This all-female pop group, one of the Ukrainian music industry's biggest success stories, hopes to win over international audiences.
“We are the least scandalous band you could imagine; we don’t give any reason for scandals,” said producer Konstyantyn Meladze about his widely popular creation, the all-female Ukrainian group VIA GRA. Meladze is difficult to reach for an interview, and that’s not just because he’s a busy person.
“We’re so popular that the yellow press loves writing about us. But unfortunately, most of the stories are far from the truth,” he says, explaining his reluctance to talk to the press.
The pop-group’s sexually suggestive name VIA GRA is said to mean the vocal instrumental ensemble “gra” (“game” in most Slavic languages). However, the trio has also been notorious in the media for its sexually explicit videos and for frequently rotating its band members since the project’s foundation in 2000. Attention to and speculation about the band has grown along with the group’s striking success in post-Soviet countries and abroad.
At the Russian MUZ-TV Awards in June, VIA GRA was announced as the best pop-project of the year. And on Oct. 16, the song “No Attraction Anymore” performed by VIA GRA with Valery Meladze, won the best song prize during the MTV Russian Music Awards.
But the group’s ambitions go far beyond local markets. Like true entrepreneurs, the group is focused on winning over profitable foreign audiences, too.
According to a Sony Music Entertainment Russia executive who is promoting the band on the international market, VIA GRA’s English album “Stop! Stop! Stop!” recently achieved gold status in Taiwan.
“VIA GRA is the first Ukrainian project to gain any international recognition at all, with the band becoming popular in Asia months before Ruslana won Eurovision,” said the Sony spokesperson.
The group debuted internationally in Japan in October 2003, claiming the highest first-week disc sales in the country that year. The group has since given concerts in South Korea, Thailand, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Indonesia, and today the band is the top-selling artist in these countries.
Asian markets hold promise
VIA GRA’s business manager Dmytro Kostyuk said the group’s decision to move into the Asian markets was well-reasoned.
“European markets have not been accessible recently due to the ongoing merger of Sony Music Entertainment and BMG, among the world’s largest recording companies,” said Kostyuk, adding that one-third of the world’s population lives in Asia, which has tremendous market potential. He also said that on the international level, the group had to give up its appealing name due to trademark concerns. Now, everywhere outside the former Soviet Union, the sexy Ukrainians are known as Nu Virgos, or New Divas.
Director of Sony Music Russia Andrei Sumin said the company has grand plans regarding VIA GRA/Nu Virgos. “VIA GRA is our most successful project for the last two years,” said Sumin. “After Asia, our next step will be Europe.”
The profits from VIA GRA’s two latest albums [Stop! Stop! Stop and Biology] were tangible for the company, he added. In post-Soviet countries alone, VIA GRA has sold as many as half a million albums. The company sells the albums of 400,000 international artists.
Given their meteoric rise, one wonders if there is something more to VIA GRA’s success than an intriguing name and sex appeal.
Producer-driven success
Few people actually think about the producers of pop-bands when watching their videos on television or playing CDs at home. In the case of VIA GRA, experts attribute most of the flashy band’s success to the genius of Konstyantyn Meladze, who manages the creative side of the project — song lyrics, music and image.
Yuriy Nikitin, business manager for another hugely popular Ukrainian project, Verka Serduchka, says Meladze is one of the four most talented producers in Russian and Ukrainian show-business. He is comparable only to the Moscow-based producers of Fabrika Zvezd (“The Star-making factory”) Maksym Fadeev and Ihor Matvienko, and tATu creator Ivan Shapovalov, Nikitin adds.
The VIA GRA project, though entirely producer-created, appears more natural than some of the other projects because “all the components work together fluidly,” he said.
“Take the same three women, but without Meladze’s music: It just wouldn’t work,” said Nikitin. The main three components of the band’s success, he said, are its music, its name and a well-crafted image.
Sony Music’s Sumin agrees, commenting that the project could easily turn into something resembling pornography, if it did not have the music and direction of Meladze. “The people who say that VIA GRA is pornographic were probably among those who claimed there was no sex in the Soviet Union,” he added.
Meladze on VIA GRA
For Meladze himself, VIA GRA is all about femininity.
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| Konstyantyn Meladze, producer.(Courtesy photo) |
“I don’t portray teenagers in sporty pants. In VIA GRA, I cultivate the most important attributes of a woman – beauty, tenderness and femininity,” explained Meladze. “And because [the concept] is so simple, it provokes such a reaction: women envy and dislike [them] and men adore and want [them].”
All three of the current group members are also mothers, which largely contributes to the group’s desired image, added Meladze.
According to Meladze, VIA GRA is not based on a prototype because no existing bands match his vision.
“I crafted everything to my own taste and my personal intuition; I dressed them how I liked and I made the videos according to how I would like to see a woman,” said the producer. “It seems my tastes turned out to be pretty traditional,” he said, smiling.
“And it isn’t so important to me if the woman sings like a Whitney Houston or not. An interesting and talented personality that can attract the attention of the audience is what matters most,” Meladze continued.
The most challenging aspect of work on the project, confessed the producer, is the selection process.
“The women who get involved in our project face significant psychological pressure that comes from becoming very popular in a record-fast period of time. Few can handle it. That’s why the band members frequently rotate in and out,” he explained. Commenting on the most recent replacement of red-haired Svitlana Loboda, he said that “she turned out to be a totally chance person within our team of very similar people.” For a producer, he added, it’s crucial to continuously be in close contact with the people for whom he writes music and creates an image.
He hopes the current addition of Moscow-native Albina Dzanabayeva will be a permanent one.
Meladze’s business partner and VIA GRA’s manager Dmytro Kostyuk said the critics’ claims about the group’s explicit sex appeal are exaggerated.
“Of course, we use sexuality in VIA GRA’s image, but that’s not our major appeal,” he said. “It was Army of Lovers that appealed to pure sexuality, and it was tATu [the Russian pop-project that used lesbian themes in creating its image] that appealed to perverted sexuality. In VIA GRA, everything is natural and real.”
VIA GRA grosses about 30,000 euros for each concert, and although Kostyuk would not reveal the amount each group member earns, he said it’s enough to publish a monthly glossy magazine, like FHM.
But when the women agree to join the group – and to accept all the benefits that come with it, like fame and fortune – they must accept the fact that they cannot influence the producers’ decisions regarding the composition of the band.
Also, they are forbidden to speak with the press without the producers’ approval.
Musical fast food?
Despite the band’s success, Ukrainian rocker Oleh Skrypka, front man of Vopli Vidoplyasova, said VIA GRA is just one of many newly emerging pop-projects that have little to do with musical culture. He suspects that they are successful because of tremendous promotion on radio and TV.
“Look at what is happening in Russia,” noted Skrypka. “Show business is being monopolized by the large conglomerate Fabrika Zvezd (the Star-making factory), which produces cheap and trashy pop-projects: musical fast food. This will happen here in Ukraine, soon, if positive changes do not occur,” he said.
“I would compare [VIA GRA] with the sale of medicine that is well advertised, but doesn’t really help,” said Skrypka.
Skrypka’s main concern is that Ukrainian culture does not become commercialized. Contemporary culture should focus on preserving a national distinctiveness, instead.
VIA GRA’s producers responded that they do not limit themselves to any national or geographical borders.
“We consider ourselves a Ukrainian group, and everything we do, we do in Kyiv,” noted Kostyuk.
“But the fact is that VIA GRA does not belong to Ukrainian, or even to Russian showbiz, anymore. It has been a part of international show business for over a year now.”
