Ganna

TRANSCRIPT

GANNA:

Sometimes it's okay, sometimes I feel it's weird. And I think today is the day where I think it's weird. It is the kind of thing, if you talk to Ukrainian artists, that you talk about the war and sometimes it's okay, but sometimes it's not.

Normally I can hide behind the words, but today I can't. So really, you don't have to apologize. Right. Yeah. Yeah.

I'm Ganna, I am originally from Ukraine, and when I was 13 years old my parents immigrated to Germany, and I am a musician. I compose music, and I am a musician. I arrange old Ukrainian folklore songs in two different main projects: my jazz quintet, and so the music is some kind of Ukrainian ethnic jazz, if you wanna label it; and the other project is my solo project, which I will call electro-folk.

We grew up in a house, that was a part of another house where the family of my father's brother. We lived in a very small village, and quite protected and isolated. I was born in July 1989, and the wall fell in November, and Ukraine got independent in '91. It was a very crucial moment when everybody suddenly understood: "Okay, so now we have to shape and define what is the Ukrainian state about,” searching for moments in history, for figures in history, to give us a chance to create and remember our own identity that was hidden behind the carpet and suppressed for many hundreds of years, actually.

But honestly, when I was growing up in Ukraine in the 90s, I didn't know anything about that because I was a kid. My parents were really active and developing this identity. Actually, my father, he worked in the newspaper, and he was very engaged in political processes. So this is my memory in a very small village of Ukrainian statehood being created by the people in the 90s.

But what I found out later, mostly it was very, very unstable and dangerous time, because power structures collapsed, criminality was everywhere, people lost jobs, and so we didn't really experience that period in a way people experienced it in living in the big cities. I think our parents did a very good job protecting us from all of that.

When I was a kid, many friends or family members emigrated from Ukraine to different places in the world, but the core family that I actually grew up with was there – the family of my father. This was basically the family that we shared the house with, the field, and we were the ones left. And on one hand, I always grew up with this feeling of I have to be ready to leave because since I was nine years old and had some kind of awareness and understanding of what it means means if somebody would leave the place they live in. So I was slowly growing up with this feeling of I have to be, you know, like ready to pack it up and move. It was a very, very tough time.

Basically, we applied for getting the residence visa in 1998, and it took four years for the German embassy to get back to us. So meanwhile we almost forgot about it and then suddenly it was like,

"Okay, you're allowed to come." And my parents were like, "Alright, then let's pack our stuff and book a bus, and we just left." And so it was like leaving, really, and leaving people behind, also and I didn't know what it would mean. Would we ever come back? Would we come visiting or not? So it was a kind of strange feeling. I remember that moment when we were on the bus and we left in the afternoon, so we arrived at the Ukrainian-Polish border, it was dark. And I remember it was like, “Okay, so when the new day comes, I have no idea how everything around me is going to look like.” And it was literally like driving into the dark, and I had no idea what would come after the next day breaks.

We arrived at the the refugee camp, basically, where everybody had to stay for a month or two for quarantine and we had some vaccines made. It was a very German day. It was grey, it was raining, everything looked terrible. I remember they were thinking of going back, but we stayed in that refugee camp for a month.

We went to school and everything was very much alien to me because our parents taught us at home. And we never went to school until now. And when we started, it was exam time. It was October. So we would come into the classroom and everybody would be sitting there in front of us – a blank page and nobody would be talking. Everybody would know what to write. And I was like, “So this is school. How are you supposed to learn anything?” And I was, you know, like looking to my left and to my right trying to understand what's happening. And the teachers would be: “You're cheating!” And I was like, “What are you talking about?” Like, what is this place? And it took me a while to understand that I have to learn things and people are going to test me on those things. And it was a weird concept to me. Because when we were home-schooled, my parents would be just, "Yeah, can you read this?" And I would be like, "Sure, I can." And why would you test me on this? And why would you give me any mark?

We were bullied. People would say we were stupid just because we didn't speak the language. language. I did the 7th grade twice, so when I was 14, all the other kids were 13. And they were kids. I wasn't a kid anymore, so I couldn't really connect to other kids around me who were German.

So I was mostly hanging out. with other immigrant kids who lived in the same area as us. And I always did music. And so I was actually living like in two different lives – There was one Ganna going to school and being surrounded by people who are too young for me and who don't really accept me – and then I had like like all those beautiful activities and I had friends who were speaking my language. So I had those two different parallel realities that happened in the same time.

Before we came to Germany, I was kind of clear in my head about who I am and what I want. I grew up in a very musical environment. My mom is a classical piano player and we had a lot of music at home and I always wanted to be a singer. And I was very clear about that. But when we came to Germany, I realized that I have to adopt in order to be part of this. I wanted to blend in as much as I could. So I just did whatever was asked of me, although I didn't understand any of the meaning behind the things I had to do. And I think this became some kind of a habit – just accepting the requirements, just doing the best I could to fit in. And I didn't wonder anymore who I was and what I wanted. But I was just.... I was so busy trying to to be part of this society and play by the rules that I never wondered if I actually like the rules, if they fit me, or if they are okay at all, if they make sense. So when I finished school, I had absolutely no idea what to do with my life.

And I decided to go back to Kyiv and study. at the Shevchenko University. So I went back. And I thought, finally, everything that didn't work out for me and that was awkward. And in Germany, being with people who aren't my age and having misunderstandings and not really being able to connect, it's all going to be gone and I will be finally back home. But it wasn't like that at all, because time passed. Being a teenager. and growing up and understanding your values and what you like or you don't like and was different. I didn't connect to the people at all.

