Kalush Orchestra, courtesy Jens Sage

While there was pressure on all the contestants in the 2022 “Eurovision Song Contest,” Ukraine’s Kalush Orchestra probably had the most.

“It was rather stressful because 200 million viewers were watching it, and we’re at war so the whole country had high expectations for us, even the people who never watched ‘Eurovision’ before,” band founder Oleh Psiuk said through an interpreter in a video call last week. “We had a high level of anxiety, but we coped with that.”

Kalush Orchestra coped well enough to win the competition with its song “Stefania,” a blend of hip-hop and traditional Ukrainian folk instruments that wowed the judges and audience. That blend comes from the merging of influences between Kalush, Psiuk’s rap group, several additional members whose influences lie in Ukrainian folk music and the interesting combinations that come from the union.

“We’re all creators in the team, so we were trying to search for something new, something interesting,” Psiuk said  said. “We didn’t want to look like someone else, so we found our own unique style. Three of us have always liked rap and hip-hop, three of us love orthodox Ukrainian folk music and one of us loves reggae. So we mixed all of that together.”

The bright lights and big stage didn’t last long, however.

Kalush Orchestra at the opening ceremony of “Eurovision Song Contest 2022” in Turin, Italy. Courtesy Creative Commons.

“We came back home instantly, just within a day,” Psiuk said. Their win was a source of national pride for their country, so the band came back as huge celebrities.

“We were met at the border, then we were met several kilometers after the border,” Psiuk said. “When we were going along the city, everyone recognized us, congratulated us, gave us rounds of applause. Those were indescribable feelings.”

But when Kalush Orchestra crossed the border, it also reentered a war zone, which also meant going right back into the war effort. Psiuk is part of a volunteer group of about 30 people who help get people shelter and accommodations, medicine and whatever other help they can provide.

Kalush Orchestra performs in the U.K. for the first time at the Glastonbury Festival in Somerset on June 25, 2022. Photo by Yui Mok/PA Images.

They also got started writing new music. While in the early days of the invasion Psiuk found it hard to create anything, after a while he began focusing on trying to perceive everything that was going on around him through music. The band has recorded quite a few songs and is producing many of them now. Some the band is now playing live on tour, though he’s not ready to say when they’ll be released. That’s less of a concern at this point.

The band also started looking into touring as a way to show its country’s situation and culture to the world. “Eurovision” gave Kalush Orchestra a platform to tell the world not just about Ukraine, its people and its culture, but about what’s going on in the war.

“I consider it to be my mission,” he said. “There’s an opportunity to leave our country and show our culture beyond it. We’re showing our reality through the lens of our creativity. We have lots of materials and footage from the real events, the real photos and videos of the war. We’re fundraising through a QR code. In a nutshell, we’re trying to do everything possible to help the information on the war in Ukraine to stay in the headlines.”

For this interview, Psiuk he was in Warsaw, Poland on the European leg of the band’s tour, which covered just about every country on the continent—”I think we’ve never been to Denmark so far. Sorry, Denmark.”—and had so far gotten a great reaction wherever it went.

“Everywhere we’ve been perceived well, but some are better. In Poland they always receive us very well, it’s one of the hottest audiences ever, but we’ve never faced a negative attitude,” he said.

For the next leg of the tour, he crosses the Atlantic, and he’s not sure what to expect. Not just in terms of the audiences, which he’s especially interested to see, but from the country itself.

“I’ve seen a lot of movies about the U.S., I’ve read a lot, I’ve just never been to the U.S., so it’s interesting for me to see,” he said. The city he’s most interested in over here? Los Angeles.

Kalush Orchestra, courtesy Jens Sage

“If I could choose I’d like to go to Los Angeles, that’s the no. 1 city for me to visit,” he said. ” To walk along the L.A. streets, to see everything happening there, to get the atmosphere. I’m looking forward to it.”

But what he’s looking forward to more than anything is when the war is over.

“You know, the news is more positive than it used to be, even a month ago. But I’m waiting for the best news ever: that there’s finally a ceasefire.”

Follow publisher Daniel J. Willis at Twitter.com/BayAreaData.