Ukrainian-born musician Eugene Hütz, leader of the New York-bred band Gogol Bordello, readily admits he first found it shocking when he came across images of his old friends armed to the teeth in battle in the current war with Russia. “It was particularly alarming that somebody you used to jam and rock out with is now on TikTok with a rocket launcher,” he said. “But after that initial blow, it quickly settled in that this is part of the historical DNA of Ukrainians. Being a self-sufficient warrior is at the center of our identity. This has always been in us.”
Hütz’s life epitomizes that. His defiant spirit began in childhood, when his family struggled to resist the soul-crushing influence of the then Soviet Union in the 70s and 80s. Starting in adolescence, he found a voice for his maverick character in punk rock, leading him to play in hardcore bands in Ukraine before emigrating in the 90s to America, where he eventually formed Gogol Bordello in New York. The arc of his story provides a personal hook for a new documentary, Scream of My Blood, only to place it in the far broader context of Ukraine’s history of resistance as well as the current battle for its right to exist. “My life story is used as a vehicle to tell the story of a people,” Hütz said.
To do so, the film features footage shot over decades with the musician’s family, as well as his early days with Gogol Bordello, along with sections dedicated to the current band and footage from a recent trip Hütz took back to several key areas in Ukraine. In one scene there, we see him singing traditional songs with soldiers to buoy their spirit, in the process stressing the connection between battle and music that’s embedded in the culture.
“If you take a survey of Ukrainian paintings, chronicles or etchings that go back four or five hundred years, you’ll see that the most recurring image is a fella on horseback with a couple of swords, a musket and a musical instrument strapped across his shoulder,” he said. “Just like there’s a tradition of the delta blues man in the States, there’s a tradition in Ukraine of singers with instruments like the kobza or bandura. They’re a part of our dignity and our cultural code. You don’t want to mess with it.”
Hütz’s tone when he talks about such things reflects a righteous anger and a hard resolve. In our phone conversation, which took place before a Gogol Bordello show in Amsterdam, he took every opportunity to call out what he sees as the sins of Moscow and to champion the heroism of his countrymen while offering no concessions to fear or doubt. “Those poor Russian soldiers,” he said with a sneer. “They’re experiencing an absolute inferno. They went into a losing battle with fucking gangsters.”
The early part of the film talks about the Soviet days of his youth, which Hütz found conformist and depressing, a feeling he shared with his parents, as well as with most of the people he knew. “Of course, there were some who got brainwashed into this idea that they would gain higher social status by going with Soviet notions, but nobody trusted those people,” he said.
Hütz’s father, who played guitar in a prominent Ukrainian rock band, Meridian, was regularly interrogated by government agents for his pro-western views. “That became his lifestyle – to be detained and lectured,” Hütz jokes.
As a teenager, Hütz was drawn to the first wave of Ukrainian punk in the mid-80s with bands like Vopli Vidopliassova (or VV). He also had exposure to American underground bands like Sonic Youth. “I got to see them in Kyiv,” he said. “I talked to Thurston [Moore] and Lee [Ranaldo[ about this later. When they played Moscow, their gig didn’t go anywhere but in Kyiv they were like, ‘Wow, these people actually get this.’ There was a connection.”
Hütz was 13 when the meltdown happened at Chernobyl, roughly 60 miles from the surrounding area of Kyiv where his family lived. They found out about the horror from BBC radio, not from their government. “So we developed a plan for evacuation faster than the others,” he said. “We were telling people this was going on. Nobody was believing us.”
His family fled to the Carpathian mountains in Ukraine, where they had relatives and which is steeped in the Romani culture that would later play a major role in Hütz’s music. Eventually, his family earned refugee status which allowed them to leave. For the next seven years, they shuttled between refugee camps in Poland, Hungary, Austria and Italy. Finally, in 1992, through a resettlement program, the family got to America, specifically Burlington, Vermont. Though it was far from a hipster paradise, and despite the fact that Hütz barely spoke English at the time, he found his punk tribe. “There was one hardcore club in Burlington,” he said. “That crew was extremely encouraging and all inclusive. We could go to Montreal and Boston and New York to see shows.”
He formed his own bands, starting with one called the Fags, and, by the mid-90s, moved to New York where he formed a Romani-influenced group called Hütz and the Bela Bartoks, named for the Hungarian composer. That band evolved into Gogol Bordello, whose first name came from the famed writer. “Gogol was Ukrainian and not by any means Russian,” Hütz emphasized. “Moscow loves to claim everything in sight as their own. I’m undoing that story.”
His group began to play at clubs like CBGB and Coney Island High in the East Village, which, unbeknown to Hütz at the time, is home to many Ukrainian social clubs and restaurants. “I was blown away,” he said. “It was like, ‘Honey, I’m home!”
For him, the connection between punk’s force and Ukrainian music’s power was natural and deep. “They both have this exalted energy,” he said. “If you listen to the instrumental folk music from west Ukraine and listen to Slayer, it’s the same kinds of riffs and scales, just played on the violin instead of the guitar.”
While Romani influences lie at the core of the band, over the years they have expanded to feature players from many different countries, including Brazil, Colombia and Puerto Rico. The film features footage of the current, band playing a show in Chicago while a huge flag of Hütz’s homeland flies next to one from America. The scene echoes the signs of support that have shown up all over the US and many other countries. To Hütz, seeing the blue and yellow colors fly “feels well deserved. Ukraine earned its hardcore status through a superhuman heroic effort,” he said. “It’s gratifying to see it.”
At the same time, he considers it naive and sad that the western media initially expressed surprise over the Russian invasion. “What kind of surprise can it be when the war has actually been going on for nine years?” he said, dating it back to the Russian annexation of parts of the Donbas region and Crimea in 2014. “This was ignored, as if this was some small-time guerrilla war in a neighborhood. It was actually the two largest countries in Europe at war,” he said.
The most moving parts of the film find Hütz traveling back to Ukrainian areas like Uzhhorod and the Carpathian region, where we see him visit a Romani refugee center. To Hütz, that latter region is key to Ukraine’s character. “To me, it’s a mystical place,” he said. “It’s where my biggest inspiration comes from. A lot of people ran away to the Carpathian mountains to escape persecution from the Austro-Hungarian empire, the Ottoman empire and the Russian empire. So, they have a tradition of resistance and a Robin Hood-type folklore.”
Hütz believes it’s that spirit that will determine the outcome of the war, despite such serious unknowns as whether the support of the west will hold, or whether Putin will use tactical nuclear weapons. “I don’t consider myself a gifted strategist, but for those following the story, the answer is obvious,” he said. “It will end with the defeat of Russia. Anyone who ever thought that Russia would somehow accomplish the delusion of grandeur they set out for has clearly never met one single Ukrainian.”
Scream of My Blood premiered at the Tribeca film festival and will be released at a later date
