The Evolution of Shum Rave: Yevhenii Skrypnik on Cultural Resistance, Community Building, and the Future of Ukrainian Electronic Music

In this interview, we sit down with Yevhenii Skrypnik, the founder of Shum Rave, a cultural movement born out of the desire to bring nightlife and creativity to the Donbas region. Since its inception in Sloviansk in 2019, Shum Rave has evolved far beyond its original concept of throwing rave parties. With a deep understanding of the transformative power of music and culture, Yevhenii developed numerous projects that redefine what it means to be a cultural activist in times of conflict.

From bringing Boiler Room to Ukraine to launching initiatives that support internally displaced persons (IDPs) and preserve Ukrainian cultural heritage, Yevhenii has navigated the challenges of war with resilience and innovation. Under his leadership, Shum Rave transitioned from an event-focused organization to one that offers tangible support to artists and communities impacted by the war, as well as restoration of culture. Since the start of the full scale war in 2022, Yevhenii launched projects like Ukrainian Beasts, a cultural resistance campaign that celebrates the legacy of artist Maria Prymachenko, and the Check-In festival, which bridges gaps between local communities and IDP businesses.

How did you get started in the music industry?

In Sloviansk, there was a youth platform of initiatives called Teplytsia, which started in 2015, after the de-occupation in 2014. At first I was a volunteer, then a coordinator of non-formal education. Later, I immersed myself in culture and took part in organizing anniversaries of local bands. I liked the whole organizational aesthetic. I studied IT and was fascinated by the technical aspects, from what to connect to where, to the aesthetics of black rack boxes. I wanted to create something of my own, and thus, turning from a volunteer to an organizer, I organized the first concert of the band Вагоновожаті (Vahonovozhati) in Sloviansk. It was my first event that I organized independently.

Are you from Sloviansk?

Yes, I was born there, studied in Kramatorsk, and have lived in Sloviansk all my life. I don't know if I would have moved from there if it weren't for the full-scale war. In 2014, I was 17 years old. Before that, I was just living in the city, thinking that my favorite bands would never come here, and from the point of view of a teenager, there was no place to spend time there. But in 2014, an event happened that became a catalyst (editor note: Russian occupation of Sloviansk) – I understood that it was time to take things into my own hands and become the change I wanted to see in my city. 

What projects are you currently working on or have already implemented?

The main project is Shum Rave, a series of parties in Donbas that emerged as a protest against the fact that we had no nightlife. There were only hookah clubs, and that was it. Before that, I was part of the team behind the Plan B project, a festival of social initiatives and new music. Its main part took place in Kharkiv: a conference for activists and cultural figures in the afternoon and concerts in the evening. During the days of Plan B, Kharkiv was transformed: almost all clubs and venues hosted concerts by local bands and artists from other cities. There were many cool people from all over the world who were making changes through social and cultural work. When Plan B was just starting, part of the festival was held in Sloviansk and Kramatorsk: a conference was held in Kramatorsk, and the musical part was held in Sloviansk. I joined the team by accident – I went to a bar in Kharkiv and met the co-organizers. They remembered that I was from Sloviansk and asked me to help – they needed one more person. Rajko and Bojan, who once founded the Exit Festival in Serbia, were co-organizers of Plan B and said: "You care about the city, you know everyone here, and you can do it." It is powerful when people who founded something cool tell you that you can do it. That's how I got into the team, joined the organization of concerts. It was big – the bands ТНМК, 5-й вимір, Гражданін Топінамбур (TNMK, 5th Vymir, Grazhdanin Topinambur) and Flying Swan from Starobilsk came. That's when I realized I was staying in this industry. I worked with Plan B for another three years, and this experience helped me create Shum Rave.

When I started Shum Rave in 2019, I already had 5 years of experience in organizing events, contacts of musicians and DJs, knowledge of how to work with contractors, a technical team, and all that. We already had a certain reputation. The goals of Shum Rave have changed several times. At first it was a protest – there was no place to spend time in the evening and at night. A friend of mine opened a bar with a pre-party concept, but then there was no place to party. The bar was very small, located in a residential building, and we kept hearing that we were not allowed to make noise after 11 pm. That's how the name Shum Rave came about. We organized the first rave just to have a place to hang out. But even then it became clear that we were solving a bigger problem in the region, namely that we travel very little between cities. For example, there's only 20 km between Sloviansk and Kramatorsk, which is the same distance as driving from the left bank to the right bank of Dnipro river in Kyiv. But we didn't travel, not to mention that people didn't travel, for example, to Severodonetsk, which is 120 kilometers away.

I heard about this problem earlier, when I was volunteering in Teplytsia, when various cultural and economic figures came to us and told us that people in our region don't travel between cities much and that we need to develop this, because it will start to develop horizontal connections and can encourage the region to grow culturally and economically. For example, when we organized a cool event in Teplytsia, such as an exhibition or a movie screening, we could only count on the audience of our city, and not on someone coming from Kramatorsk to attend a movie screening, even though they are neighboring cities. But for the first Shum Rave, young people came by train, bus, and hitchhiking from Druzhkivka, Kramatorsk, and Severodonetsk. Even people from Kyiv came, who later became our residents. They were curious to see that someone was organizing a night event in Sloviansk, and they came by bus to see and meet us. They arrived at the end of the event, at the last track, and that's how we met. This showed that we are on the right track – we unite young people, encourage them to travel between cities, get to know each other and have a great time. 

It was all on a commercial basis. I say this because I had experience with grant work, where we had money to pay for the youth's travel, and it didn't work very well. But Shum was a commercial party, people paid money for tickets, travel, and those who wanted to spend the night also rented an apartment. And so, the second and third Shum were made with the focus that it would make young people travel, and this was one of the most important things we managed to solve. 

Another important thing is to change the image of the region. When we invited DJs from Kharkiv, they knew that Sloviansk was Ukraine. But when we went outside this bubble and tried to invite people from Kyiv, for example, not everyone there in 2019 knew about it – for some people it was still a gray zone or an occupied city. Shum Rave helped to change this image and show that Sloviansk is a Ukrainian cultural city with a developing youth, and just like young people in any other Ukrainian city, they love parties, go to them, and do their own cool projects. I remember how once the rector of Ukrainian Catholic University came to us in Sloviansk and said: "Did you know that it takes 6 hours and 20 minutes to get from Kyiv to Lviv by intercity, and 6 hours and 26 minutes from Kyiv to Sloviansk. The difference is 6 minutes, and you can end up either in Lviv or in Sloviansk – two opposite sides." He said that Sloviansk used to be a resort town, and that we need to make sure that people choose to take the intercity train to Sloviansk instead of going to Lviv for coffee on the weekend. I heard this phrase when I was young and green, but it stuck with me. We managed to do it when we organized a party under the Boiler Room brand. We had a lot of people from Kyiv, Odesa, and Kharkiv come to us. On that day, a lot of people chose to go to Sloviansk, a small city in the east, which they might have once thought was no longer a Ukrainian city, instead of taking the intercity to Lviv. That's why I consider Shum Rave to be one of the most important projects in my life.

When you say "Ukrainian city" or "gray zone," what do you mean?

By "gray zone" I mean that some people thought that this city was very close to the demarcation line that was formed in 2014, and they were afraid to go there because they did not understand what was really happening there. They think that they will come to Sloviansk, and just across the river they can already see the separatist positions.

As for the "Ukrainian city," many people had a misconception that everyone in Donbas wanted to go to Russia, that the local youth were pro-Russian, and that we were closer to Russian culture. But we wanted to show that this is not true. These are the same Ukrainians, Ukrainian youth who are oriented towards Europe, who know the culture of their native land, the history of Ukraine, and who want their hometown to remain part of Ukraine.

How did you manage to bring Boiler Room to Sloviansk?

