Ukrainian women’s band Dakh Daughters hit the airwaves in the United States in January on U.S. non-profit radio station KEXP, and on April 9 released a video of their live performance for the station on YouTube for the rest of the world to hear.
In the video, which the band posted on its Facebook page, Tanya Gavriliuk, one of the members of the Dakh Daughters, tells radio host Darek Mazzone that the band wanted to bring Ukrainian culture to a global audience.
“We’re very honored to present Ukraine here in the studio,” Gavriliuk said. “The art that we create, our lyrics, reflect on what is happening in Ukraine and in the whole world. Now, it is so important to share with the world what Ukraine is, and what Ukraine can bring to global society.”
KEXP regularly hosts both U.S. and international artists for in-studio performances in its live room, and also broadcasts live from music festivals.
The Dakh Daughters band was born out of Kyiv’s theatre scene, at the Dakh Center for Contemporary Arts, and features seven female multi-instrumentalist who bring musical and theatrical parts to performances that are witty, poetic and brash.
The artists usually dress in quite an extraordinary way — in tutus and combat boots with their faces painted white — performing an incredible show which is at once darkly attractive and yet alienating.
In their performances, they use texts by famous authors in various languages.
‘No more be grieved at that which thou hast done: Roses have thorns, and silver fountains mud,” a mournful line from the Shakespeare’s Sonnet 35, begins their song “Rozy/Donbas.” The song was written in 2012, before Russia launched its war on Ukraine in the Donbas, which has made the song remarkably prophetic.
The band has a long story. All the members of DakhDaughters have been actresses with the Dakh theater troupe for 15 years. In 2012, the Dakh Daughters appeared as a short-term project within Gogolfest, an international arts festival based in Kyiv.
The initiators of the project, Anna Nikitina, suggested to producer Vlad Troitskyi that they create a theatrical and musical women’s band.
“I thought that it would be awesome to make women’s band that would be theatrical and musical at the same time,” she said on the radio station.
The band’s first tour, to Paris in 2012, was a resounding success. Since then, Dakh Daughters has staged regular performances the Monfort theater in Paris.
Dakh Daughters also performs regularly in various Ukrainian cities, as well as putting on shows in Poland, France, Brazil, Canada, and the United States.
