With culture, joy and quest to educate, Ukrainian band coming to Pittsburgh

A cheery Ukrainian band will treat Pittsburghers to a taste of home on July 31, as Kommuna Lux brings its self-described “bohemian Black Sea coastal vibe” to the Original Pittsburgh Winery.

The show, which is part of the group’s North American tour, will support The Kyiv Rotary Club’s Hospital Beds for Kramatorsk project. Funds raised from the concert will guarantee new beds for severe burn victims at hospitals across the Ukrainian front lines, as well as provide medicine and protective equipment to organizations throughout Ukraine, according to band members.

Kommuna Lux traveled to the U.S. last year, but it’s “very necessary to make a second stop,” manager Viktor Lykhodko told the Chronicle. The shows not only “spread our culture but spread information about what is going on in our country.”

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Ukraine has been at war with Russia for nearly a decade. In February 2022 the conflict escalated after Russia invaded Donbas, an eastern Ukrainian territory. Hundreds of thousands of people have died due to fighting.

The war has been largely forgotten, Lykhodko said: “We feel that we have a special mission not only to perform, to share music, to share culture, to share our energy but also to remind people all over the world and especially in the United States — in the biggest country, in the most powerful country — that war is still going, and people are still suffering.”

Kommuna Lux clarinetist Volodymyr Gitin said the tour is intended to “raise the spirits of our people.”

Playing music and supporting soldiers is “the way we are living our life and the best thing that we can do,” he said.

The group’s music encompasses several styles.

“We play klezmer, we play Ukrainian folk, we play Odessa folk,” Lykhodko said. As opposed to featuring “traditional things,” Kommuna Lux delivers concert-goers the “special atmosphere of Odessa city with its special culture.”

Located in southern Ukraine along the Black Sea’s northwest shore, Odessa is the country’s third most populous city and has a rich Jewish history dating to the late 18th century.

The city and its Jewish population rapidly expanded during the last 200 years. In 1831, 51,378 of Odessa’s 193,513 residents were Jewish. By 1873, there were 138,935 Jews among the 403,815 people living in Odessa. In 1939, on the eve of World War II, Odessa had 604,217 inhabitants; 200,981 were Jews, according to the Jewish Virtual Library.

“The Holocaust decimated Odessa’s Jewish population. Following pogroms, massacres and deportations, by January 1943 only 54 Jewish forced laborers — including men, women, and children — lived in Odessa,” according to the Holocaust Encyclopedia, a project of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

“Almost each of us, more or less, in our family history, have connections with Judaism,” Lykhodko said.

Gitin said that, at one point, the band had two Jewish members but now is down to one.

Still, Kommuna Lux has a strong Jewish presence, he said.

“People who are Jewish and who understand Jewish history and Odessan history,” can appreciate the group’s influences, the Jewish clarinetist added.

Many of Kommuna Lux’s songs stem from the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, a period when nearly 30% of Odessa’s population was Jewish, Lykhodko said.

During the last decade, the band has toured Europe, Israel and the U.S. The experience proved that “people all over the world are really kind and wonderful,” Lykhodko said. “People from everyday life — not like people who make decisions about processes — but usual people, simple people, are very kind and helpful.”

At the start of each tour, “we think about our mission, we think about how to plan everything, but in the process [of touring] we meet a lot of people at our concerts, people who invite us to their houses to have a rest and offer hospitality,” Gitin said. “We feel this and remember this.”

The best part of touring is communicating with new people, he continued.

“When it happens,” he said, “you understand that music is music, concerts are concerts, our mission is our mission, but that people have their own world and the world is very interesting and very warm.” PJC

The Original Pittsburgh Winery & Calliope Presents: Kommuna Lux on July 31. Doors open at 7 p.m. Show at 8 p.m. 21 and over. Tickets are available at pittsburghwinery.com.

Adam Reinherz can be reached at areinherz@pittsburghjewishchronicle.org.