Not long ago we looked at the work of Port Mone, a trio from the city of Minsk: Aleksei Vorsoba, Sergei Kravchenko, and Aleksei Vanchuk. As we mentioned during that first visit, these Belarusian musicians turn the traditional harmonies of the accordion, for example, into what they call a "mix of ambient, noise, experimental, and classical/traditional" forms. From a fixed heritage emerges novelty.
 Even from those opening words it's clear that folk music is being pushed to the very edge of convention. "Sometimes their compositions depart from traditional Russian or Slavic melodies through recourse to a surprising minimalism, in fact to the point where the original composition can't be recognized. Awesome!" The form changes, but the thematic content stays - one of constant departure.

And therefore of possibility.

The efforts of Port Mone were recently combined with the excellent Ukrainian outfit, DakhaBrakha, about whom we've also written with much enthusiasm and respect. Both collectives came together under the banner of "ArtPole 2011" (ArtField), for which they played a series of joint concerts in the cities of Odessa, Kiev, and Kharkov. Those urban events went hand in hand with some rural shows along the banks of the River Dniester. Here the average attendance was noticeably smaller - maybe 150 adults on each occasion. Thus the folk songs escaped any expectations of "expertise" amid well-scrubbed, educated audiences in the Big City.

These same artists' ongoing attempts to vivify a local or national heritage have been well received by the Ukrainian press. In Odessa we find the following, penned in a most enthusiastic, lofty tone: "Life is a multifaceted process... It moves forwards thanks only to the fact that everything - over time - alters. Everything first emerges or is born, after which it [merely] exists, and then eventually - in a natural fashion - begins tomove." Alteration becomes synonymous with extension; evolution and endurance are as one.

Journalists hold that the work of DakhaBrakha has "proven its vitality and uniqueness" in a related, constantly "peripheral" stance vis a vis canonical practice. In other words, these musicians maintain a profitably tenuous relationship with custom. Rather, however, than dismiss that novel enterprise as somehow disrespectful, Ukrainian scribes have instead - consistently! - praised DakhaBrakha for foregrounding various aspects of what they call "natural order amid the world's chaos and absurdity." Once again, change and alteration are synonymous with long-term consistency or order.

This validation of heartfelt, earnest, and unexpected expression - rather than of academism - has even led to parallels with the work of Nikolai Gogol. Lapsing into occasional hyperbole, today's newspapers sometimes draw parallels with Gogol's "mystical experimentation," in other words with a neo-Romantic aesthetic or "natural ease that's found only in airborne birds." The vigor with which these literary or avian metaphors now emanate from tabloid newspapers(!) is proof of how much Slavic folk music has, of late, fallen victim to both intellectual tedium and primetime kitsch.
The desire to reclaim a vibrant, vigorous form of performance is grand indeed. 

Ukrainian media are equally glad to see that Port Mone show "no pretension towards elitism," specifically with regard to ethnography. Put differently, these artists draw upon the miniature scale of specific songs from specific villages, say, in order to sketch some vaguer, broader conclusions. Intuition trumps intellect. Eschewing an ethnographer's precision, Port Mone instead call upon the pronounced, even "monotonous" minimalism of their craft to produce what some have termed the echoes of "a timeless sound." Again we find ourselves dancing on the edge of overstatement. Such are the levels of widespread approval.

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