Twenty years after the Gadiukiny Brothers pioneered Ukrainian rock music, their songs still draw huge crowds and the highest praise from the country’s top rock acts.
Twenty years after the Gadiukiny Brothers pioneered Ukrainian rock music, their songs still draw huge crowds and the highest praise from the country’s top rock acts.
At a concert at Palats Sportu last month, the band reformed – minus lead singer Serhiy Kuzminsky, who died in 2009 – to blast out some of its hits, supported by 18 other groups performing cover versions of its songs.
The band, which took its name from the spy Gadiukin, a character in a Soviet short story, combined Western music styles of rock ’n’ roll, blues, reggae and punk, infused with a bit of Ukrainian folk. Kuzminsky’s lyrics rebelled against the Communist Party line of the time. Gadiukiny sang with dark humor about everything they saw, rather than the “perfect” Soviet citizen.
Kuzminsky spent time in prison for selling and possessing drugs. After leaving prison, the musician wrote about junkies walking on farmlands and a guy in a jail dreaming about the moonlit body of his girlfriend. One song tells of Roxoliana, a gorgeous girl from Lviv, who would, according to the lyrics, give you both a passionate night and a venereal disease.
Serhiy Kuzminsky (with a microphone) and his legendary band Gadiukiny Brothers during their final concert in 2006 in Kyiv. (Ukrinform)
Another is about a country girl from Kolomyia whose cheeks are as red as the tie of a pioneer, a Soviet version of a scout. Other lyrics feature a guy who smokes cheap and strong Ukrainian cigarettes called Verkhovyna and feels the wind of change blowing from the north.
Even though the group stopped playing together in 1996, its music can be heard any time students or campers get together with a guitar. Many modern Ukrainian musicians were influenced by the cheerful music and biting lyrics of the band, which was formed in Lviv in western Ukraine in 1988 just a couple of years before the collapse of the Soviet Union.
“As a teenager I used to listen only to The Beatles,” said Sviatoslav Vakarchuk, front man of Okean Elzy. “When I was given a cassette by the Gadiukiny Brothers, I refused to listen to them at first, but when I finally turned it on, I thought ‘Wow!’ Soon everyone in my group became huge fans of Gadiukiny.”
A number of the bands performing mentioned that Gadiukiny proved that rock could also be Ukrainian and that without them Ukrainian modern music would never have developed.
The concert, however, was tinged with sadness and was dedicated to the memory of Kuzminsky, who died of complications of cancer and hepatitis treatment at the age of 46.
“Kuzia, how are you doing out there?” Mykhaylo Lundin, the band’s drummer, asked rhetorically. He encouraged the audience to lift their lighters in the air. Non-smokers used the backlight of their mobile phones and the concert hall was immediately filled with thousands of lights.
Kuzminsky was born in the Ukrainian-speaking city of Lviv, but his grandfather was Russian.
It looked like I was making rock ’n’ roll and sang songs about rednecks for the ‘in-the-know’ rock ’n’ roll community, and suddenly you are somewhere in Berdychiv or Kolomyia [giving a concert]. And all the rednecks are in the concert hall. – said Kuzminsky.
He did not care about fame, but it found him anyway. After achieving second place at the first Chervona Ruta festival (first Ukrainian music festival) in 1989, the band had several successful releases and gave concerts in Ukraine, Russia, Canada and Europe. After growing bored of his drug-fueled lifestyle, Kuzminsky got clean for a while, moved to Moscow and switched to electronic music. Living in Moscow, the former singer looked back at the Gadiukiny Brothers period and seemed happy it was over, often speaking cynically about the band.
In a 2005 interview with Nash magazine, he said their sudden fame was a misunderstanding and their songs, adored by thousands, were crap.
“It looked like I was making rock ’n’ roll and sang songs about rednecks for the ‘in-the-know’ rock ’n’ roll community,” he said in the interview, which was peppered with offensive slang. “And suddenly you are somewhere in Berdychiv or Kolomyia [giving a concert]. And all the rednecks are in the concert hall.”
The true motivation of this charismatic band leader, who wrote dozens of hits, for saying this still remains unclear. But it never was an obstacle for Gadiukiny Brothers fans who still know some of their lyrics by heart.
Former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko along with her entourage of bodyguards and lawyer Serhiy Vlasenko occupied several seats in the audience. Perhaps she was there to distract from criminal cases that wereopened against her by the prosecution.
“The Gadiukiny Brothers are a part of our history,” said Tymoshenko, dressed in tight jeans and small jacket, sporting long curly hair instead of her trademark braid. “I came simply to show my respect to the people who supported freedom with their songs in the difficult ’90s and radiated freedom.”
The band didn’t just churn out anti-Soviet lyrics. In “We Are Boys from Banderstadt” Kuzminsky makes fun of Ukrainian patriots who go to church, respect their parents and are eager to protect their Motherland. His song “The Fine City of Ternopil” became an unofficial anthem of the city and, despite its drug-themed lyrics, is used at cultural city events.
“It’s awesome that we are not afraid to make fun of ourselves,” said the band’s keyboardist Pavlo Krakhmaliov. “If people can laugh at themselves, they are able to overcome and move on. All Ukrainians were able to do so thanks to Serhiy.”
Guitarist Ihor Melnychuk said their band leader was “a kind of Messiah.”
“He took ordinary people and turned them into small stories,” he said. “That was revolutionary at that time. He made that with love, not with hatred.”
Kyiv Post staff writer Oksana Faryna can be reached at [email protected]
