ENGEugene Hutz (Gogol Bordello) in-depth interview: on galvanizing support for Ukraine and Gogol legacy

Gogol Bordello – a world-famous punk rock band, founded by Eugene Hutz, a Ukrainian – was playing a secret concert in Kyiv back in 2022. Hutz was visiting his homeland for the first time since Russia launched the full-scale war against Ukraine, and he had an unexpected moment of levity. “I remember I was singing one of the Gogol Bordello songs that everyone loves, like My Companjera or Wanderlust King, and I just thought: Wouldn’t it be great to just go to Joy Division from that?” Hutz tells The Village Ukraine. “So I started Love Will Tear Us Apart, even though I hardly remembered the lyrics. I went into it and something just happened, it was just the right call. Everybody there just went along with it, it was such a crazy and beautiful moment.” 

It was the stand-out of the whole trip, Hutz says with warmth. “I first heard Joy Division back in Kyiv, when I was 15 or 16 years old. And I was fucking done!” he says. “I mean, it was a revelation in alternative music. It was art-punk, real art-punk, made by the guys from Manchester who didn’t graduate from an art school, but were still creating art of the highest level. And that was defining for me personally.” 

When we speak in late November 2023, Gogol Bordello has just shared a new single, Solidarity, which they recorded with Joy Division and New Order co-founder Bernard Sumner. It was a privilege to work with his childhood hero, Hutz admits. “Solidarity” always does it, which is why I believe in that song so much. The lyrics hit so hard, it’s a true revelation, a song of passion and solidarity,” he adds with determination.

Over the course an hour-and-a-half interview with The Village Ukraine editor-in-chief Yaroslav Druziuk, Hutz spoke in-depth on his active support for the Ukrainian cause, his trips to wartime Ukraine, and the documentary Scream of My Blood, which follows Hutz’s story from Kyiv to the US and Brazil, and back to Ukraine. He also insists that writer Mykola Gogol is an important figure for his band and touches on the complicated issue of Ukrainian-born artists’ self-identification.

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Scream of My Blood

  

– I guess the greatest compliment I can give to the [Scream of My Blood: A Gogol Bordello Story] movie is that it doesn’t feel like an authorized biography. 

– It’s a film about the community of immigrants, first and foremost. I’m the principal songwriter and the originator of Gogol Bordello, but my story is a kind of a vehicle for other stories. 

I mean, they filmed this documentary for 18 years. The film wasn’t made because of the war, it’s just that it was a Ukraine-affiliated story. I think if the film was made because of the war, some people would just ignore it as some kind of propaganda. So they learn about the war in a more organic way. And some of these film festivals we go to now, we’re the only film on Ukraine there. So the film is doing its job on that level too. 

Scream of My Blood: A Gogol Bordello Story trailer

– What I liked about [the war part of the documentary] was this admission that yes, art can be helpful, but ultimately it’s not stopping wars, it’s not changing the world.  

– I mean… There are two levels here, the everyday level and the philosophical one. Obviously, music has no power to change the world overnight, that’s what I admit in the movie. But it’s kind of a special force… It makes a difference, eventually. You gotta have patience here, this kind of professional patience. You gotta stick to your line. And if you make 100% of an effort, it can contribute to the cause.

At the same time, I didn’t mean to say that emotional impact has no value, it does. Because emotional impact inspires people who are more pragmatic. 

– And you can see it in the documentary, in the footage you guys show from your concerts for the Ukrainian military. The impact is there. 

– Yeah, in a way, music kind of reaches its maximum potential there. To witness your music bringing people’s spirit up in crucial times like this is rewarding. And when people like Paul McCartney or Pink Floyd speak up about [the war], it also has tremendous impact.

– I guess it does make an impact, even if only up to a certain point.

– Yeah, but everything works together. You need different kinds of stuff. The Apollonian inspires the Dionysian and the Dionysian inspires the Apollonian. They need each other, everybody needs each other. 

 

 

– Do you have any sense if using your Gogol Bordello platform to speak out in support of Ukraine has made a difference in the two years of the full-scale war?

– We’re not a new band, we’ve been around, we do have our audience. And a lot of musicians feel real solidarity with Ukraine. So when the [full-scale] war started, a lot of people got in touch with me because they remembered that I’m from Ukraine. They asked how they could help, how to show support. And we decided to make a series of collaborations to show our unity. 

