Ukrainian traditional song · rock · folk
About
Oleh Skrypka is a Ukrainian musician, vocalist and composer who plays bayan, guitar and trumpet. Besides the band Vopli Vidopliassova he leads solo programs: with a folk instrument orchestra, in a cabaret lineup and with a band. He founded the Kraina Mriy festival. Skrypka has sung in VV since 1986, and the band's history has its own page. His solo line runs in parallel. The album "Inkoly" came out in 2001, "Vidrada" in 2004 and "Sertse u mene vrazlyve" in 2009. In 2001 he also played the blacksmith Vakula in the film "Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka". On 18 April 2003 Skrypka took the stage at the club Stoned Baboon without a band. For almost two hours he played alone on bayan and guitar, and a Kyiv Post reviewer called him a one-man band. The set had his own versions of folk songs, ballads and covers of AC/DC, Louis Armstrong and the group Kino. Between numbers he read his poems, and one song mixed Ukrainian, English and French words. In 2010 he launched the project "Jazz Cabaret Zabava", built on songs by Bohdan Veselovsky, one of the first authors of Ukrainian popular song. Skrypka brought it to the Art Jazz Cooperation festival in Rivne straight from a tour of the US and Canada. He presented the album "Zhorzhyna" in Kyiv on 18 March 2011. By his account he spent more than five years in Toronto, Kyiv and New York restoring the forgotten repertoire. In 2011 he also released "Humanisty" with Les Podervianskyi, with whom he had shared a stage since 2000. Skrypka launched the Kraina Mriy festival in 2004 at Spivoche Pole in Kyiv and named it after a VV song. The summer edition falls on Ivan Kupala, the winter one on Christmas. In 2006, according to Kyiv Post, about fifty musicians and groups from fifteen countries took part. In 2024 the festival marked its 20th anniversary at the Hryshko National Botanical Garden. The Kraina Mriy charity foundation, which Skrypka founded, held collections and auctions there. Skrypka plays his songs with the National Academic Orchestra of Folk Instruments of Ukraine, which has more than forty instruments, among them bandura, cimbalom and kobza. In May 2024 sixty orchestra musicians joined VV on stage at his 60th-anniversary concert at Stereo Plaza. "Dyvo" and "Rozmova z Mahatmoiu" were played with the orchestra for the first time. His Bandcamp page holds sixteen live recordings from March 2023 to January 2026: with the orchestra, with Band XL, Love Band and Grand Cabaret Girls Band, plus a solo recording from Gulliver on 17 August 2025.
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