Recommendations from the Kyiv Independent: Pyrih i Batih (Patreon)

Hello from Yerbolat, head of marketing here at the Kyiv Independent! I’d like to recommend to you the Ukrainian folk band Pyrih i Batih (or “Pie and Whip” in English). 

It was May 21st, at a big concert hall in downtown Kyiv, where Ukrainian journalists gathered to choose the winner of the Georgiy Gongadze Prize – an award named after the founder of Ukrainska Pravda and legendary investigative journalist who was kidnapped and killed in 2000.

After the official part of the ceremony, I was about to get up and run to the buffet, but suddenly a miniature man with a mustache and a guitar appeared on stage. A few seconds later, the whole band appeared around him. It was hard to understand what kind of music they were playing because they had a violin, a bassoon, a double bass, a guitar, and a bass drum. Usually, you can guess the sound of the band from the instruments of its members, but this set of instruments was really confusing.

Then the mustachioed guy, the front man, announced that they were going to play songs with lyrics based on poems by Ukrainian poets. I became very skeptical. It's very rare when the music matches the mood and rhythm of a poem, and I was schooled not to expect much from this kind of art, remembering all the songs I’ve deleted from my playlist, where musicians tried to put music on someone else’s poetry and failed (in my subjective opinion). Finally, they started to play, and oh boy, was I wrong.

The haunting melody and perfectly timed instrumentation nailed me to my chair, and the front man began to sing what is now one of my favorite songs – “І гріховна і свята”  (Both Sinner and Saint).

The original poem was written by Hryhorii Chuprynka, a Ukrainian modernist poet who took an active part in the revolutions of 1905 and 1917 and who was executed by the Soviet authorities in August 1921.

In fact, the entire last album of Pyrih i Batih is dedicated to poets who were murdered by Russia. The name of it "Замордовані. Подзвін перший" is translated as "Murdered. The First Chime."

"Each part is a bright chime in memory of all those mentioned and not mentioned – because the list is too long," says Marian Pyrozhok, the band's founder. "This is the musical treasure we have prepared for you, a metaphorical chime between the past and the present, in which we cherish the memory of all those killed and honor these times with their own works."

I've read three or four interviews with Marian and all of them emphasized the poetry and the cultural significance of the album. But Pyrih and Batih are musicians. Damn good musicians. I've been studying, playing and consuming music since I was four years old, and I've never heard a better combination of musical arrangements and pre-written poetry. I challenge you to define the musical genre of any of their albums. Take 12 songs from their last album and try to fit them into two, no, three boxes. You will fail! From the baroque, dark sound of “І гріховна і свята”, Balkan folk sounding  “Чорногора”, to their own interpretation of “Щедрик” (Carol of the Bells) and waltzing “Тайна танцю.” They can do all of that. 

But Pyrih i Batih had to make a choice, what comes first? The sound or the word? They chose the latter, and that is something very few musicians can do while working with other poet’s work.

After the show, my colleagues and I (finally) went to the buffet and met Marian. He acted exactly as I imagined him to act in a normal conversation – mimicking Salvador Dali, overstimulated after the performance and magnetically friendly. I shook his hand, complimented him on his decision to combine double bass and bassoon, drank four glasses of red wine and went home happy.

If you give Pyrih i Batih a listen, let me know what you think. 

You can find their Instagram here and their Linktree here.