Ukraine Rocks the Free World

Music Radio Tells a Story of Unity and Defiance

The Russian invasion of Ukraine, the scenes of irretrievable loss and destruction, continues to trouble and sometimes overwhelm me. My father, who drove a tank in the Fourth Armored Division of the U.S. Army in World War II, died in summer 2020 at age 96. My dad would have much to say about the ineptness of the Russian tanks, which appear to be more poorly built, managed, and maintained than the armor of the U.S. Army 80 years ago. He and his many fellow soldiers crossed the English Channel with their tanks, landed in Brittany, liberated France and Belgium from the Nazis, fought and won the brutal Battle of the Bulge, and rolled on towards Berlin. They did not get stuck in traffic jams, run out of fuel or supplies, or indiscriminately shell civilians and civilian targets. Such dishonour would have been odious to him, and he would have been proud of the Ukrainians' skill, bravery, and motivation, the national unity against overwhelming odds. A month ago, just before the invasion, one of my military consultants said that Putin is no Stalin. We fear that we may soon find out that he is worse. Or that he is at least campaigning for that devil's crown.

But as I wrote recently, I have always been avid foreign radio listener. Among the Russian failures so far is whiffing at the first task of war: knocking out the enemy's communications systems. This does not mean just turning wi-fi, computer operations, and phone lines to rubble: It means silencing radio, which is as essential now for information, entertainment, and morale, as it was during World War II.

This last weekend I once again spent a few hours listening to pop and rock music on Ukrainian radio. I started with CHR (contemporary hit radio) Radio Maximum, which played Ukrainian, European, and American pop and dance music. Then I went to Radio Roks, which plays the rock of the 1970s and 1980s, emphasis on Ukrainian and western headbangers.

I listened using the Tune In app which is a standalone channel on my Roku streaming device. I used the Shazam song recognition app on my iPad. Shazam identified all but one of the Ukrainian songs: congratulations to whoever or whatever avoided the algorithm. Both Radio Maximum and Radio Roks are in the Lviv region in western Ukraine, where the Russian bombardments are now becoming more fierce and inhumane.

Once I started recognizing and jotting down song titles, the more I saw a method to the programming. Each song had a title that was either inspirational, confident, or mocking the aggressor. On Radio Maximum, Katy Perry's "Roar" required no translation, but the next song, by the Ukrainian band known as Tik was called Люби Ти Україну!, "Lyubu Ty Ukrayinu!" or "Do You Love Ukraine!" from 2015. Tik, or TIK, is an acronym for a Ukrainian phrase   that means "Soberness and Culture.” I ran "Tik" as a word through Google translate and it came out as "threshing floor," which sounded plausible but I did further research, and TIK has an active website, with an English language option. The leader, Viktor Broniuk, and band call themselves "the best festive band of Ukraine." Indeed, the website provides the guarantee: "Wherever we appear there is always a holiday and our new hits and folk blockbusters are heard. We treat you with ecologically friendly and foot tapping music made by European standards."

"It Don't Matter" may be familiar to some listeners, a transcontental uptempo dance song by Alok, Sofi Tukker, and the Romanian pop star INNA. For a while, we could have been radio anywhere, with the segue to "Animals" by Maroon 5. In this context, both those titles resonated more than the artists intended, though I could be projecting to protect my theory. But I don't think so. The next song, by native pop star, Tina Karol, was "Ukrayina i ty!," or "Ukraine is You," recorded live. Karol is the five time winner of Ukraine's edition of The Voice TV show, and named the country's most beautiful woman three times, from 2008 to 2017.

The hits kept coming: Calvin Harris's "My Way," followed by Romanian singer Minelli's "Nothing Hurts." Harris' song features the repeated refrain, "you were the one thing in my way," while Minelli's song of romantic misfortune takes on a visceral intensity if you think of what the words say: "I knew you were bad news, moment that I met you, I need you gone, gone..."

After another tune by INNA ("Up"), I switched over to Radio Roks. The last time I tried to stream it, it was carrying news. Late Saturday night (very early Sunday morning Lviv time), the station was Rok-ing in the Free World. Riffmaster, the band name in English and Ukrainian, was represented on the Shazam site with a soldier wearing a Special Forces insignia. The song was "Quitely Came, Quietly Gone." A 2006 emo song called "Fairytale Gone Bad" by the long-lived Finnish band Sunrise Avenue was followed by an increasingly intense streak of hard music.

In the last 25 minutes before New York midnight, the set started with Nirvana's "Dumb." "I'd like to send this out to all of you Russians freezing your asses off in your broken tanks" is the dedication I would make, but I think the situation was too dangerous for a live radio announcer, so both stations just did station IDs between songs. Then, Black Sabbath's delightfully demented "Fairies Wear Boots"; a Ukrainian prog/rockabilly tune, unidentified, though I made out the words in the universal language, "rock, really rock."

I hadn't thought about Uriah Heep for a while, but my guess is that it is a once-mocked band ready for critical reappraisal. I certainly enjoyed "Lady in Black," (1970) which delivered a powerful punch. Written by Heep's Ken Hensley, its medieval setting has the singer wandering in the mists, one lonely Sunday morning (which this was), found by a mystical woman as "desruction lay around me from a fight I could not win."  All he wants is more help, soldiers and horses, for vengeance, "To trample down my enemies," to "fight and kill their brothers without thought of love or god." But she refuses his plea: She would not have anything to do with "battle that reduces men to animals, so easy to begin and yet impossible to end."

That's not to say she was closing the door on ever helping this man fulfill his need for triumph. "There is no strength in numbers," she says in the song. . . "But when you need me be assured I won't be far away." Lady in Black lyrics © Emi Music Publishing Ltd., Sydney Bron Music Co. (EMI Music Publ Ltd ).

Got that? It's almost midnight, we hear John Lennon's "Imagine," followed by a track by Japanese DJ Kinera, a little ditty done up EDM style: "Ukraine Will Not Perish," the Ukrainian national anthem. It's not on You Tube right now. But this version, known only as "War Edition," is: