From Concerts to Charity: Yurii Bazaka on Promoting Ukrainian Music

In this interview, we talk with Yurii Bazaka, the founder and CEO of kontrabass promo, a Ukrainian music agency, and co-founder of the charity fund Musicians Defend Ukraine. Yurii has been involved in the music industry for nearly a decade, managing concerts for bands like The Unsleeping, Kurs Valüt, Pyrig i Batig, and other indie artists. His journey started with a childhood interest in music that grew into a focus on managing artists and organizing events.

Yurii's experience includes organizing the Intercity Live online festival during the pandemic, which connected artists from different cities in Ukraine and around the world. Another notable project, Zmova, featured live performances in cultural locations in Kyiv, aiming to draw attention to these sites.

He is also involved in the charity Musicians Defend Ukraine, which supports cultural figures who are currently serving in the military. In this interview, Yurii discusses his work, the current state of the Ukrainian music industry, and his hopes for its future. He also shares advice for those starting out in the field, focusing on the importance of mental health and being bold with new ideas. As he prepares to attend the Reeperbahn Festival in Hamburg, Yurii reflects on the potential for more international collaboration in the music industry.

How did you get started in the music industry?

It all started with a childhood hobby. I listened to music from elementary school, loved reading biographies of artists, went to music school, played in the school brass band. Then, in high school, I discovered the guitar, then tried to learn different musical instruments at a basic level, then came to programs like Ableton Live and started to understand them. Of course, I didn't go beyond the basics in these areas, but it gave me an understanding of the structure of music. When I listen to music, I can hear each of the instruments well, understand what they do and why. When I was a student, I tried to organize a few concerts and at that moment I realized that I could play and create music, but I was still much better at managing it. At some point, I made a strong-willed decision to stop playing instruments and creating music and focus on management, realizing that this was my strong suit. So, about eight years ago, I started working in this industry. 

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

One of the highlights of my musical life was the Intercity Live festival – a series of online festivals in 2020, we started this format almost immediately after the start of quarantine. It was four online festivals with exclusively niche and underground music. The first festival was a trial, we didn't know how to make streams and what online content should look like. We invited several artists from different cities of Ukraine. For the second festival, we expanded the geography a little bit and 16 cities of Ukraine were involved, the festival lasted 16 hours – it's a pity we didn't know then that YouTube only stores broadcasts of 12 hours and even I didn't see the last four hours of the festival. We called the third festival intercontinental because we almost managed to unite artists from all continents of the world, for example, we had artists from New Zealand, South America, India, the USA, Africa, and many European artists. We were even supposed to have a broadcast from the Vernadsky station to cover all the continents, and we almost agreed on it, but then we got a refusal. We then released merchandise with swear words, maybe they didn't like it. We organized the fourth festival with the help of a grant from House of Europe. It was a two-day festival with many artists from Ukraine and a few from Europe, and we focused on the quality of the content and sound. In general, this festival gathered hundreds of thousands of views, which is a lot for underground music. Perhaps no artist from the lineup had ever gathered as many listeners live as that stream, and it was their biggest concert at the time.

At the very beginning of the Intercity Live project, we wrote to cultural managers from different cities of Ukraine and formed a team of nine people from seven cities of Ukraine. We did everything together, we had a horizontal structure. It was cool that we all became friends and our further activities were based on this cooperation. We are still friends with some of them and do projects together. This was a key moment in cultural activity for me, because then we got contacts all over Ukraine and started working at a higher level than before. 

The second project, Zmova, was also a grant-supported project, where we filmed live performances with artists in cultural locations in Kyiv that needed some attention. These were the National Art Museum of Ukraine, which has been undergoing restoration for four years due to lack of money, the National Cinematheque of Ukraine at the Lisova metro station, around which developers are actively working, the estate of Countess Uvarova, which few people know about, located on Lipska Street, where private events are usually held, although it is a legendary building. And the last one is the Vernadsky Library, which was also in a bad state. I remember that at the time of filming, and it was winter, there was a lot of snow on the roof, and there were bowls in the library with water dripping from the ceiling. It was an epic project because we had the experience of the Intercity online festival and understood how to make a high-quality live event. We invited cool artists and managed to get relatively large views. Four years later, people are still watching and commenting on these videos. It's cool that we made a project that is so sustainable that it is still relevant four years later and artists quote it in interviews.

Of course, there are also unsuccessful cases. In the summer of 2021, we wanted to organize a cool indie music festival on Trukhaniv Island in Kyiv, to set up two stages opposite each other, which would play sequentially, and so that people could walk from one stage to the other. We called this festival Confiscate, and invited top indie artists at the time, such as Stas Koroliov, Palindrome, Ragapop, Kurgan. And the festival was so unsold that we canceled it a few days before the date. We already had experience with concerts that put us in the red, and we realized that if we held it now, we would have to pay off our debts for the next year. Until now, we still have a legendary relationship with the artists because the festival didn't take place, but it was very promising. That's the experience we had. Back in 2021, there was not much attention to Ukrainian music because there was a huge influence of the Russian language and music.

How did the war affect your work?

In 2021, we did concerts for a few hundred people, because attention to the Ukrainian underground was low, there was a lot of Russian underground. At that time, there were promoters in Kyiv who brought exclusively Russian and Belarusian post-punk. The demand for such music was huge, they were constantly doing sold-out shows. At the same time, there was no audience for Ukrainian music of similar genres at all. We continued to chisel away at this rock and organized concerts with Ukrainian indie artists. Of course, there was also Russian-language music, for example, we worked with Belarusian artists. 

Since the beginning of the full-scale invasion, the situation has changed. Then there was a turn and attention to Russian content dropped dramatically. The first concerts after the start of the full-scale war were held in June in Lviv. Then we realized that there was a demand for Ukrainian music in society. In November, we announced the first concert in Kyiv, and it was a big success. Then we announced three concerts: Palindrome, Kurs Valüt, and The Unsleeping, and all three were sold out. And the Palindrome concert at the Mala Opera, which seats 550 people, sold out in one day with one Instagram post. At that moment, we realized that attention to Ukrainian music had increased exponentially. We also sold out the Kurs Valüt with a few posts on Instagram. Then we announced an additional Palindrome concert, which was also completely sold out. Then we realized that the industry had changed.

Also, at the beginning of the full-scale invasion, we founded the Musicians Defend Ukraine charity foundation, which helps cultural figures who are now defending the country. A lot of concerts and festivals around the world took place with our involvement - the organizers donated some of the profits from the concerts to us, and we also did charity concerts for the foundation, and artists of different echelons donate to our foundation, too. The foundation is still functioning properly, and from the operational side, we can say that it has been "on the rails" for a long time. We still buy various things for the military and regularly report on the foundation's social media.

What is your key expertise, what is most interesting to you from the whole range of your projects?

Everything. I can't live without doing concerts, I like doing label work because it's a job that's characterized by consistency and long-term cooperation with artists – you work for years to come. I can't help but be involved in the foundation, because that's what keeps my cuckoo afloat, when you realize that you're doing something useful for the win in the war. I often wonder if I can give something up because I don't always have enough time for my personal life, but I can't, so I've accepted it with stoicism. Besides, it's hard to be a cultural manager and get a salary comparable to the average. Of course, there are artists who can live off their music, and we have them on our label. But it helps me to feel more financially stable and less vulnerable to financial losses that sometimes occur, because I have another job, I've been working in IT for more than 10 years, and I've been teaching programming at Kyiv Polytechnic for seven years now.

In your opinion, how does the Ukrainian music industry live and develop now?

It is finally getting more attention from Ukrainians. At the moment there are few financial resources – they exist, but they are not enough. I see this as a new stage in the development of Ukrainian culture. It is not easy, it has many challenges, but it is a stage from which a large, healthy, competitive and financially viable Ukrainian culture can grow, which can exist independently of its neighbors. I think that many people remember 2014, when there was a new wave of Ukrainian culture, which then stalled, crushed by the Russian cultural economy. It seems that now it will be difficult to crush Ukrainian culture, and I hope it will flourish and become powerful. 

What advice would you give to those who are now starting their way in the music industry?

Probably the first problem is burnout. It is very easy to get it and very difficult to get out of it, so I would advise you to take care of your mental health. At the same time, don't be afraid to do bold things. Also, you should always stand up for a certain idea, because it is the driver of your future projects. 

You're going to the Reeperbahn conference and showcase festival in Hamburg this September, what are your expectations and plans there?

I've been to showcases before, and there was always an opportunity to meet fascinating cultural figures from different countries. After each such event, we created new projects, traveling concerts, or artists or cultural figures came to Ukraine. I would like to facilitate potential cultural exchange between the Ukrainian music industry and industries abroad again. It is very important to interact with foreign artists and try to do something together.

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

Now we are a music agency with concert, booking, PR and label departments. Last year we managed to build a structure with a team of 11 people. It's all interesting and difficult to keep all areas on track. It is very difficult to plan, but with the team, we understand that we are in the process of building a stable operating environment that will help us move more easily at our current capacity. We have no plans to expand and we really want to consolidate the human-centered approach in our internal and external processes. We have a team of stars, 11 wonderful professionals, each with their own unique expertise, and we really want to stay and improve together, do interesting projects and realize it in a pleasant and healthy environment. I would also like to be able to expand the planning horizon, but in the current environment, we just have to hold on and keep doing our job.