This support, from such famous musicians as Al Jourgensen (Ministry), Les Claypool (Primus), Bernard Sumner, Tre Cool (Green Day) has meant so much to me. These are giants of alternative music. Or when you have Patti Smith making a point to translate the Ukrainian anthem [into English] and perform it… I mean, that was like ten days after the [full-scale invasion], when people in the West still didn’t know how to react. So you get a sense of how important it was back then. 

– That was invaluable at that point. But we’re talking about the first few weeks. Do you feel things have changed now? Is it harder to persuade people to show active support to Ukraine now? 

– The situation is changing now, this first emotional wave is gone. I’d say that the support is not changing at its root. What changes is the way of showing this support. It’s time for pragmatic support now. 

The way I see it is that people in the West used to support Ukraine emotionally at first, and now they do it pragmatically. They may not talk about it constantly, but they keep the support going. I guess that’s only natural. Because we need results, not emotions now.

Gogol Bordello feat. Bernard Sumner – Solidarity

– Did Bernard [Sumner] need convincing? How did that collaboration come about?

– I met Bernard about 15 years ago, when we were both playing festivals in Europe. New Order would be the headliner and Gogol Bordello would play just before them. Of course, I asked Bernard and [New Order drummer] Stephen Morris all kinds of questions. The connection was immediate, the kind of backstage connection [you sometimes get]. 

A year ago we had this really important gig at Carnegie Hall in New York, this benefit for the Tibetan liberation movement [Tibet House]. We played on the same stage with New Order, Patti Smith, and Philip Glass. I talked to Bernard there, I told him about this idea to cover Angelic Upstarts. I mean, that’s a monumental song, written by these English punks to support the freedom movement in Eastern Europe. I thought it would be cool to extend this solidarity, to pick this iconic song and bring the artists who have that kind of social and global consciousness together. And Bernard immediately said that this sounded great, that we should do it together. And he didn’t need any explanations, he basically said that what Ukrainian people are going through moves him so much, that he would love to voice his support. 

So yeah, Bernard didn’t need any convincing, he also published a statement in support of Ukraine. He has the same level of understanding the situation, as David Gilmour, Patti Smith or Al Jourgensen. We gotta support Ukraine! 

Claypool, Hütz, Copeland, Lennon, Ryabtsev, & Strings – Zelensky: The Man With the Iron Balls

– I also meant to ask you specifically about the Balls of Steel [Zelensky: The Man With the Iron Balls] song. It’s great fun, but it’s also very much a product of its time, the first months of the [full-scale] invasion and probably the highest point of President Zelenskyy’s popularity. I remember when the song came out there was such a big spectrum of reactions here in Ukraine. How do you see the track now? 

– I mean, the song was written by Les Claypool and Sean [Ono] Lennon. It was one of the genuine manifestations of support for Ukraine. They saw the situation as black and white right away. Of course, I was going to support it, regardless. 

– It was a supergroup. 

– Yeah, Les, Sean Lennon, Stewart Copeland from Police… Les wasn’t afraid to write something like that, at the time, when he just couldn’t know how people would receive it. And actually there was a lot of vata [i.e., propaganda or jingoistic followers of propaganda], attacking him for that. So much respect to him for going against the vata. 

He just called me and said: “Man, I read this quote from Zelenskyy, that he needs ammunition, not a ride, I’m writing about it, let’s do this! Are you with me?” Of course I was in.

– Did you have a chance to speak to Zelenskyy after that?

– There was some communication with United24, I guess. But no, we didn’t meet. I mean, of course I would like to meet him. I guess it’s [different] in Ukraine, but for the rest of the world he is the symbol of Ukraine. It helped tremendously to get the world’s support [in the early stages] because of Zelenskyy’s unifying charisma. People in the West – Americans, Brits, Australians – see him in a particular light. They see him as a person they want to help. 

And that image has been established, that image needs to be supported and understood in the global context. Seeing disagreement inside Ukraine is not helpful for the Ukrainian cause, everybody knows it, but I’m saying it from the outsider’s perspective. Unity is absolutely vital. 

– You also played for the Ukrainian military and for the soldiers undergoing rehabilitation programs in a Recovery center. You also donated equipment [the Diego bilateral Arm-Shoulder-Therapysystem] to [the new Cherkasy center].  

