Ukraine is transforming ancient folk traditions into the future of global music – and the world is finally paying attention. The evidence is everywhere. Go_A‘s “Shum” became the first Ukrainian-language song to hit the Billboard Global 200. Kalush Orchestra won Eurovision with 439 televote points – the contest’s highest ever. DakhaBrakha has performed 300+ shows across six continents. Ukrainian artists now comprise 11.53% of global Heatlist performers, second only to the United States.
This revolution accelerated after 2014’s Revolution of Dignity, when Ukrainian culture underwent what musicians call a “revolution of consciousness.” The 2022 invasion compressed decades of cultural evolution into months. Suddenly, kindergarten teachers were becoming trap artists, IT specialists were producing drill beats with ancient flutes, and musicians were traveling to remote villages recording grandmothers’ songs, then transforming them into tracks that make Berlin techno clubs take notice.
Ukraine sits on 500,000+ folk songs created over centuries. Now artists are fusing ritual chants with trap beats, wedding songs with electronic bass, and shepherd horns with hip-hop flows. The result? Something neither purely traditional nor strictly modern – and the world is listening.
The New Wave: When Rap Meets Ritual
Take Kalush Orchestra, whose “Stefania” became the first rap song to ever win Eurovision. The group’s formula sounds impossible on paper: member Ihor Didenchuk plays over 50 traditional instruments while simultaneously performing with electronic act Go_A. Tymofii Muzychuk travels to remote villages recording grandmothers singing forgotten songs, wearing the traditional embroidered vyshyvankas he inherited from his own grandmother. Their breakout hit features a 40-second sopilka (wooden flute) solo – an instrument with roots in the Paleolithic era, originally carved from mammoth bone.
The group’s approach to fusion is deliberate. As founder Oleh Psiuk explains: “We mix old ancient folk, even forgotten sounds, with super modern and understandable-for-everyone hip-hop rap elements.” The telenka they use – a primitive overtone flute without fingerholes – requires one hand to control the pipe’s open end while holding a microphone with the other. It’s an instrument designed for mountain communication, now commanding festival stages.
Kalush Orchestra – Stefania (LIVE) | Ukraine 🇺🇦 | Grand Final | Winner of Eurovision 2022
Then there’s alyona alyona (real name: Alyona Savranenko), the former kindergarten teacher whose refusal to curse makes her an anomaly in hip-hop. Her collaboration album “Dai Boh” (God Bless) with Jerry Heil reimagines four traditional Ukrainian folk songs through a feminist lens. “Podolyanochka,” a folk song “everyone in Ukraine knows from kindergarten,” becomes a statement about female empowerment. Her track “Kupala” transforms summer solstice ritual music into a rap-pop anthem.
“There is a renaissance with Ukrainian folk music,” alyona alyona observes. “For young people, folk songs were just music for old people, but now they try to learn it.”
Jerry Heil & alyona alyona – ПОДОЛЯНОЧКА (GET UP) mood video
Alina Pash: The Literary Folktronica Witch
Perhaps no artist embodies Ukraine’s cultural reclamation more completely than Alina Pash. The Transcarpathian artist, who identifies as “100% Bitanga” (Rusyn for “hooligan”), doesn’t just sample folk music – she excavates entire cultural histories. Her 2022 track “Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors” takes its name from the classic Ukrainian novel by Mykhailo Kotsiubynsky about Hutsul life in the Carpathians, later adapted into Sergei Parajanov’s legendary film. But Pash transforms this reference into a Ukrainian literature syllabus set to trap beats, name-checking everyone from 18th-century philosopher Hryhoriy Skovoroda to national poet Taras Shevchenko to Lesya Ukrainka, the female poet who identified as Ukrainian when it was considered treason under Imperial Russia.
Alina Pash – Тіні Забутих Предків / Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors (lyric video)
The lyrics are explicit in their mission: “Skovoroda, Sausyura, Kotsiubynskyi and Oles. All those who desperately gave themselves all. Let’s continue their work in joy and sorrow.”
Her album “PINTEA” splits into two halves: PINTEA:GORY (mountains/village) recorded in ethnic style, and PINTEA:MISTO (city/Kyiv) in electronic hip-hop. The album’s namesake, Pintea the Great, was a 17th-century Carpathian Robin Hood figure – and Pash’s actual ancestor. For her 2021 album “Rozmova,” she conducted field expeditions to the Hutsul region, recording songs like “Ballad” and “Water” in one take inside the church where Sergei Parajanov shot his legendary film.