And then I was walking in Kyiv and I remember a guy approached me on the street and he was like, "You should go to this jazz festival on Crimea." It was 2011. “Jazz Koktobel. You should go there. I will hitchhike there and you can go with me if you want.” And in the end I didn't meet this guy at the festival, but I met another person who actually came from Kyiv and traveled back to Kyiv together. And I spent the rest of the year basically playing music with him. And there I started to realize that “Oh, actually I am not so bad. People like the music that I write, and it resonates with people, and it makes them feel a certain way. So it was my first concert not performing some classical music or somebody else's music, but actually my songs and people liked it and I was blown away by it. And also I realized that being lost completely – because I expected to come home, I expected to feel welcomed and accepted and it didn't happen – and it was very shocking. Because all my life growing up in Germany I thought “Oh, I just need to go back and then everything is gonna be fine.” And it didn't happen. So it was really soul-crushing. And the only thing that helped me navigate emotionally in this situation was just making music. And I realized that it doesn't matter if I will ever be able to to make a living from music only, or to to have some kind of career, the most important thing – and the only important thing – is that there's nothing else that I could do till the end of my life. So I decided I should do that.

So I moved to Berlin and I really liked it all. It was great – grabbing solos and all this. But also I was struggling because I had the feeling jazz standards have been recorded many many times and I didn't see why the world needed me to make another recording of things that I was struggling to learn, while there is brilliant performances of the songs. And also I've had the feeling that it was all based on some kind of a folklore of people, and it was not my folklore. And then I was trying to understand how can I find myself in the beauty of this freedom but still be me.

So I started to search... Actually, I think my father was the one who showed me this collection of Ukrainian folklore songs. And they were written down in a little similar way, like jazz standards, he had a melody and the text, but no harmony symbols whatsoever. And I started arranging the songs and showing it to some people that I was playing with, and they really liked it.

And I felt encouraged to dig deeper into this. And at the same time, I understood that there was something missing in my understanding of folklore music – just having the records, searching for some records on the internet, or having only the melody written down. It felt like there was a crucial part of what folklore is that I didn't grasp I didn't get. And I decided to go to Ukraine to search for people who sing these songs. And I went on the journey.

During my research travels in 2018 I have found many beautiful songs and many beautiful people who opened up their hearts and their homes and spend time with me, singing songs to me. But one of the favorite songs that I heard on that journey was "Halochka." I met this beautiful choir of grandmothers led by a young man actually. They dressed up and had their beautiful dresses and traditional clothes and sang songs from that region. And after two hours of spending the time with them – and also I have to tell you really that people who are singing this music, they put their heart into this music. So these songs, you could never hear them without... I never performed these songs without hearing the people or seeing them and remembering what kind of general feeling they transmitted while they sang these songs to me.

But it is about a girl who expresses her love and her gratitude to her mother. And in the story of the song, you understand that a girl who expresses her love and her girl, Halochka, it's her name. She has no father. She lives with her mother in the house of her uncle, and she works hard, and her mother works hard. And for me, in a way, it's a song that tells the story of very strong Ukrainian women that are a very important part of how society works, and how I remember growing up with my grandmother, how she was this incredible force behind everything. That is one of my favorite songs.

So I think this is one of the most important parts of why this journey was so important to me, not because I found beautiful new songs, but because I understood something that you cannot put into words about this music, just because I spent time with these people. And they could never explain any kind of musicology or voice technique about this stuff, obviously, but just by listening to them and trying to absorb their ways, I learned so, so much.

This is not a folk or song This is Rika. A song that I that I composed. I was searching for lyrics for it and I asked my father if he knew some Ukrainian writers that I should check out. And this is so my father – he was like, “Yeah, you can read some of my stuff.” And I was like, “Oh, come on.” And then I got to know a completely different person, actually. He sent me this file with hundreds of poems that he wrote when we just came to Germany.

I had my own experience trying to blend in and trying to understand how I was the best way of making everything work, and I was very busy with myself. I didn't really care much about how my father experienced this whole situation, being a young man having four children and being responsible for a family and a country that that was foreign. And I was very much touched by the honesty.

And I took a poem that he wrote for the song. It is about him, I think, about him being in this small town and there is a river in the town where we lived in Germany. He describes how beautiful the spring in this town is. and everything around him, but he cannot feel this beauty inside of him. He feels sad and worried and yeah, basically that.

Yes, I think combining Ukrainian folk or music with or exploring Ukrainian folklore traditions in the style of other music such as jazz, I think it was a moment of accepting that this is me and I'm different and I might not match the expectations of a jazz singer who who sings in English and everybody understands everything. I had to accept that this is not me and I am better or more real and more honest with singing Ukrainian folk songs – but not in a traditional way – in another way that was also part of me. Maybe I would have found an another way to finally come here, maybe not, you could never...

This is also a thing, I was, many years ago, I was very scared of making decisions because I felt like I'm so scared of making a mistake until I realized there is no second life that I could compare to and see also this would have been much better if I went left instead of right. So yeah, you could never know if you're right or wrong because that's life and you don't have like a correct version of it that you have to match. And I think it took me it took me some kind of strength – like inner acceptance of myself and also some kind of being brave about it – and say, "Okay, I open up to everybody."

And this is somehow.... There is nothing in between when you sing in your mother tongue. You cannot hide behind some pretty English lyrics or tell the story of somebody else. You actually are telling the story to the people. You are being vulnerable with yourself and honest. And I think I realized that this is the beauty of what I do. I can be honest, and I can be me, and it's gonna be alright. Yeah.... yeah....