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Rap music’s distinctive story telling, with a rebellious flare, is capturing new fans and the nation as Ukrainian hip-hop band TNMK illustrates both lyrically and visually the historical challenges and triumphs of Ukriane over the centuries.
In just over 5 minutes, the music video goes through the ancient tribes, the Kyivan Rus era, the Cossacks, the empires, the two World Wars, and the Soviet totalitarian regime, all which were present in what is today Ukraine.
Member of Ukrainian hip-hop band TNMK Oleh is very happy with how the visuals for their latest music video turned out. He especially points out the animators depiction the communist plague, “It’s totally clear what’s this is about. The faceless-ness of communism. About the atrocities that were being committed to justify the needs of ‘the people’.”
Inspired by the lyrics written by co-author Artem Polezhaka, Fahot began making the music, “The music appeared quickly. I remember creating the draft version of it within a single day. Working on the project felt like I was in a time machine. I took some new bits of information, and some were pulled from the archives.”
What was definitely new for TNMK is having not one, but 2 tyrants in a music video. “Today, Putin is the epitome of the imperial Russia that never liked and will never like Ukraine as an independent state. Today it’s him. Yesterday it was someone else. Tomorrow it’s going to be someone new, which won’t change the outcome.”
The animator, Oleksandr Danylenko, found some aspects of this work difficult to work with. He says, “The hardest part was drawing dictators and the killings. I’m not talking about the technical difficulties. It was difficult in a moral sense.”
The artist came up with the idea to make a video like this a long time ago. When he finally got the chance to realize it, the animation itself took a year to complete. In the process, he had to create more than a hundred drawings.
“We gathered portraits of historical figures to depict them accurately. But we’re not going for total realism, because the format here is more playful. For example, we have Sviatoslav the Brave with 6 arms, and Yaroslav the Wise flying through the air,” Danylenko explains.
Working on the project helped the animator fill the blanks in his own knowledge of the Ukrainian history. “I was very surprised by the history of Kholodnyi Yar republic. I knew practically nothing about it, before this project came about. We didn’t have this at history classes,” Danylenko said.
Parodied in the video was Former President Viktor Yanakovitch who in a staged event once gave a tour of his opulent residence that included demonstrating sluggish agility on a pathway of tree stumps.
The Ukrainian government aided in the realization of the project. Artem Bidenko, state secretary for the Ministry of Culture, Youth and Sport, said, the aim was making history “trendy, cool, fun, and interesting, first and foremost, for young people. Because usually the history of Ukraine is something tedious, and it’s all about adversity.”
Despite the adversity, the authors aimed to create a positive mindset in their audience. This is what the Ukrainian society needs right now, the singer says, “Enough with the moaning and the tears already. I know that we are a powerful nation, and we will succeed. Only by thinking positively can we build our bright future.”
