Looking Back: Making Music from the Sounds of War

0:00Today on State of the World, making music from the sounds of war.

0:08You're listening to State of the World from NPR. We bring you the day's most vital international stories, up close where they're happening. I'm Greg Dixon. As we say goodbye to 2025, our international reporters are looking back at some of the stories they covered in the last year. Joanna Kikisis is NPR's Ukraine correspondent, and she joins me from Kiev. Joanna, what is your most memorable story of the last year? So, Greg, my most memorable story may seem like a small story compared to what I've been covering this year, because most of the year I've been spending my time, all of my time, actually, covering politics, the politics of peace negotiations, covering what's happening on the battlefield, news report after news report after news report.

0:52And I haven't had time to do features, like spending time with Ukrainians at length and figuring out how the war has affected them. I love doing these stories. These are the stories that keep me going. So the story is actually about a youth orchestra in a town outside Kiev, and they've written a very special composition. Tell me about that and tell me how you found these guys. So I saw this clip. Actually, to be fair, my producer saw this clip first on social media. She forwarded it to me, and it showed a group of musicians, all very young, playing what sounded like the sound of a shot head, like this distinctive buzzing of a shot head drone.

1:30And they were recreating it on their instruments. And a shot head drone is this Iranian-designed attack drone. Often it has warheads on it, and these drones hit Ukrainian cities almost every night. So we tracked down the orchestra, which is called Harmonia. And indeed, the musicians were really young. They're in middle school. They're like 13, 14 years old. The youngest one's like 10 years old. And we spoke to the orchestra conductor, and he said, You know, this is part of a larger composition called Shahed Overture, and it describes what the students hear at night, what the sound of wartime nights in Ukraine sound like.

2:05Fascinating. Well, let's listen to your report from October 2025 about this youth orchestra. On most nights, 14-year-old Rostoslav Musyenko hears something like this buzzing over his house. An Iranian-designed drone called the Shahed. It looks like a small plane and often carries a warhead. Rostoslav says, when it picks up speed, I hide because I'm scared. He knows this sound so well. He plays it on his trombone at orchestra practice.

2:43Joining the other musicians, Most are middle schoolers from the town of Kivshavata outside Kiev. They are playing a composition about Ukraine's nights of war. It's called Shahed Overture. The young musicians are writing it with local guitar teacher Dimitro Kornienko. We used to play jazz and funk songs, Kornienko says. This composition reflects the horror that we now live in.

3:18The orchestra is called Harmonia. They rehearse on a small, brightly lit stage. The conductor, Serhii Ndouji, straps on a bass drum. Then hums a tune to the lead violinist, his 14-year-old daughter, Anna Ndouji,

3:42who starts the piece by evoking a calm night.

3:50It's pleasant and peaceful, Ana says, an ordinary day in an ordinary city until a terrible reality intrudes. Her dad, the conductor, continues. We hear air raid sirens, then a Shahid drone flying, then anti-aircraft guns.

4:14The conductor pounds on his bass drum. Explosions. The drone is shot down. Its wreckage falls on the city. Then, he says, you hear the sirens of an ambulance and firefighters. and rescue workers digging in the rubble, hearing a baby cry.

4:44The drumming, he says, is a heartbeat.

4:50It starts quietly at first and then grows stronger and stronger. The heart beats louder, a sign of life. The young Ukrainians in this orchestra are survivors. Russian strikes blow out their windows at home and force them into bunkers at school. Nearly every week, they play at the funerals of local soldiers. Ruslana Halazyuk, a 20-year-old drummer, struggles to describe the experience. You just stand there, she says, and you just cannot hold back your tears. There is no ending yet for this war or for Shawhead Overture, which the musicians are still writing. So today, they linger on a hopeful note.

5:45That was NPR's Joanna Kikisis reporting in October 2025.

5:55That's the State of the World from NPR. You listen because you value hearing a human perspective on global stories. So please consider supporting our work. If you already contribute to NPR, thank you. If you haven't yet or it's been a while, an easy way is by joining NPR+. It's a simple recurring donation that gets you perks to NPR's podcasts. Invest in a public service that matters to you. Join at plus.npr.org. Thank you for your support and thanks for listening.