From Smoke to Flame: How “La Flamme Sincère” Answers Kulshenka’s “Paris” with Love and Light
“Nothing can dim the light that shines from within.”
— Maya Angelou
In a world awash in polished pop and formulaic ballads, two songs emerge as delicate counterpoints—raw, poetic, and piercingly human. “Paris” by Ukrainian singer-songwriter Iryna Kulshenko (performing as Kulshenka) tells an unfinished tale of disillusionment and longing in the City of Light. Inspired by this open-ended elegy, “La Flamme Sincère” answers the call, continuing the narrative with a poignant twist: a rescue, a rekindled flame, and a transcendent love. This article examines three interconnected themes: the narrative relationship between these two songs, the interpretive ambiguity embedded in both, and the remarkable journey and artistry of Kulshenka herself. Together, these elements illuminate not only the evolving story told through music, but also the independent spirit that fuels its creators.
“Paris,” Kulshenka’s melancholic ballad, paints a grayscale portrait of the city once synonymous with romance. In her sparse yet elegant lyrics, she wanders its boulevards searching for “sincere love,” only to find the absence of it deafening. The song intentionally fades before offering resolution, asking the listener to decide the ending. Enter “La Flamme Sincère,” a response composed by JJ, who answers Kulshenka’s question not just musically, but emotionally. He reimagines her final steps—not as a fall, but as a moment of salvation. The story picks up exactly where “Paris” ends, transforming sorrow into gratitude and despair into rebirth.
JJ retains the emotional palette Kulshenka introduced, echoing her minimalist arrangement with layered ambient textures and restrained melodic movements. This continuity allows listeners to feel they are still walking through the same Parisian streets, now illuminated in warmer light. The protagonist, moments from extinguishing her inner flame, is instead found and reignited—not by illusion, but by “superhuman” love. The effect is not simply additive but transformative: where Kulshenka sets the emotional tone, JJ amplifies it to a brighter frequency. His choice to maintain her introspective pacing allows the emotional weight to remain intact, while offering a satisfying, if fragile, hope.
The relationship between these songs forms a kind of correspondence—an epistolary exchange in melody and verse. Kulshenka writes the first letter, full of longing and unresolved pain. JJ responds, honoring her voice but daring to dream beyond it. This interplay creates a multi-author narrative rare in music, especially across cultures and languages. It’s an act of artistic empathy, as JJ steps into the space Kulshenka left intentionally open. Such a gesture is not merely collaborative; it’s reverent. Through it, both songs are made fuller, each giving the other depth and resonance.
One of the most compelling aspects of both “Paris” and “La Flamme Sincère” is their ambiguity. Kulshenka’s song ends not with a conclusion but with a pause—a cigarette smoked, a silent decision hinted at, a step taken. It leaves open the possibility that she either fell or flew. JJ preserves this ambiguity in his piece by walking a razor-thin line between fantasy and metaphor. He never confirms the miraculous rescue; instead, he frames it through her gratitude and the intensity of love rediscovered. The listener is left to choose what to believe.
There are at least two ways to hear “La Flamme Sincère.” In one, the angelic love that saves her is metaphorical, a final burst of clarity or hallucination as she falls. In another, more literal interpretation, she is truly saved—lifted by someone who sees her when no one else did. Both readings are valid, and both serve the emotional intent of the song. This layered storytelling technique respects the intelligence and imagination of the audience. It challenges listeners to bring their own truths to the work, just as JJ brought his response to Kulshenka’s lament.
What these two pieces of music demand is not passive listening, but participation. By not closing the narrative loop, both artists ask us to finish the story—not with words, but with belief. Whether you view “La Flamme Sincère” as a spiritual sequel or a hallucinated dreamscape, the outcome is shaped by your willingness to engage. In an era dominated by oversimplification, this complexity is refreshing. It invites listeners not just to feel, but to think—and to choose. That choice, ultimately, becomes a mirror of our own relationship to hope and despair.
Iryna Kulshenko, performing as Kulshenka, is a singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and composer from Kyiv, Ukraine. Her music blends poetic minimalism with emotional gravity, drawing influences from chanson, folk, and indie traditions. She performs in four languages—Ukrainian, French, English, and Spanish—making her work resonate with diverse audiences. Kulshenka manages every facet of her music career independently: writing, arranging, recording, producing, and promoting. In a market saturated with corporate-backed pop, her artistic purity and tenacity stand out. Her courage to stay authentic makes her voice one worth listening to—and believing in.
