For Maryna Krut, a master of the 56-string bandura, music isn’t just a calling or a career.
Whether she’s performing for international audiences or for soldiers on the front line in eastern Ukraine, Krut has come to embody her nation’s fierce struggle for independence in the face of Russia’s 2022 invasion. While steeped in traditional Ukrainian music, she’s an artist committed to the present moment, accompanying herself on an instrument deeply rooted in her region’s folklore.
“About half of what I play are my originals, and half are traditional Ukrainian songs, but I try to make them modern and contemporary,” said Krut, 28, sounding a little jet-lagged after 25 hours of air travel from her home in western Ukraine to New York City. She’s at the start of a North American tour that includes two Stanford Live performances Saturday, Jan. 18 and a concert Sunday, Jan. 19 at Sweetwater Music Hall in Mill Valley.
With her soaring vocals weaving around the bandura’s skein of resonant lines Krut evokes the seasonal cycle in her folkloric repertoire. Whether she’s singing songs welcoming the spring, describing the rituals of winter, or celebrating the advent of Christmas, “I try to make it modern,” she said.
“In Ukraine people play traditional songs in the traditional way. I try to play everything in a contemporary way. Bandura can play everything, every style. Sometimes I use jazz or soul. I try to improvise and make it different each time.”
It’s not just her muse that calls out for musical variety. Moving between concerts halls and impromptu performances near battle sites, she has to toggle between the very different needs of her listeners as she brings music and comfort to soldiers. Many of her friends are in the military, “and I want to play for them, and for soldiers I don’t know,” she said.
In the weeks before Christmas she put out a call on Instagram to gather care packages for soldiers and ended up playing Secret Santa, “going through the front line with all these presents and beautiful baked goods,” she said.
While she’s embraced her role as an unofficial ambassador for Ukraine, the act of leaving home is fraught on many levels. There’s the logistic challenges of getting out of the country, and the fact that she never leaves the war behind. Krut doesn’t think she has post-traumatic stress syndrome, “but still now I’m afraid to sleep near a window,” she said.
“I’m a civilian. I don’t have any war experience, and I’ve never been on frontline with a weapon. But all of us, we have a lot of trauma. When I can’t explain how I’m feeling with words, music explains what’s going on inside.”
Growing up in the western Ukrainian city of Khmelnytskyi, Krut wasn’t raised in a particularly musical family. But at the age of 8, vising her grandmother in a small village, she saw another girl playing a strange looking boxy instrument with dozens of strings. Smitten with its sound, she convinced her mother to sign her up for lessons at a local music school.
She learned traditional songs at first and then classical music. By her early teens “I started writing music,” she recalled. “I’d try to play and improvise, and started writing songs.”
A few years later she got her hands on a cheap MP3 player without a screen and asked her friends to load it up with interesting music. With no way to ID the tracks Krut often didn’t know who she was listening to, “but I heard a lot of great stuff, like Esperanza Spalding and Diana Krall,” she said, explaining that her influences include many jazz and soul artists she’s still trying to identify.
The normal pressures young artists face in defining themselves through their music feel very different in a country at war. Composing music is best done in comfort and safety, luxuries that Krut can’t take for granted. The reality in Ukraine is that everything changed on Feb. 24, 2022.
“I’m creating music now, but it’s more complicated than before,” she said. “When I hear explosions, you understand it’s so important. Any day you can die. You need to leave something in this world, at least your music.”
Contact Andrew Gilbert at jazzscribe@aol.com.
MARYNA KRUT
When & where: 7 and 9 p.m. Jan. 18 at the Studio, Stanford University; $15-$45; live.stanford.edu; 8 p.m. Jan. 19 at Sweetwater Music Hall, Mill Valley; $39.66; sweetwatermusichall.org.