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Musical Notes on  “ДЕ ТИ: Where are you?”    

Leo Wolansky                                                     

Why does music exist? Why does the human brain appreciate melody?

The root of the answer may be found in infancy.

Many months before a baby can understand the textual content of language, a baby will respond to speech, especially the soothing voice of the baby’s mother. It’s not the words the mother says that matter. It’s the intonation. The baby can understand the emotions of tenderness, anger, frustration, despair, joy, and sorrow, without understanding words. So intonations can communicate emotions before and perhaps on a deeper level than text can.  What is melody? Pure intonation!

One of the strange phenomena we have seen with the russian genocidal invasion of Ukraine is the disconnect between what people know and what people feel. When the World saw Ukraine invaded there was nearly ubiquitous sympathy, which peaked when the atrocities of Bucha and Mariupol came to light. As we know, the sympathy resulted in public outcries. The outcries reached governing bodies, which issued formal statements of condemnation and sent aid, both military and humanitarian. Once the world decided that russia was the quintessential monster, committing war crimes and even genocide, and the world decided that Ukraine was the quintessential victim in need of help, the Free World felt a sense of satisfaction. We knew what to do! But the continued missile and drone attacks by russia on apartment buildings, killing and crippling innocent civilians led to a strange emotional reaction—apathy.

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It’s similar to the emotional impact that each human being feels toward death. You know it awaits you, but because you are unable to solve it, you simply block out the emotions you ought to feel. You create a “brick wall” to separate the disturbing truth on the outside, from the rather delicate psyche on the inside. “ДЕ ТИ: Where are you?” has the task of “breaking down that wall.” Melody, in conjunction with the text, is intended to find the cracks in that wall, so that good-hearted members of the Free World feel again, feel the pain, feel the empathy. Music relies on a balance of the familiar and the original. Too much of the familiar and soon the music becomes boring. Too much of the original and the listener can’t follow the music. It goes “over your head.” Of course, each individual has differing musical ability. Mozart, for example, could listen to a complete Sonata once, go home, and write out all the notes. Another person can’t handle singing “Happy Birthday to You!” So, finding the correct balance of familiar and original for diverse audiences can be a challenge.

In “ДЕ ТИ: Where are you,” the music starts with an E note played on the open E bass string, the lowest note on the guitar. This note repeats with a great deal of regularity throughout the song, providing the “familiar.” The musical technique of playing a repeat note many times usually the first note and the final note, defining the tonal center of the song, is known as “a pedal point.” Another term for this technique is a “drone,” strangely appropriate during this war. A pedal point is named after the pedal on a church organ, since often an organist would hold down a single pedal with their foot to demonstrate the tonal center or key, while they would play more complicated things with their hands. In “ДЕ ТИ: Where are you,” the open E string pedal point symbolizes “the wall” we use to provide stability in our emotional state to protect themselves from the pain of facing reality. Together with the E bass note of the guitar, “ДЕ ТИ: Where are you,” starts with a simple chord on the bandura, defining the key to be E minor, minor keys typically being associated with a sad feeling.

As stated above, music needs a balance of the familiar and the original. In “ДЕ ТИ,” the “original” largely comes from the high-pitched stings (the treble strings). Although these are mostly played two strings at a time, in a familiar type of harmony, called major thirds, the paired notes sequentially slide down one “guitar fret” at a time, in a chromatic scale, providing an original sound that produces an eerie, disturbing feeling. Every two measures, we hear the bandura again, adding an element of familiarity, stability, but still in the sad E-minor key. More on the symbolism of the bandura later.

Toward the end of the instrumental intro, the key/tonal center moves away from E minor to G major. A switch to major generally produces a sense of optimism and positivity. By playing the G major 7th chord, the sound is further associated with mellow jazz and conveys peace. The first verse then begins in the key of G major and the words continue this sense of optimism. The “sky was blue,” “a mother went outside to get her children food,” all parts of normal life. Indeed, at the Mariupol dram theater, food was being distributed outside the building to give the refugees a sense of normalcy. The next lines, “life changed in a flash” and “a frightening, thunderous crash” are played to two chords the transition us away from G major. For the line, “She screamed for her children ‘Where are you?’” the music moves to a B dominant 7th chord. In traditional Western music, the dominant 7th chord is a core device, which provides contrast to the chord that defines the key (tonal center) of a piece. As a result, the B dominant 7th chord prepares us for a transition, the transition to the refrain (chorus) of the song. What we are not prepared for is the transition to a new language, Ukrainian. The mother sings in her native language, “ДЕ ТИ…,” This adds an element of great unfamiliarity to the non-Ukrainian speaking listener, but also projects realism, since the listener understands that the setting of the song is Ukraine. At the outset, of the refrain, the guitar plays a special type of E-minor chord, one with an F# added, creating what is called a E-minor 2nd chord, creating novelty to the sound.

