Cafe International’s series on anti-war songs from Ukraine features an interview w/ dakhabrakha’s Marko Halanevych and their manager Iryna Gorban. We'll hear about how they've become cultural ambassadors, performing at some of the world's top stages, including Glastonbury, sharing songs both from prior times that Ukraine has been attacked as well as a new requiem dedicated to victims from Russia's invasion.

What can we learn from songs that describe crimes against humanity from prior times that Ukraine was invaded? On today’s show, we speak with University of Toronto professor, Anna Shternshis about her project, Yiddish Glory, resurrecting long lost songs written during World War II. She tells us how Holocaust victims and survivors used music to document Nazi atrocities with the goal that the perpetrators of those crimes will someday be punished.

Cafe International's series on Ukrainian music continues with a look at one of one of the giants of Yiddish folk music, Arkady Gendler – who was considered a living Alexandrine library of Yiddish song from Ukraine and Moldova.

Arkady Gendler was born in the town of Soroke in 1921 near the border of Moldova and Ukraine. During World War II, he served in the Red Army and helped liberate Ukraine from the Nazis, only to discover that most of his friends and family had been murdered during the Holocaust. After the war, He worked as a chemist in the town of Zaporizhzhia – the city with Europe’s largest Nuclear power plant.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Gendler spent his final decades teaching younger generations about the Yiddish culture in Ukraine and Molodova that was nearly destroyed during the Holocaust – and that is what we will hear about on today’s show  - with guests Avia Moore (Artistic Director of KlezKanada, and assistant producer of Arkady Gendler's album "Yidishe Lider"), Eric Stein (Artistic Director of the Ashkenaz Festival and mandolinist who performed and recorded with Gendler), Sebastian Schulman (Executive Director of the KlezKanada Festival) and Christian Dawid (clarinetist and producer of Arkady Gendler's final CD, "Yidishe Lider").

On this program the bandura master Julian Kytasty talks about the history of the bandura, shows how the instrument is played and discusses what we can learn from songs written in prior centuries when Ukraine was attacked. With host Dan Rosenberg

On today’s show, our guest is Yuriy Gurzhy, a DJ, music producer and writer who grew up in Kharkiv, Ukraine and now lives in Berlin, Germany. We’ll hear about what it was like recording his album, Foxtroty, in Kharkiv in the weeks before Russia started bombing the city – and much of Ukraine.  Foxtroty is based on poetry from the Executed Renaissance - a golden age of Ukrainian poetry in the 1920s before Stalin's brutal crackdown in the following decade where many leading poets were sent to the gulag and killed.

Cafe International's Series on Ukrainian music continues: This episode features Dan Rosenberg's interview with Yuri Bukovynets from the Hudaki Village Band, speaking about the lives of musicians during wartime, and how they’re helping those who are internally displaced and have lost everything due to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Mariana Sadovska: “If I’m asked to describe what my family and relatives are going through in Ukraine, I actually don’t have words. It’s hell. When I get a chance to have a video conversation and I see their eyes and their faces. They’re tired.”  In this moving interview, we will hear about her role as a cultural ambassador for Ukraine amidst Russia's horrific unprovoked war, how she is performing benefit concerts and sharing with the world the incredibly diversity of her country's folk music.