This is a story from the "naivety and courage" category. In 2019, we held three parties, and then the quarantine happened. We gradually moved online, held streams, including with the Plan B festival, shot several video sets and a short film, which we simply called "Shum film" and posted on YouTube. It was a 30-minute story about how the war that started in 2014 affected people in Sloviansk and the Shum participants. We subtitled it in English, and I showed it to a person who was working with MixMag at the time. There was no MixMag office in Ukraine at the time, and they contacted us for an interview about how Shum was changing the city's image from a military one to a cultural one. The Shum residents were amazed that we were featured in MixMag because it was a publication they had been reading since childhood. At the time, I didn't even know what kind of publication it was, I was so out of context – I was just pleased that someone wrote about us. The article hit the main page and stayed there for three days. Everybody started tagging us online, and I woke up to see that MixMag had featured us, and then we were reposted and tagged by the Kyiv, Lviv, and Odesa community, and even the media, which wouldn't have written about us for money. I realized that something serious was going on.

Then Lev Harris from Boiler Room knocked on our Facebook page and offered us to host a party under their brand. At the time, I didn't really know what Boiler Room was. I think it helped that I didn't know much about the industry I was working in, because I was doing what I wanted to do, as I saw it, and I wasn't chasing MixMag to write about me or bring Boiler Room, because if I did, I would have done my work differently and it might not have worked. 

We agreed to the offer and moved the dialog from Facebook to email. Since I had worked with grant programs before, for example, I already understood that there would be a contract and conditions to be met. And so it happened, we received a contract with restrictions and requirements, in particular, the payment of royalties - 1100 pounds, then about 40,000 UAH. At the time, it cost about the same to hold Shum Rave in Sloviansk, and we didn't always break even. And here they say, give us 100% of the amount before the event and we will make an announcement. And then the "naivety and courage" begins. 

I asked our residents if they wanted Boiler Room. They were very enthusiastic and, like MixMag, they had been dreaming about it since childhood. And all of them had no money, the electronic scene in the regions is not so developed to get a stable job in this field. In addition, we were all young and just starting our professional careers, not only in music but in general.  The only resident, Dima Bikadi, gave me $100, which only helped buy alcohol to think about what to do next. I still agreed to this whole idea without any money, thinking that, yes, I don't have any now, but once we get the contract, I'll go to local businessmen and say that it will be such a cool event, the contract has already been signed – give me money. It didn't work out that way.

Meanwhile, Boiler Room issued an invoice with a SWIFT payment, but at that time SWIFT was no longer working in the Donetsk region and we could not send money to the UK because part of the Donetsk region was occupied and under sanctions. I found out about this when I asked the bank how I could pay the bill. They told me that I, Yevhenii Skrypnyk, registered in Donetsk Oblast, could not. I found a person in Kharkiv who could make the payment, and in the meantime, Boiler Room took a long time to respond to emails and delayed the contract, but they had already made an announcement with a link to sell tickets. When the contract finally arrived, we already had the money from the tickets, and we were able to pay the royalties.

Another important detail: Boiler Room wanted only four DJs, and we already had more residents. We said that we would either take everyone or no one. Boiler Room agreed, and we also agreed that we would only invite local artists, although there were offers to invite someone from Kyiv. As a result, we held this evening under the Boiler Room brand with only the local scene.

What impact has Boiler Room had on you and your residents?

On the day of the Boiler Room in Sloviansk, almost all the apartments were rented and hotels were booked, as well as in Kramatorsk. A lot of interesting people came and made new acquaintances. The most important thing is that this party discovered new names – the lineup did not include any of the artists we were used to hearing. The local scene that was presented was very different from what you can hear in Kyiv. It was music that was hard to hear in Kyiv. 