What is particularly novel is that the melody starts with the second note of the scale in E-minor, the F# note. The entire melody of the first line is sung without returning to the E-minor note in an E-minor chord. The melody and harmonies in the guitar have moved us to an A-minor 2nd chord. And the melody does not even arrive on the root of the A-minor chord when the chord is played. Instead, the first note sung in the melody during the word “Доню” (pronounced “Dawn-yoo” and meaning “little daughter”), is a D note, which is outside an A-minor chord altogether. A note outside the chord being played on the downbeat of a musical measure is known as an “appoggiatura.” This is a musical technique that typically provides “originality” and pathos in a melody. As a result, the listener is propelled forward without a sense of finality. The music of the three remaining lines of text in the refrain have a relationship to the first line known as a “circle of fifths,” a special type of “a musical sequence.” This means that the harmony of each line acts as a dominant chord to the next line, further propelling the melody forward, postponing the return of the E note in the melody and E-minor chord on the guitar, but using a familiar harmonic pattern.

The big musical surprise comes on the word “Mamo.” In the middle of this predictable “circle of fifths” the guitar plays an unanticipated F-major chord, as the F# note we anticipate in the key of E-minor has been replaced with an F-natural (non-sharp F). The B-natural note sung in the melody on the word “Мамо” clashes with the F-major chord, which adds originality and pathos. This coincides with our imagining that it is a child that sings this line, in one of the most distressing situations in life, a child realizing they have lost their Mama. Replacing the F# with the F-natural in the scale also introduces an entirely different musical technique. Rather than using the conventional Western minor scale, it introduces a scale from antiquity known as the Phrygian mode. The Phrygian mode is associated with extreme sorrow, appearing in lamentations. It is more prevalent in middle eastern music than in European tradition. Notable exceptions come from southern Spain due to the Moorish influence and the folk music of Ukraine, the mode having been introduced through the many raids from Turkey by the Ottoman empire. With the word “Де” of the line “Де діти?” (pronounced “Deh dyee-tyh?” and meaning “Where are the children?”), the melody is finally heading toward the final E-note sung with the harmonic support of the E-minor chord, but the penultimate chord in the guitar is B-flat major 7th. When “E” is the final note of the Phrygian mode, the B-flat creates a striking dissonance with the “E” known as a “tritone.” This intensifies tension. But the F-natural note of the B-flat major 7thchord has a special function of resolving to the E giving and therefore the F serves as the “leading tone,” the downward leading tone being a unique feature of the Phrygian mode. The remaining notes of a B-flat major 7th chord, the D, A, also harmonize in a very natural way with the F and help it to resolve to the E. This relationship of B-flat major 7th resolving to E-minor is a favorite musical technique in my compositions.

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So, after a long period of delay, the melody and harmony have returned to E-minor as the refrain ends. The guitar repeats the E bass pedal point heard in the musical intro as the song began, giving more familiarity, but the higher strings are playing parallel fourths in a descending chromatic scale instead of parallel major thirds, so a new sound is introduced that is also associated with antiquity or tension. A slight slowing of the tempo occurs here and is intensified going into the second verse. The second verse is sung in English. The melody is initially identical to the melody of the first verse, which started with optimism. But the harmony is foreboding by starting with an E-minor chord instead of a G major 7th chord. Such a relationship between two keys is known as the relative major and relative minor. The pattern of chromatic descending harmonies in the higher strings continues, but these are on bass strings in parallel fourths. Added to this is a descant. A high voice is holding a B-note, adding a second note to the pedal point. Such notes are also commonly introduced in lamentations. On the guitar, the G string to be played as a third “pedal point,” but rather than being a source of familiarity and comfort, but the G pedal point clashes with the chromatic descending harmonies and the tension builds. The tension is particularly amplified by the understatement of the text, “The russian word for kids was written on the pavement of the shelter in Mariupol and could be seen from the skies.” There is no mention of the horrors that took place as 600 people were buried alive. It’s as though the singer can’t bear to say the words. But the music says it through the dissonance, which, added to the bass E pedal point, implies a funeral dirge. For the third line, the guitar continues with the pedal point and we again hear the descending high major third harmonies, we last heard in the instrumental intro that opened the song.

