and sympathized with what they had to go through: “Everywhere there is one answer: “Glory to Ukraine! Glory to the heroes!” – says Omodada before the last concert of the tour in Stary Saltov. “And all the people are trying – those who speak Ukrainian, those who switch to Ukrainian. The admiration comes from the people,” the musician shares his impressions. “That is, they experienced such horrors that, for example, in the west of Ukraine, people have not seen. You imagine that everything is lost, bombed and you have to sit by the hut and cry. And in fact, there was so much joy and happiness in those human eyes. I realized here that when you are going through an occupation and the enemy is leaving, why shouldn’t you be happy about this? This is something so inspiring,” says Pyrig. “Pyrig and Batig” planned to symbolically end the tour in the village of Peremoga, near Shestakovo, but now it is closed to entry. That is why they finished where the idea came from – in Stary Saltovi. In this way, the musicians also fulfilled the promise they had previously made to the locals. “Each place has its own individual vibe, so you experience different emotional loads everywhere. But they have one character: people firmly and confidently want to revive Ukrainian culture. After each performance, you take a part of this place home with you. We will talk about our de-occupation journeys in Lviv.” Photo: Herman Krieger, Ukrainer

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