Maryna Kramarenko: "I have a desire to come back and restore"
Oleksii Karpovych
author, photographer
Maryna Kramarenko is a Ukrainian jazz pianist, composer and teacher currently based in Helsinki, Finland. She studied music performance and musicology at the Academy of Managerial Personnel of Culture and Arts in Kyiv. Kramarenko is a member of several music projects, including her band Safety Trio, which performs her original material. Maryna Kramarenko is primarily associated with the figure of a guide to the world of music, which is quite atypical for the Ukrainian music scene. In her work, you can hear the influence of Northern European melodies and Japanese jazz, contemplation - Marina pays a lot of attention to silence, space and sensitivity.
At the beginning of the full-scale war, she had to leave for Finland with her son, and it was not an easy decision for a person who is so strongly attached to her environment, where she had been building a certain quality of life for years.
Maryna Kramarenko (Jazz bez 2019). Photo: Oleksii Karpovych
Where did you celebrate 24 February?
I celebrated 24 February at home. I was woken up by my son, who heard that something was happening.
I was sleeping, I had a lot of work the day before. I just didn't hear anything, my son shook me and said: "'Mom, Mom, it's started!
Did you have any plans before the war?
Yes, of course I had plans, but I had to put everything on hold. I had a trio, but the musicians I played with went the other way. Sasha [Korsun, drummer - ed. He was trained as a Gestalt psychologist, and he decided that it would be more useful and closer to him now to help people in this way, rather than with music. In fact, he ended his musical career. Valentyn [Pastukhov, double bassist - ed.] has two children, and he had to work hard and was constantly busy. I was thinking about what to do next. I started recording a new album, gathered some money, and started working with musicians abroad and in Ukraine. Maxim Malyshev, who is now in Thailand, recorded the drums. But, of course, all the plans came to nothing.
Safety Trio — Valentyn Pastukhov, Maryna Kramarenko, Oleksandr Korsun (Jazz bez 2019). Photo: Oleksii Karpovych
What did you do in the early days?
In the early days, everything was very tense. We lived on the 16th floor, in Pozniaky [one of Kyiv's districts - ed. We watched the news all the time, and when we tried to go to the shops a few days later, we came home with nothing because of the huge queues.
On one of the first days, at night, my son saw a rocket flying in Pozniaky and hitting a residential building.
When I heard the first explosion, I started waking my son up to run to the bomb shelter (which was hardly a shelter, more like an unprepared cold basement), but he went to the window in the middle of the night and pulled back the curtain. We saw the second missile flying.
We quickly grabbed our suitcases, which we had prepared in advance, and ran for cover.
I really didn't know what to do. We stayed in Pozniaky for a few days, and then went to my parents' place - they live on the first floor of Bereznyaki, and it was not as scary there as it was on the 16th. I remember going grocery shopping during the air raid, and it was scary.
One day before we left, my son sat down opposite me and asked: "Mum, don't I have a future? What should we do?" I decided to act. Before the full-scale invasion began, my son was applying to a college in Finland with English as the language of instruction. I wrote to my friends in Helsinki and asked if Europe would accept us, if there were any programmes to arrive earlier, because he was applying in April and we were leaving in March. My friends said we could go. I wasn't going to do it myself, but I knew I had to support my son. He was 17 years old at the time, he had plans, and it made me feel uncomfortable.
So this was the main motive for your decision to leave?
Yes, when he asked me if he had a future. And it was an instant decision, because at that time it was so unclear what to do... We were exhausted, we hardly slept, and this greatly affected our condition - as it did for everyone, of course. I had constant panic attacks.
What did the evacuation route look like?
We got ready in almost a day, and in the afternoon I wrote to my friends in Helsinki. Then I started checking everything - which way we would get out, when there would be evacuation trains, how I could go on when we were in Poland. I did this until the evening.
In the evening, my son and I came to my parents and told them that we were leaving in the morning. Everything happened very quickly. All the things we needed were in Pozniaky, so the next day we took a taxi at 6am, packed two backpacks, and from there we went to Darnytskyi railway station.
We thought we'd catch a train there, but we didn't get on. It was a living hell there, like everywhere else in those days at railway stations in different cities. Only in the afternoon did we take a train to the Central Station, and from there we squeezed into a train going to Lviv.
For about three hours we were travelling in the vestibule, people were everywhere. After three hours, the conductor came and told us to follow her. It turned out that a couple of carriages had been attached to one of the stations, and that's how they dispersed the people. We were happy that we could lie down for a while and finally stretch our legs. But after a while, people were picked up again, and we were already sitting with others.
