“Twelve million of people watch our show,” “audiences in Ukraine, Europe, the US, Canada, Israel, and Asia vote for our singers,” said the hosts of the “Voice of the Country” project Olha Freimut and Yurii Horbunov during a Sunday broadcasting of the super final of the singing show. There was a storm in the social media: thousands of people posted their thoughts and selfies, including the coaches of the project, with a hashtag #?goloskrainy?. The brightest photos were shown live for the entire country on a huge multimedia screen which was placed behind the scene. On the whole, every element of the show was pierced with the atmosphere of mutual understanding and unity – starting from the performances of the singers on stage to their communication off the stage. This trend was proved by the voting results, when out of four super finalists, Yevhen Tolochny, Andrii Luchanko, Tetiana Reshetniak, and Anton Kopytin, the last one, a singer from the Donbas, was chosen. In the fifth season the project of the 1+1 channel broke the limits of a television genre of a talent show and became a socially integrated project creating the modern popular Ukrainian culture.
“This year’s ‘Voice...’ is the best of all five seasons,” wrote on his Facebook page director general of 1+1 media Oleksandr Tkachenko. Indeed the project prepared many surprises for the audience. The first dramatic change is that the repertoire of the participants consisted of Ukrainian songs with several world hits. When during the super final the participant of Tina Karol’s team, a father of a family with many children from Donetsk, was singing in an embroidered shirt “My Two Colors” or the song “Mother’s Love” and his performance was accompanied by a video which showed his wife carrying a baby, the television audience gets 100 percent emotional. Or when the scenes of the history of Andrii Luchanko from Sviatoslav Vakarchuk’s team were shown – the boy wanted to go to the casting of the “Voice of the Country” for a long time, but at the end of 2013 he decided that his place was at Maidan, where he was one of the thirty students who were first to decide that they would fight for the right for the future of their country. His repertoire (from “Counting Stars” to “Cheremshyna”) and the manner of performance showed the entire spectrum of his young talent – from folk singing to international music vision of the world. “This is a European show and you were singing like a European,” said music coach Oleksandr Ponomariov about his pupil, another participant of the show, Yevhen Tolochny. And it is important for the Ukrainian TV audience to learn to see not only our present, but our European future embodied by these young talents.
Another successful move of the “Voice...” is the popularization of Ukrainian composers. The participant of Potap’s team Tetiana Reshetniak performed the song “Candle,” the music to which was written by the People’s Artist of Ukraine, legendary Myroslav Skoryk, who, by the way, was present at the super final. The producers of the show and the coach took a risk and allowed the song, which includes words about the Holodomor. This is a huge risk for an entertainment project, but for a national one, and the “Voice of the Country” is becoming one, this is a huge step ahead. Potap surprised everyone too when he sang together with Tetiana “The Day is Passing, the Night is Passing” in Ukrainian, and his singing was beautiful, deep, and piercing. But the audience was more excited by the moment of defining the winner of the “Voice...” Before the results were announced, Tina Karol presented the family of Anton Kopytin, who lost his place of living because of the war in the Donbas, the keys from his Kyiv apartment. All these changes in the project, starting with the relationships between the coaches and the singers and finishing with the change of the format and the key points that were stressed throughout the show prove that the “Voice of the Country” is becoming a venue for the national unity through Ukrainian music, building of bridges between the regions and people, the project when humanism gets on the surface.
COMMENTARY
“VOICE OF THE COUNTRY” AS A MARKER
Viktoria LEZINA-MASLIANA, general producer of 1+1 Production:
“I would not say that the format of the ‘Voice...’ has changed. More likely, we only this year have fully realized what this project means within the framework of the country. The ‘Voice of the Country’ is a kind of a marker. It in many ways defines not only the culture advantages of Ukrainians, but also shows where we want to go and what we seek. And the victory in the ‘Voice...’ is proof of that. In terms of music, the changes are slow and gradual. I believe that in the near 10 years the music taste will for sure change in our country and what we call ‘sharovarshchina’ (pseudonationalism), what we are ashamed of will disappear forever. In the same way the hackneyed, unrefined scenic methods, which our audience does not perceive anymore, disappeared. The audience feels clearly when we are sincere, and when we are not. They felt this sincere intonation in the ‘Voice...’ And I am very grateful for this trust because when we were making this project with our team, every second of every material, song, story, or situation, went from our souls. This project is not about music, but also about love, care, support, and helping those who really need it.”
