This story aired in the October 9, 2025 episode of Crosscurrents.
Bay Area reporter Adreanna Rodriguez went to Kyiv to document the ways Ukrainians continue to live their daily lives. It's a series called “Joy As Resistance In Ukraine.”
Yesterday, in part one, we heard how Ukrainians are preserving their culture with classical music programs for newborns and staying in touch with the modern world through sushi.
Today, in part two, we learn how the electronic music scene and nightlife have been reshaped by the realities of war.
Click the button above to listen.
Story Transcript:
REPORTER: Underneath a canopy of lush green leaves, people bounced back and forth to the music. Everyone looked excited to be there, and their outfits matched that vibe.
Across from the stage, people chat with friends, sipping craft cocktails and smoking cigarettes.
I’m at the Community Cafe, an outdoor space connected to a local electronic music club called K41. The party is being hosted by a project called CMYK, which blends traditional Ukrainian folk music with experimental electronic DJs.
My local producer, also named Tetiana (for real), guides me across the garden and through the crowd so we can get a better view of the DJ.
TETIANA: You know, before the war, people from Berlin were coming to the club just for the weekend or to some festivals. It was full of foreigners who had just come from Berlin. I remember one summer we had a festival every weekend, and it was a crazy summer.
REPORTER: For more than two years, the electronic music scene and “nightlife” have been reshaped by the realities of war. Because of missile attacks like the one last night and the mandated curfew, nightclubs have become dayclubs. As the partying in Kyiv has been evolving, so have its objectives. The electronic music scene has taken on new cultural significance. And, like the presence of sushi restaurants, day clubs have become a surprising place of resistance during the war.
ALICE: Music not only collects, uh, memory and emotions of, uh, previous generations. It's also a beautiful tool for rethinking the present.
That’s one of CMYK’s key organizers, Alice Valert. For her, music is a means of processing trauma, rethinking identity, and rebuilding a sense of unity. For many Ukrainians, the war has prompted a profound collective awakening, one that has many reclaiming their own culture.
ALICE: We have this very beautiful moment right now where we are raising this awareness, and we know what we are and what we are fighting for. Many people who were speaking Russian, who were using Russian thoughts, culture, and literature, now understand the importance of Ukrainian.
REPORTER: Alice is referencing the newly popular use of sampling Ukrainian folk music in electronic DJ sets. It's evidence of a strong shift away from Russian culture, and Ukrainians wanting to connect and celebrate their roots.
ALICE: You might think that folklore music is some boring, medieval, stylish—I don't know, like fandom thing, but actually it's very deep and very transforming.
REPORTER: And this shift to celebrate Ukrainian culture can be seen in the popularity of CMYK’s festivals. They’ve even created a curriculum on it.
ALICE: We had this educational course for electronic artists and also for traditional ones. We were teaching them how to appropriately communicate with each other and how to sample traditional music.
REPORTER: For CMYK, it's important to know the context of where the music is coming from
ALICE: Not some guy who just learned Ableton and downloads ethnical samples and doesn't know that this song is actually a song that was used by a mother to mourn her children who died at war.
REPORTER: The event today at K41, with its gentle melodies and focus on rebirth, serves as a reminder that even in the shadow of war, life finds a way to assert itself.
ALICE: We have, uh, separate, um, performances of artists, uh, as electronic and also as the traditional ones. And then we have a few combinations of fits. This way, you can fully feel the power of traditional music. Then you feel the power of electronic music, and then you combine it.
TETIANA: Um, I'm Tetiana Osin
MARKO: And I am, uh, Marko Medvediev
REPORTER: Alice invited Marko and Tetiana to perform at the Community Cafe last night.
MARKO: I have an electronic music project called Parking Spot, uh, and I'm doing mostly like, uh, in styles like ambient, EDM, experimental music, and I love, uh, exploring sound.
TETIANA: And I'm a folklorist. The main scene in my life is to explore folklore through expeditions, where I record all songs from villages and then learn and teach the songs to other people.
REPORTER: The two didn't know each other beforehand. They prepared remotely ahead of their live performance.
MARKO: For me, my main task was how to give, uh, much space to Tetiana.
TETIANA: And I listened to Marko, and I was like, oh my God. I feel him so much.
REPORTER: For Tatiana, the opportunity to perform live and collaborate was creatively invigorating, particularly because constant blackouts disrupted her solo music.
TETIANA: When the war started, I was on a pause. The project with Marko is for me a chance to make my whole process alive and to be inspired to create more.
MARKO: For the first months of the full-scale invasion, many people couldn’t even listen to music, but for me, it was some kind of therapy.
REPORTER: Even amidst the constant bombings and air raids in Kyiv, music became Marko’s refuge, a way to process the chaos, document his experiences, and hold onto some sense of normalcy when the world around him felt like it was collapsing. Just days into the full-scale invasion, Marko found himself sheltered in a basement, making music reflective of the new world around him.
MARKO: I was in a bomb shelter in Kharkiv, and there was a track that had one minute of some dark, underground ambient soundscapes, and then it basically collapses into silence for another one minute. Basically, we have some kind of shattered feeling of our life.
REPORTER: One of Marko's most recent experimental electronic albums explores themes of personal growth despite displacement. Creating in the midst of war is more than expression; it’s survival. It’s a way to assert life and identity when so much around them is being destroyed.
Often, physical infrastructure is the first focus of rebuilding during a war, but the cultural infrastructure can be just as impactful on the psyche and resilience of people.
MARKO: Doing culture, business, and everything in Ukraine is a form of resistance and a form of keeping us as Ukrainians, a strong nation that can produce something during the war.
REPORTER: For many Ukrainians, this assertion happens at new music festivals, nightclubs, and community kitchens that feature live DJ sets. These places are a temporary oasis amid a desert of war. For many Ukrainians, the cost of war is deeply personal, a reality that even the most vibrant music and culture cannot fully shield them from.
ALICE: My best friend died in the war almost two years ago. Literally changed me. But, I started to feel like, not that I'm going to die tomorrow, but something like I've already been dead for like, days.
REPORTER: What Alice is expressing is a sentiment I hear throughout my time in Ukraine, that when death is so near, you sometimes lose sense of it. This isn't to say that she is in a state of depression or detachment. But rather, Alice has a deep understanding of life's preciousness, a profound clarity that fuels her dedication to cultural preservation.
ALICE: I died yesterday, and this gave me a very clear and very open-minded view on everything.
REPORTER: This perspective comes from years of living in a world where every moment feels sacred, and where survival itself becomes an act of defiance. In that resistance, Alice, musicians, DJs, and artists have created something that outlasts the destruction around them.
For Ukrainians, their fight for survival is inseparable from their fight for culture. Without it, the act of survival loses its meaning.
ALICE: We are fighting for life, we are not fighting for death. So you go to the museum during the day. You go to the restaurant. Your life is more valuable. So if you don't continue to spread culture, there's no point in fighting.
Reporting for this series was supported by the International Women’s Media Foundation’s “Women on the Ground: Reporting from Ukraine’s Unseen Frontlines Initiative” in partnership with the Howard G. Buffett Foundation.
Local Producers in Ukraine include Liubov Sholudko, Tetiana Burianov, and Anna Nemtsova.