We arrived in Lviv around 4 am. We were supposed to take a train to Poland, but there was a problem with them, one after another they were cancelled. And people were waiting in the underground passage of the station, which was completely packed, standing in the cold for 5-6 hours. At about 9 am, they gave us a long train, and we went to Poland, but not to Przemyśl [the nearest large city near the border with Ukraine - ed].
There was a woman on the train with a child of 9-10 years old, who was supposed to go to Warsaw, and her daughter was supposed to pick her up from the train by car. And I saw that time was running out, and we might not get there on time and miss the plane, so I asked her to help us. Not immediately, but the woman agreed.
It turned out that we were being driven by a volunteer who had been asked by her daughter and who had been taking Ukrainians to Warsaw from the border. We arrived only at 2-3 am in Modlin [an area near the airport in Warsaw - ed.], where we spent the night before the plane in an apartment booked in advance. We were able to get some sleep, and the next day we flew to Helsinki.
When you arrived in Helsinki, how did everything go?
Our friends met us and we stayed with them for a couple of days. Then we went with them to the police, at that time it was 6-7 March and there was no "temporary asylum" in Finland. We were simply registered as refugees, our passports were taken, our fingerprints were taken, and we were told to go to the distribution centre, but we said we had a place to stay. We left our contacts so that we could be reached at the distribution centre. About one day passed, we received a call and were told to come with our belongings to the point where we were taken to the city of Pori.
“Hostel in Pori, where we were before the Finns sheltered us” (Photo from the archive of Maryna Kramarenko)
In Pori, we were put in a dormitory. It was an abandoned building that had probably been preserved for refugees. We were able to stay there for about a week, and I started to feel depressed. The thought of leaving made the ground disappear from under my feet. As I said, I personally did not want to leave, it was not my choice. But I couldn't let my son go alone - he was under 18, and it was a different country. I wanted to really support him.
Then we were on Facebook and in groups, and we saw that Finnish families were taking in Ukrainians. We received a lot of responses to our request - we were in messengers and on the phone, constantly answering. But they mostly offered accommodation in the countryside outside the city, where there are many animals, and I am allergic to animals. At that time, I was experiencing an increase in allergies, and it was probably also psychologically exhausting, and I had to turn down many offers.
Once a man offered me a small student apartment in Helsinki. He said that the apartment was small, but it would be cosy and I could live there until the end of the summer. At the time, it seemed like a very long time, almost six months.
We were immediately ready to leave - at the refugee centre we received various necessary things for life. We had to pack it all up, so we bought two suitcases, packed, and in two days we were in Helsinki. It was not a very comfortable environment, but we were alone, had the necessary household items, and tried to somehow improve our psychological state.
How long did it take you to adapt?
That's a great question - we didn't adapt (laughs). It's just an appearance. There is not a single day when we do not think, do not remember, do not worry. This is forced refugeeism - it's one thing when you come to another country consciously, with plans and the realisation that you are ready to endure it all. But when our normal life ended on 24 February - a life with work and plans - we tried to rebuild something in another country, with a dream of returning to our homeland.
Yes, I dream of returning, I believe in victory. No matter how long I live here, I always think in my head, 'This is temporary, this is temporary'. Yes, I will not sit idly by, but this is temporary. I am looking forward to the victory, and I will be very happy to contribute to the restoration of the state - I will do what I can.
When did you realise that you could and wanted to return to music?
Like many people, I had a period when I couldn't listen to music at all. Nothing at all. I think this desire appeared when everything became so unbearable that I had to immerse myself in something, to reflect, because it was exhausting to exist constantly in the information field and be constantly in tension. I had to switch gears.
The first time it happened was in Pori, when my son suggested looking for a place and an instrument to play. We asked the Finns, and they directed us to the library, where there was an instrument. That was the first time I played a little bit. Since then, I haven't played for a long time.
And when we were already in Helsinki, I wanted to take some second-hand keys so that I could plug in my headphones and play without disturbing anyone. I asked the owner of the apartment if I could do that, and he even helped me find an instrument and bring it over. And I slowly started to recover. In April, I started writing something.
And then my son just made me look for someone I knew in Finland who was a musician to play with. I said I only knew Iro Rantala. My son immediately told me to write to him. Of course, I was hesitant, but I did, and he didn't write back right away, but he did write back and invited us to his house. We talked about what I had mentioned in my letter to him. I wanted to play a charity concert, raise money for Ukraine and donate it to the fund of the Association of Ukrainians in Finland.
