The bandura met the sopilka and electronics: Maryna Krut and ONUKA have released a joint track, ‘Poyasny’

Bandura player Maryna Krut and ONUKA — the electro-folk duo of Nata Zhyzhchenko and Yevhen Filatov — have released a joint track, ‘Poyasny’ (‘Explain’). It is their first work together.

ONUKA’s official website announced it.

The song grew out of a composition Krut had been writing with this very collaboration in mind. At its centre is a meeting of two sound worlds: her bandura, and ONUKA’s electronics and sopilka.

A light form, a dark subject

For all its light surface, ‘Poyasny’ is a song about losing the people closest to you — and about the particular state that follows: when a person seems to remain on the earth yet no longer stands on it firmly.

“However light this song may seem, for me it is still about the loss of loved ones. Such is the time. Such is life. Such are the contexts of the songs. It is probably about how, when you lose someone, you are seemingly on the ground and yet not standing firmly. Uncertainty, weightlessness, hanging between worlds and meanings — that is what this is about,” Nata Zhyzhchenko says.

A dream from a list of three names

For Maryna Krut the duet was a dream fulfilled — and she revealed that ONUKA stood first on the short list of artists she wanted to sing with.

“I have a small list of three names I would like to feature with in my creative life. ONUKA was first on that list. So my first dream came true! When I was writing this song I realised it was a track for ONUKA — but at the time I knew she had never done duets with women artists. So I proposed it timidly, and Nata gladly responded,” Krut said.

Zhyzhchenko returned the compliment: she said she takes a duet with Krut as an honour, and that in this song “no one lost anything, everyone gained”.

“When the bandura and the sopilka sound like this, I’m delighted,” she added.