Album of the Week – Daria Kulesh – ‘Motherland’

Written by celtic music radio on February 15, 2025

The journey to MotherLand has been a long one that started for Daria Kulesh with her debut album Eternal Child released 10 years ago this month.

MotherLand is her first, full-length, solo album since 2019 and it’s a product of surviving lockdowns as a new mum, a visceral reaction to our increasingly unstable and torn world, where she’s feeling cut off from her own troubled homeland – Russia – and, more specifically, Ingushetia in the North Caucasus.

The heritage that had been a strong inspiration as well as a focus of celebration and pride on earlier records is now a source of very conflicted feelings, which means the styles and stories on MotherLand are mixed and varied, too.

There are songs of war and exile, protest and rebellion as well as songs of peace and joy, salvation and escape. Daria delivers ballads of fear and of love.

Then there are the rich tales, dipping into several languages and spanning a huge geographic area: from the summit of Everest, via the Highlands of Caucasus, to the Western Isles of Scotland; from a slave ship in the Atlantic to a snowy village in Ukraine. Songs of the past, the present and a hope for the future, against all the odds.

And above it all, Daria’s album – featuring a stellar cast of instrumentalists – is a plea for peace.

She will be sharing her thoughts with Hugh Taylor on the Album of the Week Show today at midday.

• Album of the Week Show – Daria Kulesh in conversation with Hugh Taylor – Album of the Week Show – Saturday, February 15, 2025.