– Well, besides the medical tangible help to the wounded defenders, I think that helping these centers or any kind of rehabilitation is also a great way to educate people about the situation. People just see these war news pieces and maps on TV and it’s like a distant theory to them. But if you see real people who are learning how to walk again, you see that people from the UK and Germany and the US and Canada, who are not Ukrainian, work in these organizations, that becomes a gateway for some people to join in and help. Maybe just yesterday they were vata. [And now they think:] What the fuck am I doing? Maybe it’s time to get my head out of my ass and find out what’s happening there. 

 

 

 

Trips to Ukraine and Ukrainian identity

   

– Can you walk me through your recent trips to Ukraine? What was it like to go back to Kyiv and to your native town of [Boiarka]? 

– Well, I grew up there, so it was very emotional. But at the same time it was a relief, to go see everybody, my family and friends, and see that they’re unbreakable. I still have an extended family there, in the very house that I grew up in. My uncle and aunt, their kids. 

It was emotional and worrisome in the sense that from a distance you tend to hyperbolize the situation. But when you’re actually there… When you see that people adapted to the situation, that their spirit is unbreakable, it’s a great relief. It’s one thing to see them on FaceTime telling you that everything’s okay, but when you sit there and spend several days with them, you understand that they are actually unbreakable. 

And that goes back towards respect for Ukrainian people and who we are. It’s phenomenal, it’s something really singular. Not that the other nations are incapable of that, it’s just that Ukrainian people show that to quite a special degree. 

Photo credit: Dima Taranenko

– You mentioned a philosophical aspect to the whole thing, can we get philosophical here for a minute? Is there anything that you discovered about yourself after Februrary 24?

– Uh, no. I think it’s more of a distillation process here. More like, you just see what people are made of. And faster, it’s like a Polaroid picture: If it was half-developed then, now it’s fully developed. And that’s the way I see the situation. People who are more decisive, show themselves as decisive. And people who are indecisive show themselves as even more indecisive. And then some people who seemed to be indecisive fully manifested themselves as being very much decisive. So it was a big distillation process, for me and for everybody else. But for the most part it’s just that. 

I mean, I don’t think people really change, I think they just emerge. The whole thing of people changing or transforming – I don’t know about that. I think it’s more of an emergence. And if someone emerges in a certain way, that’s who they were in the matrix of it all.

– Would it be fair to say that your self-identification as a Ukrainian has transformed in the last two years?  

– It was [already there]. It was much earlier than February 24, it was really back in August 1991 [that it emerged]. I mean, when we came to the US, I took my mother’s maiden name, Hutz, the Ukrainian name, as my name here in the States. It sounded great to me, but also I wanted to preserve this component of our family makeup. My father’s last name is Nikolaiev and even though it’s a Ukrainian family, only lord knows how that Nikolaiev surname actually appeared, because everyone is from Ukraine, we don’t have any Russians in the family.

Photo credit: Dima Taranenko

– By the way, your dad fucking rules. Some of my favorite scenes in the movie feature him.

– Yeah, he’s awesome. And my parents have always been very Ukrainian-conscious, we all [love] Ukrainian music. My father was big on Vopli Vidoplyasova, Braty Hadiukiny, Kollezhskii Asessor, also. He was keen on highlighting his Ukrainian identity to be cool, you know? 

Which was a big mission of Ukrainian punk rock. We were not necessarily big fans of Ukrainian pop music, but we respected figures like Taras Petrynenko, Kyrylo Stetsenko who could bring to light this distinctive vibe of Ukrainian culture.

Gogol Bordello – Immigraniada

– Now let me ask you about this journey of yours. The documentary does a good job telling both your personal story and the story of Gogol Bordello. But here in Ukraine it seems like it also serves this purpose of correcting your personal narrative. Because the optics of the Gogol Bordello story here in Ukraine basically is: there was this guy Zhenia from Kyiv Oblast, he moved to the US, made good and founded a great band, which toured with Red Hot Chili Peppers and recorded with Rick Rubin. So there’s a lot of pride here. But there’s also some distance to it. Yeah, it’s great that a Ukrainian boy made it big time. But he’s Ukrainian-American now, and Gogol Bordello is an American band… The documentary actually does a great job of showing the whole picture. It was not your decision to leave Ukraine in the first place, it was your parents’.