There is a higher descant sung by two voices on an E. The E continues to drone between the third and fourth lines and makes use of a musical “suspension” a musical device that builds up tension, in this case creating a sound that recalls the whistling of a falling bomb. The text “But if you split that word in two, it spells, ‘Where are you?’” focuses on the irony. The giant letters mean one thing in russian and another in Ukrainian. Next, as the chord moves back to the B dominant 7th chord for only the second time in the song, something unexpected happens in the text. The song has been a narrative telling the listener about the sky, the mother, the mother’s screams, the explanation about the words… But now the listener is addressed directly. It’s as if the singer came down from the stage and walked straight up to your seat, looked you in the eye, and pleaded, “Can you hear the victims’ desperate cries?” The unspoken words being, “Will you help them?” And now we hear the refrain a second time. But our understanding of it is new because the words “DE TY” have been translated for us and the double meaning of “DETY” is now clear. We know that the sign on the pavement was also crying out, “Where are you?” in the sense of “Where is the humanity in you that you would bomb innocent children?” Additionally, “Where are you?” in the sense that the Western world disarmed Ukraine in exchange for security assurances to respect Ukraine’s borders, but now is providing insufficient aid to stop the genocidal invasion.

The music of the second refrain mixes the familiar entries of the two first voices, but now adds two contrapuntal harmonies. These two voices sing just two words “DE TY?” but then hold onto their notes, using the musical device known as “suspensions,” which adds tension and complexity to the “circle of fifths,” converting the G major to a G major 7th chord, followed by the conversion of the F major to an F major 7th chord. This adds richness to the harmony. The most complex harmony is on the “Де діти?” (pronounced “Deh dyee-tyh”) chord. Including the guitar, the chord consists of what would be called a “tone cluster,” six different notes of the seven available notes on a diatonic scale. This constitutes the harmonic climax, maximizing the tension, and then the music resolves to the familiar E-minor pedal point. This time the descending chromatic high notes are struck violently on the guitar to reflect the violence of the bombing. After “Де діти? (De Dity?)” is repeated, the guitar music from the instrumental intro returns, and we seems to be heading to the end of the song, but suddenly we hear a repeat of the line “Can you hear the victims’ desperate cries?” This time something new happens. The note from the word “cries” was digitally “pitch-modified” raising it from F# to G. Because of this conversion, instead of taking us from B dominant 7th to E-minor, we are pulled from C dominant to F-minor. An upward ½ step modulation is used fairly frequently in contemporary popular music and typically creates a sense of excitement. In this song the effect is amplified because of the upward resolving appoggiatura in the melody of the refrain to the words, «Де ти?» Further amplifying this effect is another coinciding surprise. To this point we have heard four singers from the Ukrainian diaspora in North America singing about Ukraine. Now as we hear the question “Can you hear the victims’ desperate cries?” we hear the harmony of a descant, sung from 4500 miles away, behind partially closed borders of a country at war. This is followed by a complete refrain, sung by an internationally renowned Ukrainian boys’ choir, who enrich the harmonies with their angelic voices. In their final line, they expand “ДЕ ТИ (De Ty)” to ask, “Where are you, World?”

DETY Song Studio Homin Stepiw

As the singing ends, the guitar takes over with the now familiar descending chromatic harmonies. The bandura plays the final line, which is a chaotic dissonance. This is the sound produced by stroking in one direction, the strings of a bandura below the bridge. This portion of the strings are typically considered nonfunctional. Stroking these portions of the strings pays homage to an iconic composition “Homin Stepiw” (the rumblings of the steppes) by a famous bandura player, Hryhoriy Kytasty. The bandura is the official folk instrument of Ukraine, and attempts to commit genocide against Ukraine have included the bandurists, since they were minstrels of Ukrainian folk-lore, and maintained Ukrainian culture over centuries of persecution. In ““ДЕ ТИ: Where are you?” this dissonant passage is meant to conjure up an image of a bandura being destroyed as debris from the Mariupol theater falls on it with strings snapping, as a symbol of genocide.

Another composer that should be mentioned is Mykola Leontovych. Leontovych is best known for creating the music of “Carol of the Bells,” but his numerous arrangements of Ukrainian folk music feature remarkable originality and lyricism. I was fortunate enough to sing many Leontovych arrangements over the years mostly due to my having sung in my sister Bohdanna’s vocal ensemble. Being familiar with the rich harmonies of Leontovych, I tried to introduce a bit of his style in the vocal parts of “ДЕ ТИ.”

Leontovych was murdered by a Soviet agent in 1921, probably another victim of Ukrainian cultural genocide. But that genocide will never be complete. With Dudaryk’s help, the listener can finally “hear the victims’ desperate cries.”

The brick wall is being penetrated—and obliterated!

Once the human being not only knows what’s happening to Ukraine, but feels it too, what follows is empathy and support!