The residents got a nice tick in their portfolio that they played at Boiler Room. For many bookers and promoters, this was an important indicator that these artists could be cooperated with. Some of them are now performing at major festivals in Europe, which is an important achievement for bookers there. In addition, the residents gained experience in legal matters, because I was constantly "suffering" in the chat to inform them about the progress of the case so that they did not think it was so easy. I gained invaluable experience in negotiating and cooperating with a major brand. 

If the full-scale war hadn't started, it would have been easier for us to invite DJs from Kyiv, other cities and abroad. Many cultural figures from Europe have followed us, offering to come for a nominal fee or even for free, just to find out who we are and how Shum Rave works. And this is what we would have liked to do if not for the full-scale war – to further develop the local scene and Sloviansk as a city with a cool nightlife. Besides, at that time, the largest open-air concert venue in Donetsk Oblast, Monopoly Krona, had already been built in Sloviansk. We held Boiler Room in the hangar, a part of this open-air venue. Local businesses that opened this venue supported us several times, providing space either for free or for a nominal fee. Once, they even provided financial assistance when we were in the red, as they were also interested in developing this initiative. The potential for development was great, and for young people, Sloviansk was gradually gaining the image of a city where they could come to relax.

Tell us about the impact of the war on your work. 

I met the beginning of the full-scale invasion in Kyiv. I was living in two cities at the time because we started a project with the support of the UNDP to study what was happening to culture in cities like Shchastya, New York, Druzhba, and Verkhniotoretske, which were the cities where separatists were visible "across the river." We went there because the municipalities of Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts opened youth centers like Teplytsia, which I once started in Sloviansk, in these cities. We would go there, see what was going on, and bring DJs who played sets of Ukrainian music, some disco, good music – we brought some of the cultural product there and asked people what their cultural needs were, and how we could help them. I was there as an expert who managed to do this in Sloviansk because I understood the context of the region. We did all this with the future in mind and what might happen. That's why I lived for two months in Kyiv and two months in Donbas. 

I met the invasion while working on one of these projects, analyzing what was happening in the East. That day changed everything, because culture faded into the background for me. I started volunteering, some of our residents ended up under occupation very quickly, and I tried to help them leave, looking for contacts. I was volunteering for about six months or more, then at some point I realized that something was happening with the culture in the country. Someone was organizing charity events, stand ups in bomb shelters, and people were rebuilding houses to music, like Repair Together. And I was very much out of this process and did not understand what was happening to the culture. I also saw it in my friends, because someone was very active and did something in the culture, some guys mobilized or were very active in volunteering and were out of context. I had the idea that we should all get together and talk about who is doing what now. And then, with the support of UNDP, the Brave Culture Meet-Up conference was created. I wrote to them that new cultural figures are emerging, culture is transforming, and some of the figures do not understand what to do. Almost a year had passed since February 24th 2022, and it seemed that we all needed a space for dialogue, to finally get together and talk. And so we organized a conference in Ivano-Frankivsk, bringing together various cultural representatives for two days.

It became clear that the parties in Donbass would long not be possible, many of the musicians became internally displaced, they lost their studios, contacts, equipment, and we had some resources to unite these people and help them. We turned from an organization that throws parties to an organization that can support people who need help. 

From the conference, we drew some conclusions about what is currently happening in culture and how it can be transformed. Then we were supported by the House of Europe and we made a series of sets with IDP musicians, we asked them to record a set of what they thought their city sounded like. For example, we invited guys from Mariupol and asked them to play the music they played at parties there. 

Before the full-scale invasion, Shum Rave also worked with cultural heritage - we tried to show that our region is Ukrainian, rich in culture. And to make people travel, for example, between Druzhkivka and Sievierodonetsk, we recorded music sets at important locations that are architectural, cultural, or natural heritage. These were beautiful and large-scale projects, and we enjoyed doing them, even though we didn't do them often. We realized that what we had recorded in the east was very timely now, because we started to hear echoes of what people in the east had always wanted to go with Russia – after the full-scale war started, this "propaganda charm" started playing again, and the videos we had recorded helped to fight this narrative to some extent. 

