Ukrainian band DakhaBrakha brings living archive of folk tradition to Brooklyn
The Kyiv quartet will play the free show in the Lena Horne Bandshell in Prospect Park on August 7.
Pop Culture
Ukrainian band DakhaBrakha, which mixes folk traditions with world instruments and experimental theater, is on an extensive tour of the United States and will perform next month in Brooklyn.
The Kyiv quartet will play the free show in the Lena Horne Bandshell in Prospect Park on Thursday, August 7, as part of a globalFEST program at BRIC Celebrate Brooklyn!
DakhaBrakha shares the bill with Colombian accordionist Yeison Landero, the New Orleans group Sally Baby's Silver Dollars and South Korean musician Sunju Park. The festival, in its 47th year, runs through September 19.
The Brooklyn date follows “Ptakh,” the band's first full-length studio album since 2020. DakhaBrakha released the 14-track record in December 2025.
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The band recorded the album in Kyiv during Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, according to its press materials. DakhaBrakha said "Ptakh" takes up memory, identity, loss, freedom and hope, and features a collaboration with the Ukrainian writer and musician Serhiy Zhadan.
Russia's invasion has damaged Ukrainian cultural heritage across the country. UNESCO said Wednesday that it had verified damage to 541 cultural sites since February 2022, among them 43 museums, 22 libraries and one archive.
The band has described its music as rooted in Ukrainian folk songs gathered through field expeditions and archival research, including village singing and older vocal traditions.
DakhaBrakha formed in 2004 at Kyiv's Dakh Contemporary Arts Center under avant-garde theater director Vladyslav Troitskyi. The members call their style "ethno-chaos," a mix of Ukrainian polyphonic singing, global rhythms and instrumentation, and theatrical staging.
The quartet has toured Europe, North America, Asia, Australia and Latin America, and has performed at Glastonbury, Bonnaroo, WOMAD and Roskilde. It won Ukraine's Shevchenko National Prize in 2020 and globalFEST's Artist Award in the United States in 2023.
American audiences know the band in part from its 2015 NPR Tiny Desk concert and a 2021 return for Tiny Desk Meets globalFEST. Its music has appeared in the television series Fargo, the Oscar-winning documentary Porcelain War and the film Bitter Harvest.
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