Ukrainians got to «Woodstock»

Margarita Kopylova 

Kostshin is a town where annually 300-400 thousand music fans get together. This musical field is located in Poland near the border with Germany. For over already 12 years there is international festival “Woodstock”; its history goes back to 60^th of the last century in USA where youth would get together and protest against Vietnam War. At that time mass movement of hippies started. 

Principles of that festival in US and “Woodstock” in Poland didn’t change: «peace, love and friendship». Although public is different (punks, bikers, hippies and reggaes) there is friendly atmosphere. People come to concerts, listen to music, dance, someone draws something, someone graves on wood. There are two stages: rock and folk. One can see different musicians from Europe, America and even Africa. This year there were also two Ukrainian bands: “Perkalaba” and “AtmAsfera”.  

— This is not the first experience of Ukraine at Woodstock: there were such bands here at different times «Gaidamaky», «Pikkardijska Tersija», «Orchestra of Yanka Kozyr», — told Igor Sas to “Den”, he is a bass-guitar player of “AtmAsfera”. – At this festival we performed a theatre play and ethno program “Forgotten love” – mixture of folk from East to West with the help of various instruments: flute, violin, mandolin, keyboard, guitar and drums in combination with the lyrics in Sanskrit, English and Russian languages. 

Our “AtmAsfera” was born in Lvov, but we work for over one year now in Kiev. We create music of two types: art-rock (album “To find”) and ethno (project “Forgotten love”). Our band often participates at charity and free concerts. We took part in “Chervona Ruta” in 2005 and got third place there, on “Musical Island -2006” we got to final. We also played at such festivals as “Ethno evolution”, “Rock Sishc”, «Taras Bulba», «Nest», «Sea bird» and so on. Now the members of this group work at creating new project where music, poetry, theater and dances will be all combined.

№138, Thursday, 17 august 2006