BASEL, Switzerland (AP) — Ukraine’s musicians can’t escape conflict, even on the Eurovision Tune Contest.
Rock band Ziferblat had been in Basel, Switzerland to characterize their nation after they realized the house of backing singer Khrystyna Starykova in a frontline area of jap Ukraine had been destroyed by Russian shelling.
“She’s so strong,” mentioned guitarist Valentyn Leshchynskyi, who shaped Ziferblat together with his vocalist twin brother Daniil and drummer Fedir Khodakov. “She is nineteen years outdated solely, however the influence of this example — I believe she gained’t hand over.
“Of course it’s difficult when you’re losing your flat while you need to stay calm to celebrate here because it’s a musical festival, it’s not about the war.”
The band is about to compete for Ukraine in Saturday’s Eurovision grand closing with “Bird of Pray,” a tune whose intense vocals and prog rock sound owe one thing to the Nineteen Seventies – as does the bell-bottomed pink swimsuit Daniil Leshchynskyi wore in Tuesday’s semi-final.
Valentyn Leshchynskyi mentioned the lyrical message of loss and hope, centered on a phoenix-like hen, resonates with what Ukrainians skilled in recent times.
“We want to build a dream on the stage – even for three minutes, for Ukrainians – like the war will be over in the very near future,” he instructed The Related Press.
Ukraine is a longtime Eurovision competitor – as was its neighbor Russia. Each noticed their relationship with the continental pop contest remodeled by Moscow’s full-scale invasion three years in the past.
Russia was kicked out of Eurovision. Ukrainian folk-rap group Kalush Orchestra gained the 2022 contest lower than three months after the invasion. Successful introduced the proper to host the competition the next 12 months. When conflict made that inconceivable, Liverpool stepped in to stage Eurovision with a distinctly Ukrainian taste, decking out the English metropolis in blue and yellow Ukrainian flags.
Even earlier than the full-scale invasion, Ukraine used Eurovision for cultural diplomacy, as a method to inform the world about their nation’s historical past, music and language. Ukrainian singer Jamala gained the competition in 2016 — two years after Russia illegally seized Crimea — with a tune concerning the expulsion of Crimean Tatars by Stalin in 1944. Kalush Orchestra’s profitable tune “Stefania” blended rapping in Ukrainian with a haunting chorus on a standard Ukrainian wind instrument.
Now the message is that Ukraine continues to be standing, and nonetheless preventing.
Daniil admitted to feeling a “little bit of pressure” forward of Saturday. However he mentioned it was “such a privilege” to characterize Ukraine.
“We have two missions here,” his brother Valentyn mentioned. One is to come back out at or close to the highest in Saturday’s 26-nation musical showdown. The opposite is “to remind Europeans about the war.”
As a part of its Eurovision journey, the band is fundraising to purchase robotic de-mining programs to assist clear an space of Ukraine he says is 3 1/2 instances the scale of Switzerland.
Ziferblat’s journey to Eurovision coincided with Vyshyvanka Day — the third Thursday in Might, when Ukrainians world wide put on conventional embroidered shirts as a logo of nationwide satisfaction.
The band members joined scores of Ukrainians clad in elaborately stitched vyshyvanka in a Basel park to eat borscht, sing Ukrainian songs and cheer on the band forward of Saturday’s closing.
“This is a day that is gathering all Ukrainians together,” Valentyn mentioned. “In Kyiv, the capital, everyone is wearing these shirts and going to the streets celebrating and you feel like a united nation for one day.”
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Related Press journalist Kwiyeon Ha contributed to this story.
