The conversation reveals the importance of music as a part of cultural identity and of cultural identity as a part of political resistance. I recommend listening carefully to this discussion, perhaps listening twice, as I did. This musical project comes as the NATO prepares to be dismantled from within and Putin gains an ally in his war on Ukraine.
The compilation is current, but the music itself was recorded -- by many artists -- during the previous Russian occupation of Ukraine. Not mentioned in this conversation is the fact that one of Putin's excuses for the reconquest of Ukraine is that there is no such thing as Ukraine. It is just a part of Russia in this view, making Bardetskyi's work deeply and importantly political, even though it has not a single word of political content in its lyrics.
I understand this story because of something I learned during a 2004 visit to my charch's partner congregation in Transylvania, which has been occupied by Romania for the last century or so. From 1965 through 1989, this meant it was ruled by the increasingly brutal Nicolae Ceaușescu.
One of the translators for our visit had been a teenager during that dictatorship. Ilena described lying down in the center of her house to listen to radio broadcasts from the Voice of America on the lowest possible voume, lest they be reported by neighbors. She also said that she spent a couple of days in prison for reading a poem about Transylvania that one of her classmates had written. Ilena was not held longer than that because her father had Communist Party connections, which is similar to the leniency that Bardetskyi had enjoyed.
But the classmate who had written the poem Ilena read was held for seven years. There had been nothing overtly political about the poem. It merely celebrated the beauty of the land of Transylvania. But it celebrated that in contrast to Romania as a whole, so she was punished severely. An indication of her character is that when she was released, she apologized to Ilena for the two days she had spent in prison years before.
The incoming president of the United States is using the word "peace" when referring to his plans for Ukraine. But the word has a different meaning when used by such a deeply violent person, and that meaning is "appeasement" of his patron. For me, listening to this album is a genuinely peaceful act of solidarity with Ukraine.