Two-day rock festival lures top bands and more than 30,000 rowdy concertgoers
The Chaika International Youth Festival on May 26 was billed as an alterative to Kyiv’s inflated concert prices. Whereas tickets for events in the sedate Ukraina Palace are typically too expensive for the average Kyivan youth, this free extravaganza was hyped to be a democratic alternative. It was also supposed to be a mass celebration of “peace, love and liberty.”
“It’s not about politics, officials, or sponsors! It’s for you and me – for those who have spring in their hearts and souls no older than 30,” read the official Web site, which illustrated the event with archive photos of Woodstock.
And in one sense it succeeded. Officials predicted that between 16,000 and 30,000 people would attend. While it was impossible to get an accurate tally, the event exceeded expectations. More than 30,000 people crammed the paved airfield at the Chaika Sports Complex. They spilled out of its crumbling whitewashed confines and into the shaggy fields. Concertgoers made shashlyk fires and lounged in the grass amid the corrugated outbuildings and the industrial infrastructure of the decaying Soviet sports complex.
The crowd was a cross section of Kyiv culture. Hip kids and housewives, punks and bikers, grunge kids and fashion model wannabes, the sober and the stoned arrived in everything from Mercedes to marshrutkas.
“We are not about politics here,” shouted the emcee between acts.
But while no political platitudes were spouted, no candidates touted and no doctrines voiced, the event was far from apolitical. There were innocuous acts like Tanki, who played their commercial ballad “You Took my Strength,” but most of the acts were angry and aggressive. Of the undercards, the crowd responded most heartily to Dymna Sumish’s instrument-throwing rage and various gangster-styled rap groups. Even the tongue-in-cheek punk of the Varenykys’ “I Have No Money” held an undercurrent of frustration.
Throughout the day, the emcee would occasionally break into stilted English to the comic delight of the audience. When a child was reported missing, the emcee apologized for addressing the crowd in Russian. “She’s from Dnipropetrovsk,” he said, “They all speak Russian there.”
The international festival was supposed to be so laid back that there would be few rules for performers.
“If someone wants to play longer, they are absolutely free to do so,” said Chaika founder Oleksandr Sokobylko in an earlier interview with the post weeks
| Bi-2 was among the top acts performing at Chaika. |
before the show. “Everybody will get the opportunity to relax and lie on the grass for the entire day.”
But few people chose to lie down on the dirty pavement of the airfield and the smaller acts were hustled on and off the stage. As darkness fell, the crowd became younger and younger. The audience within the arena doubled, then tripled as the small acts gave way to the headliners.
If you pack 40,000 teen-agers into a crowded space, ply them with alcohol for 10 hours, and set them in motion with hyper-aggressive music, peace and love are not the natural result.
In the stands and in the more loosely populated areas away from the stage, a mellower crowd milled. But closer to the stage, the dominant gesture was the middle finger, not the peace sign.
The crowd surged against the barriers in front of the stage. Large, plastic bottles of Obolon, the unofficial beverage of the event, were tested for aerodynamic properties. The police, who had not been visible during the day, swelled their ranks and deployed along barriers. Those who made a dash for the stage were harshly dealt with.
By the time the bass-heavy, hip-hop group DAZ Mashin shouted their first “YO!YO!YO!” police were physically supporting the barricades. At five-minute intervals, they plucked people from the crowd and pulled them over the barrier. If they resisted, they
| Police came out in droves in attempt to tame a crowd of drunken teen-agers. |
were subdued with choke-holds or a fist to the head. If they went quietly, they were set free back stage – a strange incentive plan for the drunk and violent.
The concert was supposed to wrap up at 1:30 a.m., but it was not until midnight that the first of the major acts, Chycheryna, took the stage. By the time crowd-favorite Bi-2 played their first number, the crowd was close-packed from one end of the arena to the other, and the police were in constant motion.
While a steady stream of fans left because of cold weather and fatigue, a steady stream of re-enforcement’s filed down the darkened road to take the places of those who left.
In a city of rock concert flops, Chaika was a rousing success in terms of attendance. It managed to lure thousands of youths away from the city center and set them free. Whether it met its professed ideals is another matter.