– Here’s the thing: it was a natural step for me to preserve my Ukrainian background. I did not have any doubts about it. Why? It never really crossed my mind. It never occurred to me to manicure it in any way. 

– It probably would’ve been easier not to, right? Not to stand out, basically assimilate. 

– But why would I want to do that? I mean, there was zero strategy about it, it was just how I felt. I never tried to correct my accent, for instance. People go: Oh, you would be getting more roles in movies. But why? I don’t care about the fucking roles in movies. If that was my only bread and butter, maybe I would consider it. But it’s not.

– You still got the Everything Is Illuminated [the 2005 Jonathan Safran Foer book adaptation starring Elijah Wood] part. 

– Yeah. I mean, I’m a punk rocker, and being a punk rocker is about being who you are. It’s a fairly democratic form of art. It’s not a form of high art, and that’s alright. Maybe with an exception of Joy Division. [he smiles] I fucking love it, I love it more than life itself, but it’s a pretty fucking accessible form of art. [he smiles] And that’s what’s great about it. You can create high art within it, it depends on your intention, really. But mostly it’s about self-expression. Ultimately it’s a portal for self-healing and an escape from any form of dictatorship, from this existence in the matrix. 

On that level, it was just natural for me – to preserve my [Ukrainian identity]. And when I moved to New York, years later, when I got to know the Ukrainian diaspora and spent a lot of time with them, I felt a whole other kind of fascination with Ukrainian culture.

Everything Is Illuminated stars Elijah Wood and Eugene Hutz, director Liev Schreiber adapts the Jonathan Safran Foer eponymous book 

– I see. But there’s also this very international, citizen-of-the-world kind of vibe intrinsic to Gogol Bordello. It goes all the way to your bandmates coming from all over the world, also the kind of music you play. Was it a challenge to preserve your Ukrainian identity when you’re playing with Russian guys, guys from the Balkans, from Latin America, etc.? 

– It’s not a challenge whatsoever. Look, Ukrainian culture is very lovable. Everybody in the band couldn’t get enough of it. That aspect of me as a leader was absolutely kind of a natural sort of inspiration for this culture. For example, for Pedro [Erazo], who’s from Ecuador, who’s from the original lineup [of Gogol Bordello] and who went on to marry a Ukrainian girl… 

– Alfredo [Ortiz] is great also, he’s another stand-out from the documentary. 

– Alfredo is great. But [going back to the question], there is zero challenge here, because Ukrainian culture is so lovable, and I really mean it. It’s so earthy, so unpretentious, so flamboyant, so life-giving, so family-based, and so fucking fun, that it’s easy for people to take to it. 

– And that’s the Gogol Bordello brand. You guys mix a lot of different cultures. But I guess there’s another side to this story. I mean, it can get murky when you have a Russian guy playing on stage with a Ukrainian guy. So the instinctive [outsider’s perspective] could very well be: If these two guys can get along and play in one band, how come they can’t deal with the whole war stuff? 

– The thing is, Sergei [Ryabtsev] might have been born in Nizhniy Novgorod, but he married Olga Matyeshko a long time ago, and he’s been living between New York and Kyiv for over 25 years. His heart is 100% with Ukraine. 

– He also traveled with you to Ukraine after the full-scale war started, as the documentary shows.  

– Yeah.

– Did you talk to Sergei about the war after February 24? 

– We had those conversations, but they took place back in, like, 2005. [he laughs] We discussed Russian imperial delusions that far back. And we found an agreement on it such a long time ago that we had no further arguments. I mean, I’ve fallen out with several [other] people…

Gogol Bordello feat. The Cossacks – Teroborona

– Care to mention anyone?

– I was very perplexed that Manu Chao [the French singer-songwriter, know for his anti-globalist takes] failed to produce any kind of supportive statement. That pretty much led to the end of our communication. I mean, he failed to produce it back in 2014, you know? Nothing followed even now. That was a big disappointment. 

– Is that a red line for you? If you failed to declare support for Ukraine – basically the bridge is burnt?

– Well, sometimes. You gotta give time to people to get their head out of their ass. [He laughs] But if not, then the road forks, and it’s okay. But I would not be cheering with anybody who wouldn’t get their head out of their ass. 

