Masha Kashyna has always lived between worlds—between the rigid beauty of Ukrainian classical training and the unruly, self-made grit of street culture; between shimmering metallic tones and earthy, wooden resonance; between nostalgia for the past and a restless pull toward the future. Born in the early post-Soviet years in January 1991, she grew up in an environment that shaped her with equal parts grounding and curiosity. Those dualities now pulse through everything she creates. Her artistry refuses neat boxes: vibraphone, soprano saxophone, synthesizers, bass guitar, visual media, and the unpredictable textures of experimental sound all collide into performances that feel like stepping into a dream you’ve somehow lived before.
Across her work, Masha builds miniature worlds—cinematic soundscapes that evoke soft daydreams, forgotten memories, restless travel, and the kind of emotions that linger long after the last note. Her live sets become immersive rituals, merging flickering visuals with improvised sound, inviting the audience to drift out of their daily life and into something more fluid, more imaginative, more alive. There’s a hybrid spirit at the core of everything she touches: Ukrainian roots, underground sensibilities, jazz fragments, Latin warmth, hip-hop edges, ambient haze. She seems drawn to whatever emerges from below the surface—local cultures, global experimentation, the underground currents that shape what music becomes before the mainstream ever notices.
“Tenderness,” her newest single, might be her most evocative fusion yet. It’s a nostalgic banger that lives between a lyric ballad and reggaetón—soft and intimate one moment, rhythmic and urban the next. Sung in both Ukrainian and English, the track follows a woman awaiting the return of her lover, unraveling the fine lines between longing, hope, and the subtle co-dependencies that creep into relationships. But beneath the romance lies something deeper: a quiet act of cultural reclamation. “Tenderness” is a modern re-interpretation of a Soviet-era song—originally French, later adopted into Soviet culture—and Masha transforms it fully into Ukrainian, lyrically and emotionally. In a time of war, when Russian cultural appropriation has become yet another weapon, her version becomes a hidden political gesture: a Ukrainian woman-artist rewriting the narrative, reclaiming heritage, bending history through art.
The track itself feels like a journey. Co-recorded with her bass player Cristobal Pinto Santana, it begins in cozy acoustic closeness—a voice, a saxophone, a vibe of two people sharing a moment in a room. Then it unfolds into modern urban grooves, weaving synthesizers, bass guitar, and sax lines that float like warm breath on a winter day. There’s something both intimate and expansive here, as if the song is traveling across continents—Ukraine to Germany, memory to present, love to longing, home to wherever home might be found next. Masha’s sense of migration, movement, and identity sits right at the heart of it. You can hear the questions she’s asking—where do we belong, who are we becoming, what does home mean when the world keeps shifting beneath our feet?
Based in Hannover and always moving between genres—Rhumba, Urban Pop, underground hip hop, experimental jazz—Masha Kashyna uses “Tenderness” to show what happens when tradition, political consciousness, and raw emotion collide. It’s a song that feels like a postcard from someone traveling far, but carrying all the familiar pieces of themselves in their pocket. It’s soft, bold, modern, and deeply rooted all at once. And like much of Masha’s work, it leaves you with images even after the sound fades: city streets passing by through a train window, a saxophone echoing in an empty room, a woman standing at a threshold between past and future, still finding her way home through music.
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