After the Brave Culture Meet-Up conference, donors came to us and asked about those videos and whether we had any ideas on how to work with cultural heritage now. And at that time, Russia started destroying museums, taking away paintings, destroying monuments, and shelling our historic buildings. I turned to a friend whom I had once met at Plan B. She is a powerful creative director and a very good person. I told them that there is such an idea and it's obviously not about recording a DJ set on the ruins of some museum, we need to do something interesting. Thus, we created a project called Ukrainian Beasts, a cultural resistance campaign dedicated to the dissemination and preservation of the cultural memory of the artist Maria Prymachenko. In Ivankiv, a Russian missile destroyed the museum where some of Maria Prymachenko's paintings were kept. If the Russians thought that by destroying the museum they would destroy the culture, no, on the contrary, they set the beasts free, and they are now spreading all over the world – on T-shirts, stickers, sweaters. The Prymachenko Family Foundation itself is engaged in spreading this heritage. We painted a mural at Okhmatdyt, involved our musical component there, and invited the band Our Atlantic to perform. We were not allowed to have a smoke machine there, so instead we had a machine that made soap bubbles. I think the children just enjoyed the bubbles, and the adults listened to the lyrics.

We have become an institution that no longer organizes parties – if we do, it's more like something intimate for friends to meet. If we do something big, then music is one of the components, mainly to support internally displaced people (IDPs) or to support musicians. We organized the Check-In festival with the music label Module and the youth organization Shift from Dnipro, where we destroyed the myth that has existed since 2014 that IDPs are just "sitting on" their resettlement payments. After the full-scale invasion started, this "propaganda charm" began to spin even more, as many more people appeared who were forced to leave their cities and start their lives anew. We organized a festival in Dnipro, which brought together a lot of IDP businesses, and we introduced them to Dnipro residents, showing them that they have a lot of people who were forced to move to the city and opened businesses there. So the story that they are on welfare doesn't work: they generate profits, create jobs, and they are great people – get to know them, don't shy away from them. The locals should also know that if there are people who were able to move from Makiivka after 2014, first to Severodonetsk, and after the full-scale invasion began, to Dnipro, and start their businesses again, then local Dnipro residents can do the same if they want to – this is an element of inspiration. The Modulus residents and Shum Rave residents performed at this festival to show that business and culture go hand in hand, that it will be very difficult for business if we don't have a cultural context and vice versa.

In your experience, how does the music industry in Ukraine currently exist and develop?

Initially, new names and new places in the lineups appeared in the electronic scene, and those who had not been able to break through before got this opportunity. However, now we see that it is becoming more and more difficult for people from the regions to get such a chance, because again, those who have already taken positions in the lineups appear there regularly. Nevertheless, the scene has changed and evolved. 

In the electronic scene, the community is self-regulating. At the beginning of the invasion in 2022, there were people who tried to organize events during curfews and were quickly told by their own community that they shouldn't do that. There is still an institution of reputation, at least for now, and we'll see what happens next. 

I don't know how the industry survives. Many people have day jobs that allow them to make music. Brands that sponsor events are gradually returning. There are more grant programs, especially those aimed at Kharkiv and Dnipro. I really like what's happening in the culture in these cities, people are doing very powerful things there and driving change, which I'm happy about.

The scene is developing, little by little. In the regions, there are great people, and I wish that everyone who wants to get their MixMag or Boiler Room will get it. I think it will happen.

What advice would you give to those who are now taking their first steps in your profession or the music industry in general? 