– Did you [lose any communication with friends after the full-scale war started]?

– Almost not. I mean, maybe I’m lucky, because our circle is extremely cosmopolitan, people come from different places, but they know it when they see it. Even the friends who I thought were Russian actually came out and said that they were Ukrainian or born in Odesa, stuff like that. I mean, as long as a person is not on that imperial kick, consciously or subconsciously, there is a way to communicate. 

It looks like it has settled in a majority of Russians, completely. It’s a very delusional frame of mind, they are completely gone.

– What about the American perspective? I mean, how many times have you been asked about whether Ukraine is part of Russia?

– Zero times. In my circle people know this very well, that Ukraine is Ukraine, that it has nothing to do with Russia. Then again all my life i ve been pretty selective with friends. 

Of course, there’s lots of vata in the US and the global south. But don’t forget about the people who are not vata. For them it’s self-evident. Or it takes them ten seconds to realize, when they finally see it under the microscope. There’s a lot of people who see [the situation] in black and white, without the need for explanations.  

 

 

The Gogol of it all

   

– There’s this ongoing conversation here in Ukraine, about re-establishing our relationship to all things Russia and canceling Russian culture. You have this interesting part of the documentary dedicated to naming the band Gogol Bordello and your relationship with [Mykola] Gogol [a famous 19th century Ukrainian writer who lived in Russia and is taught as a “Russian novelist” in Russia.]. Basically now there are two schools of thought here in Ukraine: either we treat Gogol as part of Russian literature or we recognize him as part of Ukrainian culture, even if he did assimilate [into Russia]. I guess what I’m trying to get at is whether you’ve had any second thoughts about the band’s name in the last two years?

– Absolutely not. Why? I took the name in the first place, because at the times of deep nostalgia for anything Ukrainian, and I mean deep nostalgia, I ended up reading Evenings on a Farm Near Dykanka, again and again. The early Gogol, you know, which is really the best Gogol. It’s like rock-and-roll: a band’s greatest albums are usually its first two or three, then you’re just trying to survive. But the best stuff that blew everyone away were the early [books] that he wrote, [and they are very much steeped in Ukrainian culture]. By the way, his early writings are built on the writing of his father, who was a local writer, they are deeply rooted in this semi-vulgar, vaudeville-like stuff, which is deeply Ukrainian, 100% Ukrainian. 

And so [Gogol Bordello] is a perfect name, because it’s Ukrainian but it’s also cosmopolitan. And that’s the way to be. It’s my personal conviction: you gotta know your roots, but you gotta see yourself in a global context. It’s a very modern and very profound way to be. Not seeing yourself in a global context, that nationalism is not the vibe. You gotta see yourself as a global force, you gotta cooperate with other people. 

You gotta understand that Gogol is the most written-about writer in the world, and there’s a reason for that. The amount of Gogol literary criticism in the West is gigantic. You could get all the literary criticism on all the Russian writers and it would be outnumbered by the books written just on Gogol. 

So I took the name as something deeply Ukrainian, but also cosmopolitan and in that sense I think it’s the right thing to do. Just like in the context of the time when [Gogol] lived, he basically had to jump through the imperial hoops just to get published. And that’s just like Kafka writing in German. But do you see any murals of Kafka in the middle of Berlin? No. You walk out and see it in Prague, it’s the first thing you see in the airport. Yeah, he wrote in German, but…

Gogol Bordello – Wonderlust King

– Again, it’s a fascinating moment here in Ukraine, especially the discussions about Russian culture. I had this great history teacher in my university, and his whole thing was that Gogol and Shevchenko show the two ways Ukrainian writers could survive in the Russian Empire. The way of Shevchenko is to write in Ukrainian and create Ukrainian art, despite all. And the way of Gogol is basically to assimilate and become a part of Russian literature. 

– Listen, wartime is an extreme thing and it brings on extreme positions, you know? I can see how people can take either side. But I think that [it’s a discussion] beyond language. I mean, on a state level, you have to do it. If it’s Ukraine, then the official language should be Ukrainian, 100%. All the services should be in Ukrainian, 100%. People should be able to fill out any form in Ukrainian, 100%. And they should also be able to speak Swahili in their private time, if they want. That’s my view on that. 

