K“ryachkivka Forever!” is a documentary film project that will put forward an account of the Ukrainian “traditional music revival movement”, from its nascent first stirrings within the oppressive environment of the Soviet Union, right on up to the present day.

This is a narrative centered on a quest—undertaken by both a cadre of intensely dedicated musician-scholars, as well as by a contingent of stalwart aficionados, a steadfast fan-base who rallied behind these impassioned musician-scholars with their support and allegiance.

The film’s story thus represents a quest, on both sides, for that which is felt is directly embodied in this traditional music culture: a deeper sense of identity (specifically Ukrainian), and a (more broadly pertinent) set of critical values, crucial yet evanescent characteristics that seem to be disappearing in the contemporary world.

Among these are certain modes of human interaction, of emotional and psychological connection, and adaptation to human predicaments, that made up an organic, everyday part of traditional culture, but that suffered grievous fracturing, decay and disintegration throughout the whole Soviet era.

At the very heart of this quest, then, is a striving for “authenticity”—for what is believed to be a more grounded, more sincere, more valid approach, more properly in tune with the Tradition itself, than was the case with the (often kitsch-ridden) versions of traditional culture that were sanctioned and promoted by the Soviet state.

Yet rather than simply presenting this striving for “the authentic” in an entirely uncritical manner, “Kryachkivka Forever!” will instead explore the contested interplay between this “authenticity-oriented” approach (especially in its stricter applications), and those approaches that have re-configured traditional music (stemming from before, during and after the Soviet period), in ways that in many instances did little more than distort this musical culture, but that in other instances actually worked to broaden its possibilities of expression.

The story will begin, then, with the struggle of these musician-scholars—a cadre who were committed to keeping this music alive at all costs, and who thereby positioned themselves in opposition to a Soviet regime that was suspicious of the potential of such activities for resistance against its tyrannical rule.

But it will go on to then detail the emergence of a subsequent challenge, as the story develops into the post-Soviet period—that of an ill-considered, all-embracing, all-but mechanistic commercialism that bears within it formidable modes of depredation all its own.

“Kryachkivka Forever!” is therefore a film that will not only narrate the ways and means by which a vibrant traditional music culture in Ukraine was preserved and perpetuated, triumphing in the process against the real forces intending to suppress it, but it will also focus on the variegated fate of this traditional culture today, as it attempts to find a place for itself within the contemporary world.

It will thus deal, in a critical manner, with questions such as whether or not a traditional music culture can continue to survive into the present day, and if so, in what ways? In terms of what shape, character or form? As a consequence of what kind of newly-adopted roles? These are indeed, questions that are urgently relevant to world music culture at large, well beyond the borders of Ukraine itself.

Ultimately, though, it will be with the majestic beauty and wondrous eloquence of the specific musical culture of Ukraine—expressed above all through concrete instances of its evocative, vivid song culture—that this film will make its most powerful, most indelible impressions.