This review by Judith Gennett is reprinted from Green Man Review.
From Edmonton, Alberta, The Kubasonics are the Brave Combo of the zabava, of the Can-Ukrainian Prairies. Giants Of the Prairies is billed as a commentary on Canadian life. Remember the MacKenzie Brothers? The album is a schizophrenic meander, a river of lovely ethnicity flowing between the often goofy banks of what life really is. It takes a while to get used to.
Goofy banks, indeed. Giants Of the Prairies is named for big, strange statues that towns erect. In Minnesota it may be a huge ear of corn or Paul Bunyan, but in Can-Ukrainia, it’s an Easter Egg (Pysanka) or a pieroge, or even a kubasa. The Kubasonics have managed to write 15 verses on these items for the Uke melodied title track, and the song was used on a CBC show about big landmarks! A song that reminds me of some of the old Minnesota guys I’ve met (you could reference Norwegian Bachelor Farmers, sort of) is “Trouble on the Farm,” the true story of Vuioko Metro or “Uncle Metro.” Vuoiko goes to take a leak on his farm and one of his dogs thinks he’s taking out a kubasa, the sausage after which the band is named. Another, in zydeco beat, tells how “Kyshla,” or blood sausage is made. “And Dad made a funnel from an old plastic spool / And stretching out those pigs guts, that would make him drool.”
At the other end of the sausage is that river of loveliness. Brian Cherwick, a University of Alberta ethnomusicologist, plays slow, haunting flute solos on telenka or sopilka, and or a faster one on a drymba, or jews harp. A pretty piece of fusion for gurdyphiles is the up tempo traditional song “Kysil,” accompanied by baglama, tabla, and the Ukrainian hurdy gurdy called the lira — I guess that makes Cherwick a “lyricist”! Old time music lovers will like the Can-Ukrainian dance tune “Early Bird Of Spring,” taken from the repertoire of Bill Boychuck and The Easy Aces, and played on fiddle, bass, drums and tsymbaly.
(self-produced, 2002)
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