A very good day for French-Ukrainian cultural solidarity.
The lovely ladies of Dakh Daughters have recently been awarded the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French Ambassador in Kyiv - in fact, the ceremony took place during an air raid that interrupted their concert!
According to the new profile of them in Kyiv Post - “His Excellency M. Gael Veyssiere took the moment and met the band in the basement corridors that lead to the dressing rooms.”
I was friendly with some of the members of the Dakh Daughters over the years- and partied with them as a few of them wound up in Paris and Normandy after the start of the Russian full-scale invasion. Which is the reason that the French have adopted them.
I have long had a crush on the lead vocalist Ganna Nikitina- what can possibly be sexier than an intelligent Ukrainian woman dressed up like a member of the Dresden Dolls?
Kudos all around!
Kyiv Post celebrates its 30th
The group’s profile appeared in Kyiv Post as the newspaper celebrated its 30th birthday last month. The newspaper has been ably stewarded during the war under the editorial guidance of my old friend Bohdan Nahaylo.
The newspaper’s publisher role has recently passed to the son of the former owner (Adnan Kivan, the Odesan Syrian born real-estate developer who has passed on recently) - and the scandal that had led to the newsroom mutiny and formation of the competing Kyiv Independent now seems like ancient (pre -war history).
Worth a read
The newest issue of the open source London Ukrainian Review dealing with “Culture as Security” has just been published. It is very much worth a read. The journal is high-brow, serious and non-academic in the good sense- and is ably edited by the talented Ukrainian journalist Sasha Dovzhyk. And my friend Larissa Babij.
Reprinted from The Fantastical Daybook of Vladislav Davidzon.
See the original here.