Doing what you feel, regardless of what the industry suggests. If we at Shum Rave had done what the industry wanted, we would hardly be where we are today. We had a hashtag in Sloviansk called #loveandlearnyournativeland, so that people who are making their first steps would try to develop the local scene. If you're organizing a party in a small town, don't invite a Kyiv-based artist to play, but invite your local people and let them develop with you. Listen to what they want, build a community, work with local businesses, and never leave anyone behind. Sometimes, when people work with electronic music, they go into the red and screw people over and it's bad for their reputation. I'm sure that one of the reasons why Shum Rave worked out is that even when we went into the red, we paid people as we agreed. If you made an agreement, pay them. In general, pay people at least something, try to find money for the fee, because it will be a win-win situation for you in the future. And work with the media, with local authorities – this is especially important for small towns. We always warned the authorities that we were going to hold an event, because if we hadn't, we would have been shut down by the police during the event. And in our realities of a full-scale invasion, take care of people's safety, know how to provide medical care, think through everything a thousand times in terms of the fact that some bad situation may happen and you will have to solve it. Be humane, because now there is a lot of tension in society and a person who does not wish you harm may come to you, but now they happen to be on edge. Be polite and you will succeed. 

Did you also communicate with neighbors, people who live around the place where you held events, to warn them about the event?

We held the first Shum events in an industrial zone, and there were no neighbors there. When we held events at other venues, we adjusted the volume level. In the electronic scene, very often the control over the sound level is given to the DJ, the sound comes from the console directly to the speaker. If the DJ thinks the sound is too quiet, he can turn it up at any time. We have always had sound engineers to whom we gave the sound and they brought it to the hall, so that it sounded cool in the hall and did not make noise outside.

There was a situation when we held an action "Culture Needs a House." There was a problematic house of culture in Sloviansk and we wanted to return it to the city's ownership, because the presence of cultural centers is still important – for some people, it is the closest place where they can go to a master class, a club, an exhibition, a concert and start their way in culture. We warned the local authorities that an event involving electronic musicians would take place near this building and asked the police to protect it. They came and guarded the venue for us, but it was under people's windows and I didn't take that into account. The event was planned for only two hours, but at some point the residents of the surrounding houses started to get annoyed by our music and started calling the police, to which the police replied that it was a pre-agreed event. The police came to us with the fact that people had already started calling and asking when we were finishing, and we had already almost finished by then. That was the end of it. That was the only conflict with the sound.

Once we had a conflict with the night light. We shot the video on the Bilokuzmynivka rock. This place is important for our region. We shot a DJ set there at night, we had one laser and 18 beams, and we shone them on the rock, they "painted" the rock in different colors. I didn't know that it was a special natural area, so we calmly filmed everything and left. Two days later, the people responsible for protecting this natural site found me and told me that we were filming a set during the nesting season of the Red Book owls, and that we had burned the owls' eyes out. I don't think we burned out their eyes, but it's for sure that the owls were nesting during the techno set and lasers. They got a little bit baked.

You're going to attend the Reeperbahn Festival and Conference in September 2024, what are your expectations and plans there?

We have a lot of plans, because Shum Rave is not only me, but also a team of our resident DJs. We have several residents who would like to find contacts of interesting labels or people who could help with booking abroad. I'm going with tasks from the residents, who I need to meet. We have already collected demos and business cards that can be handed over. 

I would also like to meet people and organizations for cooperation. In addition, I am interested not only in exporting music abroad, but also in bringing foreigners to Ukraine to show that culture is happening here. For me, the current situation in Ukraine is like when I was in small Sloviansk, where people were afraid to go because they didn't understand what was happening there. Back then, I wrote to Kyiv DJs with an invitation to Sloviansk, and I received a reply that there was a war there, how could they come? And now, I write to foreign artists, or just friends, and they say, "But there's a war here, how can I come?" That's why it's important to talk about the fact that culture is happening in Ukraine, to show it, so that they can come back home and tell us about their trip, that there was a good audience, and let's give weapons to Ukraine so that it can win.

How do you see yourself and your projects developing in the near future?

It's hard to plan because we don't know what will happen. We are planning that next year Shum Rave will return with musical projects that are interesting for us. Most of them will be about the regions and the unification of communities. We are still thinking about how to do this, because everything is changing rapidly. I hope that the trip to Reeperbahn will help me reboot, see how others do it, and see again what I used to be inspired by.