World Minded: Music Gives Voice to Resistance
“After the invasion [of Ukraine by Russia] on Feb. 24, I couldn’t be silent.”
On a day in early June, three months into the invasion of Ukraine, Adriana Helbig finishes her first call of the morning, with the Ukrainian embassy in Washington, D.C. She was able to help secure a visa for a 17-year-old Ukrainian student to study at a Pitt regional campus. It was one of many calls she would be on that day.
“After the invasion [of Ukraine by Russia] on Feb. 24, I couldn’t be silent,” says Helbig, chair of Pitt’s Department of Music and an authority on the folk and pop music that has become an integral part of the Ukrainian resistance.
Helbig describes Ukraine’s position in terms of postcolonial theory, which is usually thought of as pertaining to peoples and diasporas of Africa, Latin America and Asia who are emerging from control of Western imperialist structures.
“The theme is the same,” she says. “Whose land is this? How do you create a truly independent state? Now young Ukrainians are united in a narrative of breaking fully away from the empire and from the oligarchy that inherited—or stole—the economy of the empire.”
Ukraine’s Resilience
The songs are linked in a March 1, 2022, Pittwire article that explains the power behind each track.
Helbig’s music scholarship could not be more of the moment. The Ukrainian group Kalush Orchestra won the Eurovision Song Contest 2022 and exposed the world to the folk- and rap-blended Ukrainian pop music that has been part of her field of study since the early 2000s.
“All my research is human rights based—making sure every voice is heard. Music is tied to resistance—in this case, folk music weaving in Carpathian rhythms and instrumentation that was suppressed for decades under the Soviet Union as part of destroying the rhythms of rural life and a national identity, which includes the Romani music made by the marginalized communities once referred to as ‘Gypsy.’”
Music has been uniquely integral to the Ukrainian resistance. “The attention on music has added confidence to people,” explains Helbig. “I feel like my work has to be public facing and applied where musical ethnography is part of a power struggle.”