Her videos are equally loaded with symbolism. “Bosorkanya” (The Sorceress) features choreographed witches casting spells against religious leaders. “Motanka” takes its name from traditional Ukrainian ragdolls believed to have magical powers – faceless figures with crosses for faces, made without needles. The track opens with Hungarian counting, a nod to the multicultural Transcarpathian region she calls home.
Go_A: Engineering the Shamanic
Go_A took a different path to global recognition, one that involves turning spring ritual songs into club anthems. Their name – combining “Go” (movement) with Greek “Alpha” (beginning) – signals their mission: return to the roots, then launch them into space.
Their Eurovision 2021 entry “Shum” demonstrates this perfectly. The title refers to both “noise” and “forest” in Proto-Slavic – Shum being the god or personification of the forest in Ukrainian ethnography. The original folk ritual involved making noise to wake the forest spirit and bring spring. Go_A’s version layers this ritual over drum ‘n’ bass, African drums, and what sounds like the apocalypse in the best possible way.
Lead singer Kateryna Pavlenko employs “bilyi holos” (white voice), a medieval technique of singing without vibrato that creates an almost otherworldly effect. Her hypnotic, shamanic presence during Eurovision – despite having had part of her lung removed and surviving a serious stage accident – became legendary. The song hit number 158 on the Billboard Global 200, the first Ukrainian-language song to ever chart there.
Go_A – Shum (LIVE) | Ukraine 🇺🇦 | Grand Final | Eurovision 2021
The Musical Architecture: Why This Actually Works
The fusion isn’t random. Ukrainian folk music’s characteristics – wide use of minor modes with augmented 2nd intervals, modal systems based on Mixolydian and Dorian modes rather than strict major/minor, complex three and four-part harmonies – create what musicologists call “severe tension” that translates perfectly to electronic music’s emotional intensity.
Village fiddlers traditionally never played “in squares” (4/4 time), avoiding rigid time signatures. This rhythmic freedom aligns naturally with electronic music’s flexibility. The repetitive structures of traditional village music, designed to keep people dancing until dawn, were essentially “the original rave,” as one producer puts it.
The technical execution varies. ONUKA performs with eight musicians mixing traditional instruments (bandura, buhai, trembita) with theremin and MIDI controllers. Kurs Valüt samples the sound of parliamentary voting and Dnipro traffic lights for their “Dnipropop” genre. Producers conduct folklore expeditions to villages, recording authentic performances, then process them digitally while preserving their rawness.
The Historical Weight
This musical revolution carries historical weight that Western audiences might miss. Composer Mykola Leontovych, who gave the world Carol of the Bells, was killed by Soviet agents in 1921. The Soviets replaced authentic culture with “sharovarshchyna” – a caricature featuring exaggerated costumes and sanitized folk music. They portrayed Ukrainian culture as “provincial yet exotic” while positioning Moscow’s offerings as “high art.”
Today’s folk fusion directly challenges this narrative. As ethnomusicologist Maria Sonevytsky notes, Ukrainian artists are reclaiming the “wild” label as a source of power, creating music that’s “cosmopolitan and very Ukrainian” simultaneously.
What Comes Next
The numbers tell one story: Ukrainian-language content on Spotify Ukraine jumped from 7% in 2021 to 22% in 2024. On YouTube Ukraine, it exploded from 9% to 56%. Ukrainian artists comprise 11.53% of global Heatlist artists despite having only 152 tracked venues compared to America’s 6,678.
But the real story is in the streets and shelters. During air raids, Kyiv’s CMYK ethno-raves continue – traditional fiddlers play while people dance between trips to bomb shelters. Soldiers learn bandura in trenches. The Kobzar Guild performs in city squares amid rubble in newly liberated towns.
Producer Stepan Burban calls it “the time of independent artists.” The Moscow-centric show business that dominated pre-war Ukraine has evaporated. In its place: bedroom producers, folklore researchers, and musicians who view Ukrainian language not as limitation but as liberation.
The fusion will likely evolve. The CMYK organizers insist their goal is “preserving the rawness of traditional music, letting electronic textures frame rather than replace it.” Artists like Jerry Heil are more ambitious: “My main goal is to make Ukrainian music the new worldwide music trend.”
Given what’s happened in just four years – from Eurovision victories to Billboard charts to Pink Floyd coming together specifically to support BoomBox’s Andriy Khlyvnyuk, turning his own street performance in military fatigues into a global protest anthem – that goal seems less like ambition and more like inevitability. Ukrainian music isn’t just mixing folk with modern genres; it’s redefining what both can be.
