Ukrainian-born singer-songwriter, Natisa, has announced the release of her new single on February 3rd 2023. Entitled, Wind Of Hope, the song was written by Natisa after she had escaped from Ukraine to Prague earlier this year, and “when all that was dear and important to me had to be left behind.” It’s been produced by US-born, Prague-based songwriter and musician Gregory Darling, whose latest co-write, Lucky - with Julian Lennon and Gregg Alexander (New Radicals) - recently spent two months in the Top 40 of the Billboard Triple A.
Wind Of Hope is heart-wrenching stuff – ‘Tell me why they broke into our house/Tell me why they tore apart our lives?’ sings Natisa, and then, at her most-bulletproof, ‘Love will rescue us/Ukraine lives in our hearts’ - showcasing a voice at the outer limits of perfection, a mellifluous, brittle instrument so finely poised and positioned as to be able to claim land rights of its own. It also accents a common theme running through Natisa’s songs: love. “Love is like air,” says Natisa. “It is everywhere.”
Born in 1988, in the city of Dnipro in Ukraine, Natisa attended the Kyiv Municipal Academy of Performing and Circus Arts, before graduating to become a soloist for the state academic orchestra, an institution that saw her collaborate with DJ Shiller, as well as 1970s Afro-German-Carribean, disco/funk vocal supergroup, Boney M, an outfit who are still massive in Ukraine. Natisa cites jazz as an influence, although her musical heroes include artists like Ella Fitzgerald, Quincy Jones, Elton John, Barbara Streisand, Madonna, and Mariah Carey, and you can sense the influence of some of these artists on Mantra, Starting To Get Used To and Birds, songs likely to surface on her debut album due to be released in 2023.
Background: at 4.45 am on February 24th, 2022, Natisa woke up to the sound of rockets and explosions. Her first thought was that she couldn’t believe that the war had begun. Then she thought of her son, Platon, aged seven, who was always at her side, and she knew they had to flee. Later that day, her friend called her, and they made a plan: Natisa and Platon would collect the barest of essentials, and escape to the border. But most of the roads around Kyiv had already collapsed, and those that were still functional were impossibly rammed with traffic, a thronging horde of panicking people. They decided to wait one more day and night.
“I don’t know how we survived that night,” says Natisa now. “In the morning, my friend came to pick us up, but, as we drove away from Antonov Airport, we heard shots and explosions.” By now, their plan had been formulated: Natisa’s friend had a brother who lived in the Czech Republic, and they would head for the Polish border, and then on to Prague. Except they were not out of the woods yet.
“When we arrived at the exit to the Zhytomyr highway, which leads towards the Polish border, two cars were already waiting for us,” says Natisa. “There were four women and four children ready to leave in these two cars but the shots became louder and closer, so we had to change our route. We followed our friend’s car through the traffic for 20km before he had to go back to Kyiv to help defend the city. As we watched him drive away, we could see Ukrainian tanks and soldiers arriving. We drove - and lived in - that car for five days until we felt safe.”
Wind Of Hope will be distributed by Nova Universal and made available from February 3rd 2023.
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