Beyond language, there are also emotional, historical and mythological aspects of the message. In a way, language is just a technology to convey it. In Gogol’s case in particular, he was conveying a deeply Ukrainian folkloric message, especially in the beginning. That can be very much seen in his essay on Ukrainian songs, which he loved and was an expert on. That’s not a whimsical thing, that’s a pretty in-depth essay, in which he decodes Ukrainian songs and what they mean, one by one. That’s a fucking good insight for anybody who’s still trying to figure out what’s up with Gogol. It’s his deep roots in the vertep, in Ukrainian songs, Ukrainian syntaxis. 

– He definitely has a rich and complicated legacy. As a matter of fact, back in 2021 The Village Ukraine published the “451 Station” podcast with Oleksandr Mykhed, and one of the throughlines of the whole series was the Gogol issue. I’ll make sure to send you the link. 

– Let me say one more thing, because I think it’s extremely important. Now is the time to unify and put the global Ukrainian mosaic together, instead of losing important parts of it. Every art opening I come to here [in the US], Andy Warhol comes up. People ask me: Was he Ukrainian or was he Polish? Was Malevich Ukrainian? These things start to constantly  come up. And more and more names tend to come up now. 

You’ll hear people say: Well, Warhol wasn’t identifying himself as Ukrainian. And I’m like: Okay, point taken. But at the same time: do you know his real name? 

– He’s still Andrii Warhola. 

– That’s right! His roots are still in a Ukrainian lemkos family and he painted a Ukrainian church in New York. There’s probably a reason for that, right? He didn’t paint a Hungarian church. [he laughs] It’s all about how much of the surface you want to scratch.

My point is that the more this contectualized Ukrainian cultural mosaic emerges worldwide, the more it also needs to be recognized in Ukraine.  

Also, Andy Warhol was of the generation that took a stand to [identify] first and foremost as Americans and as New Yorkers. Nobody was talking about their roots at the time, it was just a different world. It was a post-WWII world, when people wanted to give themselves a new identity, to basically heal after the war. "We’re all Americans" kind of style.

The founding member of the Ramones Tommy Ramone was born and raised in Budapest. That wasn’t on anybody’s radar either . Bob Dylan never talks about his roots back in Odesa. [Dylan’s grandparents emigrated from Odesa in 1905.] It was a different time. But their cultural message still comes from same cradle as the Fiddler on the Roof, the Sholem Aleichem cradle. 

I mean, I found out that Sholem Aleichem wrote Fiddler on the Roof [the 1964 cult musical based on Sholem Aleichem's stories about Tevye the Dairyman] about the characters in the Boiarka region only this September. So check me out, where the fuck was I? [he laughs] My aunt told me, and I was like: Really? No wonder when I watched the musical it felt like it had nothing to do with Russia, because it’s actually in Ukraine. 

And people say: Yeah, but that’s just Jewish. And I reply: Have you ever met Moroccan or Argentinian jews? Okay, so you’re saying if Sholem Aleichem would’ve written it in Morocco it would’ve been just the same? Because its just Jewish? Not really, it’s distinctly of the Jewish culture from Ukrainian soil.

– I mean, again, it’s a complicated topic, because there were reasons why Ukrainian Jews emigrated to the US… 

– Yeah, sure, there were… But also every time you look into history closer, you will find it was a Russian-sanctioned pogroms actually that drove them out. It was a hired death squads, basically hired guns [that instigated pogroms]. I studied it, too. Every time there is a mention of these so-called “cossacks”, there’s a lot of confusion about it here in the US. 

Every time you hear about “cossacks” being responsible for pogroms in Ukraine, I say: Ok, you know the [American football] team Minnesota Vikings? You guys know these guys are not the actual vikings, right? They are just guys from Minnesota wearing shirts that say Vikings. You know that vikings don’t come from the fucking Minneapolis, right? [he laughs] And that’s the same, a team of the so-called “cossacks” would be hired to do pogroms. And now we still talk about it? Come on, wise up!

 – I really have to let you go now. But I would really like to thank you for this conversation and being generous with your time. Actually, the first time we tried to book this interview was back in 2019, when Gogol Bordello was announced to headline the UPark festival in Kyiv. Then Covid happened, and then the big war started… 

– Right, we were supposed to play there with Iggy Pop!

– Hope we’ll have a chance to meet in Kyiv after the victory. 

– You bet!