Valeriia Vovk and Ukrainian Retro Music
A most surprising weekend found me filming a concert that moved me more than I can express.
Good Morning:
Before I get into the astonishing events that led me to film one of the most moving concerts I have ever seen, a pair of most mundane programming notes:
There will be no #DogShirtTV show tomorrow morning. I will be in a dentist’s chair getting my teeth cleaned—and then on a plane for North Carolina, where I will be giving a speech on the question of whether we are less free than we used to be and, if so, how. #DogShirtTV will return at its usual time from a hotel room in North Carolina on Tuesday.
The MARA Book Club meeting on the estimable
’s new book, “The Missionary Kids” and Barbara Kingsolver’s novel, “The Poisonwood Bible,” which had scheduled for this evening, has been postponed until next Sunday at 6:00 pm. Information on how you can attend is, as always, below the paywall.
#YourMusicOfTheDay: Not Brahms Today
I had been aware of Valeriia Vovk’s work for some time before the events that began Friday evening. Vovk is a Ukrainian singer-songwriter based in the United States. I was aware that we had friends in common. And her singing would occasionally pass across my Instagram feed. I knew her only as a talented singer (she has a particularly lovely voice) who work I kept an eye on but didn’t follow closely—life being complicated and all and my being too busy to know about all the things about which I would like to know.
The other day, however, Vovk did something that caught my eye. She posted this video on her Instagram with a singer named Sofia of whom I had never heard before and a guitarist named Michele Romeo:
I was immediately taken by the tight ensemble singing, and the fabulous retro vibe of folk-music inspired lounge singing. Quite apart from the fact that I’m fascinated these days by modern Ukrainian culture, in general, this is music of a sort I have collected in my heart since I was a teenager and the British folk revival hit me like a thunderbolt.
So realizing that the trio would be performing in Washington on October 25, I bought a ticket—or, to be precise, I bought four tickets, figuring that I would give three away to friends and family. And then I sent a text out to some friends and family, including the estimable Mariia Hlyten (aka Marichka), letting them know that the concert was happening and that I had tickets I was giving away if they wanted to come.
I should have known that Marichka wouldn’t need me to let her know the event was happening. Nothing important happens in Ukrainian Washington any more without Marichka playing a central organizing role. She has made herself essential in so many ways.
But a few minutes later, Marichka texted me back with some alarming news: The venue at which the Vovk’s concert was taking place was canceling on her with barely 24 hours notice. And they were offering her a completely inadequate substitute location in its place.
So I did what any red-blooded American would do under circumstances in which he had bought tickets to a concert he really wanted to see and some motherfucking venue owner was trying to stiff a trio doing a fundraising benefit concert for the Ukrainian armed forces: I called the estimable
.Could Holly’s church—the very estimable Mount Olivet United Methodist Church in Arlington, Virginia—host a concert on short notice, I asked? Really short notice.
Holly immediately called her pastor, the very estimable Rev. Dr. Sara Keeling—whose web bio informs me that she hails from Orange, Virginia, which apropos of nothing happens also to have been the home of James Madison. And the Rev. Dr. Sara Keeling immediately made the church’s social hall available, personally meeting Marichka at the door to let her into the building at 4:30 pm yesterday afternoon. Vovk emailed ticket holders and let them know about the change of venue. And all was well.
But there was one remaining problem: We couldn’t turn on the stage lights. The social hall actually has a good lighting setup, but it requires a particular computer to drive it, and neither we nor the Rev. Dr. Sara Keeling had access to the relevant computer on zero hours notice.
So I did what any red-blooded American would do: I called the estimable Ian Enright of the venerable firm of Goat Rodeo, which does all of Lawfare’s podcasts and which you should use for your podcasting needs too. Because, I figured, audio is related to lighting and, besides, Ian is a particularly creative problem-solving sort of guy and the kind of dude whom you call two hours before a concert you just wanted to attend and bought tickets to but which you are now helping, you realize, to host and is about to start in the dark. I told Ian I was on my way to a Best Buy to see what kind of lighting I could buy on a Saturday evening with very little margin for error.
Ian put out the word among the community of Washingtonians capable of solving a problem like this that any estimable soul who wanted to show up at Mount Olivet United Methodist Church and do so would be officially a Great American—and probably a Great Ukrainian too, though it is not my place to bestow such honors.
A few minutes later, Ian texted me the following:
I was immediately relieved, amused, and feeling stupid.
Because if any technology in the world is one that I should have thought of for this particular application, it is the use of high-lumen LED work lamps, which use precisely the same technology that I deploy against Russian embassies in my Special Military Operations. Think of poor Himar the Gobo Projector, may she rest in peace. It’s the exact same tech.
I knew beyond any doubt that this technology would work for this purpose, that I could snag some lights quickly, and that I could use them to light up the concert without setting fire to anything.
