N.L. Ukrainian band shoves against Russian narratives with album launch, packed shows

ST. JOHN’S, N.L. – Traditional Ukrainian party songs — sometimes with a Newfoundland twist — came blasting out of the door of a popular bar in St. John’s Saturday night, spilling down into the alleyway and bouncing off the buildings lining the city’s main street.

It was the first night of two sold-out shows by local Ukrainian-Canadian “speed-folk” band the Kubasonics, who launched a new album as Russian forces continued their invasion of Ukraine.

Brian Cherwick, who plays several instruments in the band including the accordion and the tsymbaly, says he almost cancelled the shows when he first heard last week that Russia was dropping bombs on his homeland.

The Kubasonics play what he calls traditional Ukrainian party music with a modern twist, and Cherwick said he figured nobody wanted to hear fast-paced party songs full of triumphant yells and shout-outs to the audience during a war.

He says his wife and his family Ukraine then reminded him Russia often says a unique Ukrainian culture doesn’t exist, and he realized with these shows, he’d be proving that narrative wrong all the way from Newfoundland.

Cherwick said in an interview Saturday he feels Newfoundland and Labrador understands his band and the importance of music as a way to resist and tell stories, because the province has its own history of telling its stories through song.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published March 6, 2022.