Charity concert, Iiro Rantala and Maryna Kramarenko improvisation (photo from the archive of Maryna Kramarenko).
Was that the beginning of the resumption of playing in a normal way?
You know, Rantala and his wife are very nice and bright people, and his help really spread my wings somehow. I felt that I could do something, that here I could still do what I love. Before that, I had an idea to go to work and wash the floors, but my son always stopped me, kept telling me that I should play music.
Rantala contacted the curator of the cultural centre, Natalia Dmytrenko from the Society of Ukrainians, and the concert took place in early May (2022 - ed.). We raised money, it was a small amount of money, about 600 euros, which went to help.
In May, I received a call from Olena Shulga [cultural manager, curator of the Ukrainian segment at Artists at Risk Foundation - ed. She saw on Facebook that I was in Finland and suggested that I apply for the Artists at Risk programme, which Sasha Charkin [Ukrainian jazz trombonist - ed. had told me about earlier, but at that time I was depressed and not in a position to apply for anything. "Who am I?" I thought to myself, a kind of self-destruction. I applied for the residency in early June. And my life became better - I had a grant, I had the means to live a normal life in Helsinki.
I also started a joint project with a vocalist, with whom we played in many interesting places.
That was the beginning of our musical journey. What projects have you managed to implement? I've seen your song "Dreams of Bakhmut", is it just one song or will there be more?
I have already recorded three songs, mastered in Kyiv. Unfortunately, I can't write for an acoustic instrument, because it requires special conditions and funds. That's why I use midi programming.
I took a break for the summer. In general, I needed time and space, solitude, concentration. And the idea [of recording] came after a charity concert - I wanted to create a composition about Bakhmut. It wasn't easy, because I don't feel like an independent musician when I have to concentrate everything in one instrument, but I went this way, and it was interesting.
Why Bakhmut?
Bakhmut is a famous fortress, and when I was writing this composition, there were heavy battles going on there at the same time. And again, thanks to my son, I knew the history of the city, he read a lot about it, watched programmes.
And this support from my son has always kept me going. I am really happy that he is conscious and developing. Bakhmut is all about identity, about what comes out of me, Ukrainian motifs, the collective image of the Ukrainian Cossacks. The idea for the painting came quickly, and when I was thinking about it, I remembered what explosions look like. The explosions in Bakhmut.
What will happen next?
There will be six compositions. Three of them are ready, and perfectionism prevents me from completing it completely - I constantly want to improve it. But I decided for myself that if I like 75 per cent of it, then it's just right. It's the hardest thing to capture, because it's an endless process.
What does life as a Ukrainian musician in Finland look like for you?
It's difficult for a closed-minded person, and it's hard for me to overcome it. I have become very sensitive. There are phrases that really hurt me, which I didn't perceive so sharply before.
I understand that people here will not be in our situation, no matter how hard they try, but it is almost impossible to have empathy for the war, except after living in such conditions. From the point of view of creativity, it has always been important for me that when you collaborate with someone, you need mutual understanding. But if we are in different realities, then try to find it - that's the problem.
I understand that I have to go out and meet musicians, and I think there is still a fear that we will actually get along. It doesn't affect my personal work - I can do as much as I want. It was a little easier with related arts. In the theatre, I felt fine - it was a collaboration with a local women's theatre, and there was nothing relevant to our situation. These were stories about famous women, it was possible to plunge into another reality and work in the space where I highlight events with music.
I would like to find Ukrainian musicians, but I understand that everyone is too busy to plunge into long-term collaborations. But there are performances too, not just charity concerts. We play covers, for example, and we play arrangements of Ukrainian folk songs.
What about the Finnish scene?
The culture of classical music is very strong here. Speaking of jazz, the concerts or jam sessions I've been to mostly feature serious bebop. There's not much else here.
How do you look to the future?
You know, I once had a question in my application for a study course in Helsinki: "How do you see yourself in the future?". And I just wrote, "I don't know how I see myself in the future." In my dreams, I see myself working with people, doing some good deed. We live now, we live today.
I am determined to move, not sit. I am determined to just do my job. I still work officially in Ukraine, at a music school, and the money I earn goes to charity.
Being here, out of respect for the country that has accepted us and in order not to be constantly on subsidies, I try to look for a job. It's difficult, but not impossible - everything here is in Finnish, and sometimes my brain is torn. But there is an instruction to just go in this direction. To keep moving and wait for the opportunity to turn what I have gained here into a good deed in Ukraine. I want to come back and rebuild.