Cover of the documentary series “Spalakh”, SLUKH media.
By Yana Kuznietsova
The era of long-form music reviews is effectively over. As visual formats took over the market, specialised media faced a choice: either switch to quick, entertaining content or find a new way to discuss complex topics. Ukrainian music journalism chose a different path. Traditional editorial offices gradually transformed into full-fledged documentary production houses.
Today, the video essay goes beyond the format of a short biographical overview of an artist or a visualised album review. It increasingly functions as a research-based media format that combines interpretation, contextualisation, and engagement with cultural narratives.
From backstage to testimony: the transformation of the genre
For decades, music criticism was text-based. However, in the era of streaming, where algorithms shape our playlists faster than any critic, the classic review has lost its significance. Readers no longer need to read long articles to understand the sound of a new album—a single click is enough. The media now faces a new challenge: to give the audience what Spotify or YouTube Music cannot provide—namely, context, historical background, and a visual representation of what lies behind the notes. Thus, music analysis has gradually moved from the written page to the screen.
Along with this, the very essence of music films has changed. Just a decade ago, documentaries in this field resembled extended diaries: glossy success stories, polished backstage footage, or simply PR coverage of world tours. The camera functioned as a marketing tool, serving the cult of a specific artist. Today, however, the perspective is radically different, as the focus has shifted from the performer to broader cultural processes.
The modern music video essay as a sociocultural investigation
Instead of asking musicians the standard questions about their “sources of inspiration,” journalists work with archival footage and expert commentary, presenting music as a mirror of society. They analyse how local scenes reflect our identity, how yesterday’s underground suddenly becomes mainstream due to social shifts, and how forgotten recordings from the past shape the sound of the present. In this format, the editorial team has found the perfect balance: they pack academic rigour into cinematic dynamics, speaking to the digital audience about complex topics on equal terms.
The editorial team as a production company: constructing identity through video essays
In the Ukrainian market, this transformation is most vividly illustrated by the evolution of the media outlet “SLUKH”.
Sensing society’s demand to rethink its own culture, the editorial team effectively transformed its newsroom into a documentary studio.
Music critics became researchers and screenwriters, and large-scale video essays replaced the usual interviews and quick reviews. This required not only new technology but also a radical shift in thinking: the outlet abandoned the pursuit of daily news hooks in favor of complex, long-term projects.
At the heart of these works was not so much the music itself as the search for identity and the dismantling of colonial myths. Journalists stopped focusing solely on contemporary celebrities and became role-playing archaeologists in the field of audiovisual materials. They began to “unearth” forgotten or deliberately erased layers of Ukrainian culture—from local underground movements to historical examples of pop music from the last century. Music in these pieces serves as a kind of key that helps provide a deeper understanding of social processes.
A telling case study is the investigation of the phenomenon of “mustachioed funk”, Ukrainian pop music of the 1970s. The journalists took the half-forgotten legacy of Soviet vocal-instrumental ensembles (VIA) and reassembled it anew. Instead of the stereotype imposed by the metropolis of a purely folkloric, sharovarnya pop scene, the audience saw a progressive scene that produced high-quality funk, soul, and jazz-rock
In fact, this niche publication has taken on an unexpected mission—it has become an institution of memory, where each video returns to society its own lost names and meanings.
This example illustrates how journalists work with documentary archives: they not only discover and bring to light both new and forgotten music tracks, but also reinterpret musical history, placing it in a contemporary context and debunking the myth of the Ukrainian music scene’s alleged low quality and secondary status based on empirical facts. This approach has made it possible to create a fundamentally new media product. It shapes the image of Ukrainians based exclusively on an understanding of their own cultural background. Viewers are presented with evidence that our cultural space has always been complex and self-sufficient.
Documentary film as a tool of cultural diplomacy: overcoming “news fatigue”
At the international level, music documentaries emerge as an effective antidote to global “news fatigue”. Traditional news reporting, with its emphasis on statistics and geopolitical interpretations, often leads to information overload, which weakens emotional engagement and contributes to audience burnout. As a result, news feeds lose attention, and viewers develop a kind of defense mechanism, distancing themselves from complex and traumatic content.
Culturally oriented documentary as an alternative mode of communication: one that is more sensory, narratively rich, and capable of restoring an empathetic connection with the audience
Music is a universal language, and video makes it understandable through storytelling. When a viewer anywhere in the world watches a high-quality video about Kyiv’s electronic underground or the history of Ukrainian jazz, they perceive a society equal to their own—complex and modern—capable of shaping its own cultural meanings. This is precisely how strong horizontal connections are forged—connections that cannot be achieved through press releases or official government communications. From a media management perspective, the dissemination of such content on international platforms and at festivals is a classic example of “soft power.” Music documentaries function as a tool of cultural diplomacy, offering alternative narratives about Ukraine that go beyond the dominant frames of war and crisis. They contribute to reimagining the country as a culturally dynamic space where, alongside the experience of war, creativity and contemporary cultural practices are also articulated.
Archive of an era: how the media preserves our cultural code
The gradual shift of Ukrainian music journalism toward documentary film and video essays should not be viewed merely as a reaction to crisis conditions. Rather, it is a matter of a structural transformation of the media landscape. Niche publications are increasingly moving beyond the role of reporters or reviewers of music releases and adopting more analytical and interpretive formats. Discussions of music are taking on the status of a tool for cultural analysis, allowing us to simultaneously make sense of local cultural processes and form more complex ideas about Ukraine’s cultural presence in the global sphere.
Over time, the daily news cycle will inevitably lose its relevance, and current events will gradually shift into the realm of historical memory. Video documentary projects can acquire the status of important audiovisual archives of the era, capturing the ways in which cultural identity is understood and constructed in the moment. The transformation of part of the media from traditional editorial formats to documentary productions indicates an expansion of their function from providing timely information to participating in the production of cultural memory and representation. In this sense, such projects can be viewed as elements of long-term cultural archiving, documenting the Ukrainian experience within the complex process of historical articulation.
Opinions expressed here are those of the authors alone and do not necessarily reflect or represent the views, policies or positions of the EJO or the organisations with which they are affiliated.
This article was first published on: https://ua.ejo-online.eu/ The original article is available here: https://ua.ejo-online.eu/9420/sfery-vysvitlennya/rol-muzychnoi-dokumentalistyky-yak-zafiksuvaty-identychnist-pid-chas-kryz
