Klavdia Petrivna: dancing on the edge of life and death. Why do millions of Ukrainians follow a girl who a year ago only her family and friends knew — explains music columnist Ihor Panasov

The Ukrainian music scene, which is undergoing another major renewal since the spring of 2022, has a new phenomenon. Its name is Klavdia Petrivna. The singer, who published her first tracks only in August 2023, today has a number of undisputable online hits (Znaydy Mene (Find me), Ya Tobi Brekhala (I lied To You), Baraban (Drum) — the last one together with Artem Pivovarov) with 10-20 million views/listenings on YouTube and Spotify. A strange person who hides herself under a hat and behind masks, which only arouses interest. The artist, whose management does not make official statements, what is her full name according to her passport.

Almost all Ukrainians who lead an active life in the information space already know the phrase “Klavdia Petrivna”. Very quickly, people appeared, whom the singer already "pissed off, because she is everywhere." At the same time, both from them and from those who admire Klavdia Petrivna, it is difficult to hear a meaningful answer to the main question: what did this person bring to Ukrainian music? What is the nature of her image, style, intonations, lyrics? What is she about?

1

On August 30 and 31, Klavdia Petrivna gave the first two concerts in her career. In the Kyiv Sports Palace. No one has ever made such a leap in independent Ukrainian history — from obscurity to the stage of an 8,000-seat hall. This is a unique scenario for Ukraine.

It was the live event which was essential for me to draw the first conclusions about this phenomenon. Because carefully listening to songs and studying the contexts sewn into them is good, but until the artist has never stepped on the stage, he or she is like a computer program.

Klavdia Petrivnaʼs concert is a mix of a cozy cabaret, a big pop show, theatrical mise-en-scène and civic gestures. Dresses, costumes, masks and hats. Light, large screens, minimalist decorations. A total of one and a half dozen musicians and invited guests on stage (Pivovarov, TVORCHI, OSTY, Masha Kondratenko). A large dance group, which, together with the actress, embodies scenes from a modern drama rather than a back dance. Disco, techno, electroswing, retro-jazz, neo-chanson and a lot of other things in the songs. Almost everything is played live, everything sounds decent. A full hall of spectators.

Klavdia Petrivnaʼs concert is a multi-layered spectacle. There is nothing random about it. Bouquets of flowers fly into the hall during the song Baron, because this track is a sarcastic mockery of popular culture. Footage of the war appears on the screen before the song Imperatory (Emperors), because this is a story about the inevitability of the fall of everything based on domination and violence.

2

So who is Klavdia Petrivna? What kind of reality does she build and what does she bring to the world?

This is a young woman who has experienced and realized much more than is usually experienced and realized at her age. She had a happy childhood. She has a brother, whom she regularly mentions in songs as a clean, bright image. She is well educated, and uses the words "pattern" and "catharsis" not because it is fashionable, but only where it is absolutely necessary.

She has enough traumatic experience in relationships with men. She knows how to brilliantly ironize them. She knows how to ironize herself. She looks strong and independent, but she is sad when alone.

She has a sonorous voice and a sharp tongue, but she sings mostly about sad things. About parting. About what was better before. About decline and black streaks. Klavdia Petrivna is no less a dramatic figure than Klavdia Petrivna from Volodymyr Vinnychenkoʼs novel "Notes of the snub-nosed Mephistopheles", from which the singer took her name.

Her heart is full of life, but she constantly reminds of death and its reflections. Of the ancestors who have gone to the world. Of time that inexorably passes. She not without a smile sings about higher forces, sins and miraculous icons, but one feels that she has a complicated relationship with the universe.

It is not by chance that a quote from the march Exit of the Gladiators by the composer Julius Fuchyk slips into her song Yide dakh (The Roof is Falling). This tune is still popular in circuses, but it is about those who go to fight and die. Even the design of the palms and manicure on Klavdia Petrivnaʼs concert poster carefully alludes to the aesthetics of Count Dracula, who was well versed in matters of life and death.

Approximately this is a picture that can be painted if you listen carefully to Klavdia Petrivnaʼs songs. So why is this young woman with gloomy thoughts and complex emotions, significantly traumatized by life, so close to the hearts of many Ukrainian men and women?

The answer "because money were invested in her" is not accepted. Those who think that the only reason for the take off of any products is the budget for promotion are very wrong. Such people, probably, do not know about thousands of stories when invested huge funds burned and turned into nothing. A new artist, if he/she has already reached a person, remains in his field of vision only when he gives him something. So why does Klavdia Petrivna create such a strong gravitational field around her?

3

I have two answers to this — the one on the surface and the one in the depths.

On the surface is a game of anonymity, which was led by the team of Klavdia Petrivna. The intrigue — who is hiding in the shadows, behind the veil and the mask — kept the attention of some listeners all year. Now, when the deanonymization card has been played in an exquisite style (first through clues in the clips "Yide dakh and Orbity (Orbits), and then on the show) and all the top media have confidently written that the music college student Solomiya Opryshko is behind the image, the secret is de facto destroyed. It remains only to wait for the official statement.

Of course, this will kill the interest of some part of the listeners. Perhaps Klavdia Petrivna will even lose them. But they are not her golden reserve as an artist.

Her people are those who strongly feel her drama, because they perceive reality just as acutely and walk on the border between life and death. Who think about it, reflect, give themselves advice. For such people, Klavdia Petrivna is a perfect interlocutor. Because she not only knows how to feel and realize. She still knows how to deal with things when theyʼre really bad.

And how?

She dances.

She cries, buries her dead and dances. Hence the voracious drive for a simple beat that runs through her songs. In it, she dissolves sadness and thanks to it, she can give birth to a sincere tired smile on her face.

I am sure that only the phase of the war which began in Ukraine in February 2022, helped to give birth to a mass audience that is ready to feel such an artist as Klavdia Petrivna. Because before that, her sadness would be perceived as boring. She would remain a "talented and promising" indie artist with halls for 200 spectators. Now her pain became more understandable to millions.

4

I was waiting for the appearance of such a figure in Ukraine sometime in 2018-2019, as a conditional local Billie Eilish. But it turned out more interesting. Because now a real pop culture heroine has grown up in front of us — not with temporary puberty problems, but with adult existential questions that a person usually solves throughout her or his life. Itʼs a little closer to eternity.

And this is very Ukrainian. Because what is happening now with Ukraine encourages us to think about the eternal. Motivates those who sleep to wake up.

And if someone thinks that in her dance, Klavdia Petrivna is running away from the reality that this is a "feast during the war", they are wrong. Because in addition to the impressive act "Emperors", part of her show was the slogan “Free Azov”. Because when a fan handed her a poster "We are being destroyed, talk about it. Glukhiv", the artist did not hide it, but showed to the hall. Because Klavdia Petrivna collects money for winter uniforms for women at the front on her social media accounts.

Klavdia Petrivna dances not with her eyes closed, but with her eyes wide open.

Translated from Ukrainian by Anton Semyzhenko.