Gogol Bordello frontman Eugene Hütz calls from Istanbul, Turkey, where his gypsy punk band will soon take the stage in the latest stop on their extensive European tour. Since Gogol Bordello’s inception two decades ago, they’ve become legendary for their exuberant, high-energy performances – but there’s a new urgency now, as they use their music to raise awareness and funds to assist Ukraine fight the Russian invasion that began this past February.
“Having Gogol Bordello activities now helping out with the Ukrainian cause, it’s got a whole other meaning,” Hütz says. “It feels like everything else we’ve done before was just rehearsal for this, because we have a certain method of performance, a method of conveying the message, a trusting fan base, and a certain quality that can’t be found anywhere else. We are connected to the cause authentically.”
Born and raised in Ukraine, Hütz emigrated to the United States with his family when he was a teenager, but he’s retained strong times with his native country. With Gogol Bordello, which he founded in 1999, he blended punk rock with traditional Eastern European musical influences (especially Romani, which is also part of Hütz’s heritage), thus pioneering the “gypsy punk” genre and making Hütz arguably one of the most high-profile Ukrainians in the world.
When war with Russia broke out, he didn’t hesitate to use his platform to urge others to aid Ukraine in whatever way they could, though he quickly points out that he’s not alone in doing so. “The truth is that there are many Ukrainians that are doing that, and they’re Ukrainians that you know,” he says. “It’s just, the problem with Ukrainians, they’re too humble, and many of them, you’ll never know that they’re actually Ukrainian. You rarely hear about it because Ukrainians are all about family and keeping it super cool and chill, and they don’t really brag about their Ukrainian-ness.”
He sees this attitude changing now, however. “In a way, the [war] situation is blowing all that out of the water,” he says. “Ukrainians learned their lesson that they can’t be so easy and kind of mellow about these matters. Unnecessary humility brought it to the point where it just created [this] situation where the enemy’s side measures themselves. It gives them grounds for their delusions of grandeur.”
For his own part, Hütz has taken an outspoken approach, using Gogol Bordello’s social media to urge followers to donate to organizations that assist the Ukrainian war effort. He’s also released music to benefit the cause, as well, such as a cover of The Pogues song “If I Should Fall from Grace with God” that he recorded with singer-songwriter Jesse Malin. Released in April, all proceeds from that track go to the U.S.-Ukraine Foundation.
“Jesse is a beloved friend from back in the day,” Hütz says of Malin. “We naturally became friends and tour buddies because of [our] punk rock ethic, essentially. The whole, ‘Is punk dead or not dead?’ debate has been going on for decades, but the truth is that underneath it, people who are capable of taking a stance always come from [the] punk rock scene: it’s the sanctuary of people with greater ability to focus on particular things. As long as there is more proactive and advanced social consciousness in the arts, that’s what punk rock is, really.”
In June, Gogol Bordello released the song “Teroborona” (a term that means “Civil Defense Units,” referring to Ukrainian civilian-led forces mobilizing to protect their country), with an accompanying video depicting the preparations for battle happening on the front lines. All proceeds from the sale of that song go toward the band’s Cauze campaign, a modern Donor-Advised Fund that donates to Care.org’s Ukrainian Crisis Response.
Billed as “Gogol Bordello (feat. The Cossacks),” “Teroborona” holds special personal significance for Hütz. “Cossacks is my old band – we were around in the ‘90s,” he says. “Cossacks is Dana Shepard, the drummer, and I. It’s a proto Gogol Bordello band that, as you can hear, displayed all those qualities of fusion of Ukrainian and Balkan music with punk hardcore. In fact, that band was literally everything that Gogol Bordello went on to develop and become more so.
“It was a very powerful form of new music that nobody saw coming,” Hütz continues. “We were making amazing groundbreaking music that was way ahead of anybody on that front, making ethno-spirited punk hardcore. Really, there’s no parallels known to that in the musical spectrum. But,” he adds with a laugh, “maybe it was the Ukrainian humility in me that did not allow me to brag about it!”
Still, word soon got out about Gogol Bordello’s incendiary live shows and completely unique sound. Their debut studio album, Voi-La Intruder (1999) immediately earned them critical praise. Their audience grew so that when they released their fourth album, Super Taranta! (2007), it hit the charts across Europe and in the U.S. They’ve remained popular ever since, releasing seven studio albums so far. Still, Hütz admits that attaining this level of success was never his end game.
“The idea of making it in a commercial sense never even appeared on my radar,” he says. “I think that we are just on our own trajectory, and that was the idea. It’s not really trying to compete with anything [or] reach a certain goal. It’s more about embodying your true calling. In that sense, we know that we are walking an absolutely unique path, and it’s very rewarding. We do have our own unmistakable style of music, and we feel very at home in it.”
Hütz may not be focused on fame, but he is happy to use his position to keep reminding people that the war in Ukraine is ongoing. “I’d say that some extra propelling and extra stimulation is necessary because some people, it takes forever for them to wake up to a cause that’s obviously not any kind of local matter,” he says. “It’s hard to expect somebody to learn history of another faraway country – we don’t expect that. But a primal understanding that does need to rise above everything is that this whole thing is about a struggle of Ukrainian people that’s been around for hundreds of years.
The Muscovites’ attempts to always claim accomplishments and history and culture of Ukraine as their own has been nauseating to Ukrainian people for hundreds of years,” Hütz continues. “During Soviet occupation, they were somehow able to sell to the West that Soviets are just some kind of breed of people, be you from Estonia or Latvia or Ukraine or Russia. But that is absolute moronic delusion. They were simply occupied temporarily by the Moscovite troops. That’s just something that Western people need to acknowledge, that that was never one thing. It was never any kind of ‘one happy family.’ It was a very forced relationship. And everybody’s breaking away from it now.”
Hütz knows that it will be difficult to keep people focused on what’s happening in Ukraine because there are so many other socio-political factors (and the pandemic) drawing attention elsewhere. As frustrating as that is for him, he’s also philosophical about it. “It’s just the nature of the world. Information keeps coming, and people latch onto newness. That’s how they’re psychologically wired. People’s ability to focus is very low.”
Still, overall, he remains optimistic about the war’s eventual outcome: “The Ukrainian power is superior on all fronts, chiefly because of motivation and morale. With the entire world’s support, it’s a done deal victory. It’s just, let’s make it [happen] faster, so less great people have to die.”
He says that he considered going back to Ukraine to join the fight, but his friends there convinced him he could do more good for the cause through his music. “The general feedback from there, it was really a suggested idea by everyone I know there that I’m going to do my part here,” he says. “As a matter of fact, all my friends who are musicians in Ukraine, they are out on tour in Europe or the States right now, doing the same thing that we are doing. They were especially for that purpose sent out on this particular cultural mission.”
Hütz says goodbye so he can prepare for his own cultural mission with that evening’s show, where he and his bandmates will continue to urge their fans to help Ukraine. Before he goes, Hütz wants to give a shout-out to fans for showing their support: “Thank you everyone out there for solidarity in their efforts. It really, really matters.”
