RADOSLAW — KUPALO (live Czerwona Ruta ©1997) • HD sound • rediscovered & restored

There was and will be staying only one music festival in the history of Ukraine like №1 — the Chervona Ruta fest!

(A name of the Carpathian herb — Rhododéndron myrtifólium, and in the same time of the first Ukrainian-language pop hit known since the 1970s)

This primacy is due to the fact that the fest Chervona Ruta gave birth to and created the modern Ukrainian-language scene in 1989, i.e. two years before the collapse of the USSR and the appearance on the political map of the world of the Independent Ukraine.

The Chervona Ruta was, in fact, the first powerful production centre, school and smithy of a lion's share of Ukrainian performers, a number of whom are still at a high level, and some of them have already acquired the status of a «legend».

It is safe to say that if it were not for the Chervona Ruta, the modern Ukrainian scene might not have emerged at all! Anyway, without the festival this scene would be many times smaller and poorer. In short, it is impossible to overestimate the significance of the Chervona Ruta in principle.

For more than three decades of history of the Chervona Ruta the most significant actions were in 1989, 1995 and 1997 (public performances and shows of this festival take place every two years).

A special place is occupied by the fest of 1997. This was the FIRST world-class show in Ukraine! Whimsical and imaginative stage design, sound quality, light saturation — there has never been a performance of so level in Ukraine before!!

For each contestant was created a special, modern stage image, and by the producer forces of the festival itself were created more than 50 modern phonograms! During their creation, the creators were equal to the best examples of world music and alternative style as Deep Forest, Enigma, Dead Can Dance, Björk, Fluke, The Chemical Brothers, Prodigy, Massive Attack, and many like.

Unfortunately, the Chervona Ruta festival was not held in esteem among the officials and authorities since its inception. Even the opposite! Very often its contests and shows were on the verge of closing at the last moment before the start! We can say that the festival took place under conditions as if the occupation administration was in power in the country, and not its own officials. Which is generally close to the truth...

So, the Chervona Ruta moved like an icebreaker in the middle of the frozen Arctic Sea: so strong was the resistance to its implementation by anti-Ukrainian factors: that in 1989 — during the Soviet era, that from 1999 — when even those weakened sprouts, as it sounds strange, of the «Ukrainization of Ukraine» began to curl very quickly and totally...

1999 was the year of the full force of the Era of Kuchma — the year of Leonid Kuchma's election for a second presidential term — a time of the complete and irreversible collapse of pro-Ukrainian factors, which still have not been able to return to their level of the early 1990s.