DakhaBrakha

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DakhaBrakha is a world music quartet from Kiev, Ukraine. Their music is equal parts elemental sound and soul and Ukranian “ethnic chaos,” creating a new world sound that is unexpected and fresh.

Taking their name from the old Ukrainian language (the literal translation is “give/take”), DakhaBrakha was created at the Kiev Center of Contemporary Art by theater director Vladislav Troitskyi. The theater figures prominently in their show, from their costumes to their staging.

While their roots lie in Ukrainian folk music, the band members have added rhythms of the surrounding world into their music. DakhaBrakha illuminates traditional Ukrainian melodies with its updated arrangements, keeping the music alive for new generations.

Accompanied by Indian, Arabic, African, Russian, and Australian traditional instrumentation, the quartet’s astonishingly powerful and uncompromising vocal range creates a transnational sound.

At the crossroads of Ukrainian folklore and theater, their musical spectrum is intimate then riotous, plumbing the depths of contemporary roots and rhythms, inspiring “cultural and artistic liberation.”

People always ask me, “What’s your favorite Tiny Desk Concert?” Well, right now it’s the one recently performed by DakhaBrakha. The creative quartet from Kiev, Ukraine make music that sounds like nothing I’ve ever heard, with strands of everything I’ve ever heard. I want the world to see this Tiny Desk Concert more than any other right now. It’s refreshing to hear the power of acoustic music and the many worlds of sound still waiting to be explored.

—NPR (Bob Boilen, Tiny Desk Concert)

Visually striking and sonically mesmerizing

—Broadway World