The Home Depot in Arlington had two of them:
The run-up to the concert had one other oddity: Because the United States Park Police currently has custody of most of my camera equipment, the only recording equipment I had available was a particularly high-end cinema camera I bought a few years ago for documenting #SpecialMilitaryOperations—a task for which it turns out to be rather unsuitable. (The iPhone is actually the best tool for this particular purpose.) I had asked Vovk for permission to film the concert because it seems to me important that non-Ukrainian audiences—like, say, the readership of #DogShirtDaily—learn that this music exists.
And so it came to pass that when the concert began last evening, in the wrong location and lit only with industrial work lights, the camera I had trained on it for the benefit of ya’ll was one uniquely able to capture the weirdly beautiful atmosphere of a retro concert in which the singers just happened to be wearing black cocktail dresses and the guitarist was wearing black and white as well and wearing dark glasses.
And all of that is a long-winded way of saying that this happened last night—thanks to the efforts on zero notice of a lot of people—and that I want you to watch it, because I find it inexpressibly moving and joyful and a deep look at a cultural legacy that is meaningfully at stake in the full-scale invasion:
And I want you, if you agree with me and also find yourself moved by the two songs I have excerpted here—which I cannot watch without tears—to support the charity that this concert was intended for. You can do that by sending money to this PayPal account, Stoik.project@gmail.com, which is the TYKHO Foundation, which doesn’t have an English language web page yet but which is buying vehicles to evacuate wounded Ukrainian soldiers. This support page on the foundation’s web site will also take donations using a credit card. If I may be so bold as to suggest, please do so in the name of Valeriia Vovk, so that the foundation understands that this is a result of the concert.
(I just tested it. It works fine, though it operates in Ukrainian Hryvnias, not dollars. For those who need a conversion factor, one dollar is approximately 42 Hryvnias.)
To my mind, there was exactly one problem with this concert—and it had nothing to do with the venue change, the lighting, or any of the other mishigas that happened over the 24 hours leading up to it.
It was that Holly and I and a few others were the only non-Ukrainian or Ukrainian-American folks there. It is that you are probably among the first such people to know that this concert even happened or that this body of music exists and is being actively performed at this level of exquisiteness.
It seems to me we need to do something about that, no?
If you think so too, maybe share this post with a friend—or at least the video, which I will also be posting to YouTube and Instagram.
Friday on #DogShirtTV, the estimable Emily Hoge came by to talk about Russian organized crime, and how gangsters feel about being on the front lines in Ukraine. We had fun with the subject, but it’s actually really serious and important, for reasons Emily explains:
Thursday On Lawfare
Compiled by the estimable Isabel Arroyo
Technical Standards: America’s Forgotten Tool of Statecraft
Laura Galante and Tal Feldman explain how global technical standards-setting allows nations to build geopolitical influence and position their own technologies for competitive success. The authors examine the Chinese government’s aggressive campaign to shape standards across a range of emerging technologies and urge U.S. lawmakers to catch up with China on standards for artificial intelligence (AI).
The U.S.—which once led the push for technical standards—has not disappeared entirely from the arena. But it has failed to treat standards-setting as a tool of statecraft. It has ceded leadership positions in key international bodies to China and fallen behind in both participation and influence. By design, institutes like the Department of Commerce’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) still treat standards as purely technical matters, with little attention to their geopolitical implications. Without a coordinated framework that connects that expertise with foreign policy priorities, U.S. officials remain under-resourced and fragmented—leaving industry to navigate this geopolitical battle largely on its own.
The consequences of falling behind on the standards fight are not always visible. There is no single moment of failure or dramatic flashpoint. There is just a quiet accumulation of decisions—and indecisions—about how systems are built, which protocols they follow, and who gets to shape the rules. But in a world that is increasingly connected and contested, those choices can carry outsized consequences. By the time they are visible, it may be too late to reverse them.
Copyright Should Not Protect Artists From Artificial Intelligence
Simon Goldstein and Peter Salib argue that AI tools should be able to train on publicly available copyrighted material, reasoning that richly trained AI tools will advance the innovation aims of copyright more effectively than legal protections for creators.
The Constitution explicitly outlines the purpose of intellectual property. Article I endows Congress with the power to create copyrights and patents, “To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts.” Intellectual property, including copyright, is about the creation of new ideas. As described below, this theory of copyright is also supported by the economic analysis of law.
In practice, however, popular discussions of AI and copyright often implicitly assume another purpose for intellectual property: protecting artists and content creators facing the threat of AI-led automation. But copyright isn’t, and shouldn’t be, a welfare program for artists.
Podcasts
On Lawfare Daily, Katsiaryna Shmatsina sits down with Beverly Ochieng to examine the ways external powers compete for influence in Africa, perceptions of China’s Belt and Road Initiative, the role of Russian military contractors, and how African regional organizations shape foreign agendas.
Today’s #BeastOfTheDay is a seal being startled awake:
In honor of today’s Beast, hit the snooze button one more time.
Today’s #BeastOfTheDay is—very unfortunately—not the monarchus maris, which is disqualified on account of being a product of medieval imagination, but which is most definitely a Beast worthy of recognition. I—
—am obsessed with it. Seriously. Look at this thing:Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
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