The Magic of Ukrainian Traditional Music - with Mariana Sadovska and André Erlen

Ukrainian traditional music has preserved one of the richest traditions of polyphonic singing in the world. It has survived centuries of oppression, oblivion, marginalisation, and even physical extermination.

Despite all this, there have always been people in Ukraine who travelled to villages, talked to local singers, listened to their songs, and recorded them. Thanks to their work, this tradition remains alive — not only in the villages themselves, but also in archival recordings, on stage, and increasingly in modern interpretations.

Today, we are going to talk about this extraordinary tradition. You are listening to the Explaining Ukraine podcast.

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Explaining Ukraine is a podcast by UkraineWorld, an English-language media outlet about Ukraine brought to you by Internews Ukraine

Host: Volodymyr Yermolenko, the editor-in-chief of UkraineWorld and president of PEN Ukraine.

Guests: Mariana Sadovska, one of Ukraine’s best-known singers, musicians, and cultural activists, Andre Erlen, a German theatre director. They are currently travelling through the villages of southern Ukraine, collecting and recording more songs.

We met in Odesa at the PORT cultural festival, where Mariana and Andre created an extraordinary performance featuring musicians from villages across Ukrainian Bessarabia — people of Bulgarian, Romanian, Moldovan, Gagauz, and other backgrounds.

This episode is recorded and produced with the support from the Mnozhyna foundation.

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Listen on various platforms: https://li.sten.to/explaining-ukraine

UkraineWorld: https://ukraineworld.org/en