Tour Dates

July 13 Viroqua, WI -Viroqua Music Festival *
July 14 Galva, IL – LevittAMP Summer Concert Series *
July 15 Coralville, IA – Unitarian Universalist church
July 18 Stevens Point, WI – LevittAMP Summer Concert Series *
July 19 Iola, WI – Iola Mills
July 21 Green Bay, WI – LevittAMP Summer Concert Series *
July 22 Chicago, IL – Promontory
July 26: South Bend, IN – Merriman’s Playhouse
July 27: Saline, MI – Acoustic Routes House Concert
July 28: Columbus, OH – Natalie’s Grandview Music Hall
July 30: Cleveland, OH – Beachland Ballroom
July 31: Pittsburgh, PA – Pittsburgh Winery
August 1 and 2 Thomas, WV – The Purple Fiddle
Aug 3 Columbia, MD – Abiding Savior Lutheran Church
*Indicates free shows. Tickets for all other shows are available through the venue.

It wasn’t a normal music venue, not normal in the sense that the front desk was run by volunteers and a woman carrying a newborn said it was okay to go in when I said I was there to cover the show.

A sense of familiarity hummed throughout the expansive ballroom as people greeted each other like it was a family reunion. More chairs were brought in to accommodate the crowd, a hodgepodge of chairs: folding, benches, even a few rocking chairs lined the back row. There must have been a late-minute surge of interest in the band promoting their country’s music and spirit.

Kommuna Lux is a Ukrainian band from the port city of Odesa. They can be described as a folk band in the same way the Pogues play Irish folk music. They are Bagrat Tsurkan on vocals, Oleg Vasyanovych on accordion, Volodymyr Gitin on clarinet, Andrii Okhramovych on trumpet, Yaroslav Besh on trombone and Serhiy Poltorak on drums.

Their style of music is Klezmer and Gangsta Folk and their sound is lively, fun, playful and guaranteed to get a room full of people dancing. In fact, by the second song some of the participants headed back to their chairs just to catch their breaths.

Kommuna Lux is on a second North American tour, not only as ambassadors of Odesa’s musical scene, but also to raise funds for the Rotary Club’s Hospital Beds for Kramatorsk, a city in the Donetsk region of Ukraine.

The Tapestry Folkdance Center in the Longfellow neighborhood of Minneapolis was the perfect place to see this band. During the week, the center hosts a variety of dance nights like English Country and Israeli folk dancing to Contra and Ballroom.

The concert felt more like a celebration, as some in the crowd sat, some danced, while others caught up with friends they hadn’t seen in a while. It felt like the room was only one cake away from turning into a wedding reception.

For a moment, the energy at The Tapestry Folkdance Center was a microcosm of the band’s hometown of Odesa where in 2014 they started out as a pop-up band that would play on the streets and create a mob of revelers with their infectious music. And for an hour and a half they kept the room dancing, finishing with “Hava Nagila” which almost emptied the rocking chairs. One elderly gentleman remained in his but kept tapping the armrest and his toes.