Ukrainian band DakhaBrakha lit up The Freight and Salvage in Berkeley with three sold-out shows last weekend, April 4, 5, and 6. The group’s performances are an audio-visual extravaganza. Their music cuts across a broad spectrum of folk/trad/rock/jazz/techno: ethno/techno, in their words. Think of them as musical anthropologists. They play with passionate intensity and muscular musicality—rigorous and vigorous.  The quartet comprises Marko Halanevych, Iryna Kovalenko, Olena Tsybulska, and Nina Garenetsk.

Every instrument has a percussive role, supplementing the array of drums (Indian, African, and Arabic) on stage. Everyone sings, and the women’s voices meld into soulful, sharply cadenced choruses. The cello brings dark energy to sonic arrangements. The accordion sound is minimal in many songs and often resembles uilleann pipes, organs, or harmonica.

Some of their music was featured as the soundtrack for Porcelain War, a terrible beauty of a documentary, that played earlier this year at the Smith Rafael Film Center. A streaming service has not taken up the powerful anti-war film, but some clips can be seen here: https://www.porcelainwar.com/videos

DakhaBrakha was created in 2004 at the Kyiv Center of Contemporary Art “DAKH” by avant-garde theatre director Vladyslav Troitskyi. Theatre work has left its mark on the band’s performances—their shows are always staged with a strong visual element of projected imagery and animations.

Their U.S. tour ends this month and they have one more Northern California gig in Davis before returning to Ukraine for a series of summer concerts. They are a uniquely powerful ensemble expanding Ukrainian folk and traditional music into a wild world of sonic adventures. And, in the You-know-you’re-in-Berkeley-When category, a Ukrainian immigrant, Igor Tregub, who serves on the Berkeley City Council, introduced the group.