Finally there's a club in Kyiv that's actually playing music you can dance to
Not so long ago in Kyiv the choice of music for clubbing fans was limited to techno house, disco house, or hard house, and it was all crap. Hearing the same lame music in any number of different clubs week in, week out, not only gave boring a new meaning in this city, it also made new club openings a virtual non-event: As the saying goes, you can dress up a pig and take it out, but it’s still a pig.
Lately, however, a new trend has come into being, thanks to one of Kyiv’s most central and accessible clubs, Tchaikovsky, and that new trend – to be welcomed by one and all – is hip hop.
Every Thursday night for the last five weeks Tchaikovsky has been serving up sexy, rump-shaking music till the wee hours. It’s music that doesn’t let Ukrainian men and women get away with the pathetic white-person dances they usually perform to those awful 4/4 house beats. Hip hop/R’n’B music does away with the fist-pumping, the hand-flailing, and all the other ridiculous motions that prevail at every other city club, and instead welcomes in all that nasty, sweaty, bump-and-grind, hip-and-ass grooving soul that can make American dance floors truly sexy.
Hip hop has become America’s signature black music in the way jazz was back in the first half of the 20th century. And like that genre, it has spread all over the world. Now, in Ukraine, it’s being put to a good use.
But all the popularity says nothing of the laid-back style and sexual culture that hip hop represents. Its appearance in Kyiv says a lot about how chill some city clubs and clubbers are finally starting to be.
The Thursday night R’n’B/hip hop parties at Tchaikovsky started out simply enough. Small black and red flyers that read “R’n’B party” were being handed out to weekend clubbers, and originally few people took notice. That first Thursday, Tchaikovsky was only about half full, but of those who were there, few were part of the reigning “I wear my sunglasses at night” club culture that so often manifests itself in this town. There were more people wearing FUBU shirts, American football jerseys, baggy blue jeans and sneakers. That’s more my kind of scene.
By the second night the crowd had thickened out a bit. The flyers were larger and more explicit in getting across the message that, yes, there is hip hop music in Kyiv. And the music was as good as the first night, too, with no delving into the typical Kyiv house tracks that are often played to appease those without the rhythm to groove to anything else. And best of all, to Kyiv’s “cool” crowd, these hip hop/R’n’B nights were still off the radar.
Naturally, despite Friday’s being a working day, I made sure to attend the third Thursday in the series, happy to simply be a part of a proper music scene, such as I had longed for when I settled down here nearly three years ago. These nights have quickly taken hold of me; I caught myself at one point that third night facing the bar, looking to order a drink, when a track by Ja Rule started playing loud and proud, and I thought for a moment I was actually back in Toronto at the popular Fluid Lounge. I expected to turn around and a see a mixed crowd of Latinos, African-Canadians and others bumping and grinding to the music. But I was in Kyiv, and I’ve never felt so at home.
The fourth Thursday finally produced the local “in” crowd of sunglass- and high-heel clad dorks, who were as obvious in their wealth as in their inability to dance, but that didn’t matter much anyway. I had come with a group of Dutch and Ukrainian friends who appreciate good music – and who know how to make promoters smile. My friend Joop handed one such promoter, who had been sitting outside in a styled-out 60s Chevrolet convertible, a two-foot-long cigar even as a camera crew were trying to conduct an interview with him and his cohorts. Inside we lit up similar stogies and proceeded to make ourselves right at home. The promoters caught up with us and invited us back the following week.
We gave away free passes to that night, and went back ourselves, too. The Thursday night hip hop/R’n’B series at Tchaikovsky continues. Let the true urban culture reign.
Tchaikovsky
1 Bessarabska Square, entrance near Metrograd, 234-7406.
Hip hop/R‘n’B nights every Thursday.
Hr 50 for men, free for women.
Free admission with guest pass or club card.
