The power is out in Zoriana Dybovska’s Ukrainian home. I can barely make out her face’s outline through the Zoom call.
What I can see, though, is the smile that splits her face when she talks about her music, her band, her home. A figurative light in the darkness of the ongoing Russo-Ukrainian war that has been raging since 2014.
Founded in 2016 by Dybovska, Yagody is a Ukrainian “etho-drama” folk band. Relocated to Lviv because of Russia’s invasion of Dybovska’s home in Donbas, she formed a singing group with some fellow theater actresses.
In their first festival performance, Dybovska recounts how the announcer gave them a name when they did not have one.
“Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome the band … Yagody. It means berries.”
The band consists of seven members, only a few of which can make the upcoming Big Ears festival at the end of March because of visa complications at the Ukrainian border. According to Teimuraz Gogitidze, drummer and manager of the band and translator for Dybovska, these travel complications are just one small part of navigating a war-torn Ukraine.
But to him, it’s all worth it.
“Our art is made for people to make them happy. In all aspects, like mental, physical, heart, soul. We’re sending a very important message,” Gogitidze said.
When asked what Yagody wanted festival attendees to take away from their performance, Gogitidze responded with a resounding “fun.”
“I want to make them dance, or open their hearts. … I want to help people have fun,” Gogitidze said.
Gogitidze described the physiology behind performance. He wants concert-goers to dance and sweat before playing a deeper, more hard-hitting song. It’s all part of the experience, for both performer and audience.
But fun isn’t all that Yagody wants the audience to walk away from the performance with.
Each band member feels the realities of living in wartime deeply. Gogitidze believes that for some people, war in Ukraine exists in the background of their lives. But not for Yagody.
“When we are performing, we are showing a truth,” Gogitidze said. “We feel that everyday there is a war. We feel that.”
From their first small festival stage in Ukraine to becoming one of 2024’s Eurovision finalists, Yagody has stayed true to their roots in Ukrainian culture.
In fact, Dybovska said she needs to be in Ukraine in order to create music, describing herself as “rooted in Ukraine.” Ukrainian culture and identity is at the forefront of Yagody’s art, and Dybovska wishes to see their music bring young people together under folk songs that celebrate their unique traditions and stories in the face of Russian occupation.
Gogitidze described the importance of their art amid the violent political landscape with an analogy.
“Your motherland and everything that is happening there, like your music, this is very important. … You need to grow it, you know, like a flower in a garden.”
He compared invasion to “stomping on (flowers) and putting some other flowers instead.”
Even amid the weeds, it seems that Yagody’s art has blossomed into a widely popular and well-loved form of expression beneath occupation. Above all else, Yagody considers itself a physical embodiment of truth.
“We are honest on the stage. We are who we are,” said Gogitidze.
Yagody is set to perform at Big Ears on Thursday, March 26, at 6 p.m. in Jackson Terminal.
