Cossack entertainer visits Brandon

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This article was published 01/05/2023 (971 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

International performer Kozak Siromaha brought his unique blend of music and storytelling to Westman over the weekend, performing a pair of shows in Brandon and Dauphin to raise money for his fellow Ukrainians still fighting on the front lines in Europe.

The Sun sat in on Siromaha’s Saturday evening concert at the Ukrainian National Hall in Brandon, which was attended by several local Ukrainian families, including some war refugees who fled their country last year following Russia’s military invasion.

Throughout his performance, Siromaha used music and dance to provide a history of how this country has evolved over the years in terms of its culture and language, especially when filtered through his own Cossack heritage.

The evening eventually capped off with a question-and-answer period between Siromaha and the audience, followed by a meet-and-greet session where attendees got to take pictures with the entertainer.

While Siromaha doesn’t speak English, translation was provided by Yevgeniya Tatarenko of the Borsch Ukrainian Cultural Club, who has been accompanying the singer on the Manitoba leg of his current Canadian tour.

Talking to the Sun through Tatarenko, Siromaha said that this tour has consisted of more than 20 shows so far, which included some stops in the Maritimes and parts of the Prairies most recently.

Throughout this time, Siromaha said he’s discovered some interesting things about Canadian culture, including stark parallels between his people and the Indigenous population of this country.

After all, the Cossacks — an East Slavic Orthodox Christian people originating from the Pontic–Caspian steppe of Europe — have also been subjected to significant government repression, including a period from 1919 to 1933 when the Soviet Union attempted to remove the ethnic group from the region through state-sanctioned relocation and executions.

“He hopes that this tour shows that we Ukrainians … remember and recall what was the culture of Cossacks, so we can help not just Ukrainians but Indigenous people to revive their culture as well,” Tatarenko said right before Saturday’s show in Brandon.

While Siromaha has been performing since at least the 1990s, he hit it big in 2018 after appearing on Ukraine’s version of “The Voice,” which attracted some major attention from the industry.

Since then, Siromaha’s unique blend of traditional Cossack music with more modern genres like hip hop has attracted fans from all over the world, with some of his latest singles garnering millions of views on YouTube.

Despite this success in the modern music industry, Siromaha reportedly still governs his life according to old Cossack traditions, dwelling in a settlement on the banks of the Dnipro River where he’s able to keep techniques like the Hopak dance alive.

However, ever since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, Siromaha has found another calling through the ongoing war effort, entrenching himself with the 59th Motorized Brigade to help lift the soldiers’ spirits through his music.

“So he was travelling around and organizing different concerts for defenders, to help them come out of that stress after the fight and after the battles,” Tatarenko said.

Because of this experience, Siromaha has dedicated all his recent concerts in the United States and Canada to the Ukrainian ground forces, using the proceeds from these events to buy tactical supplies, vehicles and non-lethal military gear for the 59th.

Once Siromaha’s Canadian tour wraps up in Portage la Prairie later this week, he and his team are expected to return to Europe and personally deliver these supplies to the front lines.

While the war in Ukraine continues to rage on with no clear end in sight, Siromaha is planning to bring these fundraising concerts to other countries around the globe, hoping to raise more money for the 59th Brigade and increase the world’s awareness of Ukrainian resiliency through art.

“His main message is to show people and Ukrainians that we can be strong and to decrease that aggression,” Tatarenko said.

“He hopes that people will remember [this culture] so that the war can be ended and beautiful things can happen in this world without aggression.”

Following Siromaha’s Sunday concert in Dauphin, he is scheduled to perform in Morden on Tuesday and Portage la Prairie on Wednesday.

Tickets for the Portage show, which takes place at the community’s Army Navy and Air Force Veterans building starting at 7 p.m., are available through Eventbrite.

» kdarbyson@brandonsun.com

» Twitter: @KyleDarbyson