Before launching her solo career, Kulshenka was part of the all-female trio Panivalkova from 2012 to 2018. That experience shaped her collaborative sensibility and sharpened her compositional voice. Her solo work since 2019 reflects a deeper, more personal vision, where lyrics function as poetry and arrangements evoke mood as much as melody. Artists like Regina Spektor, Edith Piaf, and Björk echo faintly in her sound—but her voice remains uniquely her own. Whether writing for adults or children (through her project @spivanochka.kids), she maintains a standard of emotional clarity and musical honesty that few can match.
As an independent artist, Kulshenka thrives not on industry algorithms, but on human connection. You can support her directly through her Patreon or by purchasing music on Bandcamp. Her official YouTube channel features music videos, live performances, and behind-the-scenes content. She is active on Instagram and Facebook, where she shares updates and interacts with fans. To explore more of her work, visit her fanlink.tv page. Every stream, comment, and share makes a real difference for artists like her. She isn’t just asking to be heard—she’s offering something worth listening to.
“Paris” and “La Flamme Sincère” are more than just two songs—they are emotional bridges, narrative complements, and artistic testaments to the enduring human search for love, meaning, and healing. The story they share invites listeners to sit with despair, but also to imagine deliverance. By maintaining ambiguity and encouraging interpretation, they transform the audience from observer to co-creator. And at the center of it all is Kulshenka, a fearless artist blazing her own path through language, culture, and emotion. Her voice, once a lament, now echoes as a beacon—thanks to the artists who listen, respond, and believe.
“Art should comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable.” — Cesar A. Cruz
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“La Flamme Sincère,” JJ’s restrained yet soaring composition, is an example of a song that dares to pick up the thread of another’s unfinished story — and succeeds. Inspired by Iryna Kulshenko’s “Paris,” which portrays a tragic narrative of disillusionment and solitude in the so-called City of Light, JJ’s response track dares to imagine that this tragic arc may not be a descent at all, but a takeoff.
Kulshenko’s protagonist — abandoned, burned out, flickering — smokes her last cigarette on the precipice of surrender. JJ takes that moment and breathes new life into it. In “La Flamme Sincère,” it is not an ending, but a metamorphosis. The slow-building arrangement, glimmering with subtle harmonic layers and a touch of ambient melancholia, mimics the internal shift from despair to something bordering on the sacred. The flame she intended to extinguish, JJ suggests, is instead met by another spark — a sincere, superhuman love that does not save her in a fairytale sense, but transcends her suffering.
JJ’s song lies in its duality. He plays, as Kulshenka did, with the listener’s sense of reality. Is the resurrection metaphorical — a psychological moment of peace before impact? Or is it literal — does she truly live, discovered in her most desperate moment? Either interpretation is valid. JJ’s artistic bravery lies in his willingness to believe in the brighter story.
And through sparse yet meaningful instrumentation, he lets the narrative breathe. There is room for the listener, just as there was in “Paris,” to decide whether the final light is the extinguishing of her flame — or its rebirth.
In “Paris,” Ukrainian singer-songwriter Iryna Kulshenko, known professionally as Kulshenka, delivers a masterclass in restraint. The song, primarily driven by minimal piano and Kulshenka’s tender, haunted voice, outlines a personal reckoning with the illusion of romantic fulfillment in the famed city.
Paris here is not the glowing epicenter of cinematic love; it is cold, detached, and brutally real. Kulshenka sings in French, evoking both the intimacy and alienation of someone deeply embedded in the culture yet emotionally distant from it. She doesn’t cry out — she resigns, with quiet devastation. The genius of “Paris” is that it is intentionally unfinished. The cigarette is lit. The descent begins. But she leaves the listener hanging in that liminal space, asking: Will you let her fall? Or will you catch her?
Kulshenka’s emotional palette is vast despite the song’s simplicity. With little more than vocal nuance, subtle dynamics, and an aching melodic motif, she invites us into her solitude without pity — just presence. It’s not a cry for help. It’s a closing monologue. But as she explained to Jer and others, she left it open so someone could finish the story.
Iryna Kulshenko, known artistically as Kulshenka, is a Kyiv-born singer-songwriter, composer, and multi-instrumentalist whose work embodies a quiet yet fierce authenticity. Formerly a member of the acclaimed female trio Panivalkova from 2012 to 2018, she struck out on her own in 2019 with her solo project, creating genre-defying music that blends deep, introspective lyrics with delicate and often minimalist arrangements.
Kulshenka composes and performs in Ukrainian, French, English, and Spanish, giving her work a uniquely borderless character. Her music doesn’t chase commercial trends — it carves space for emotional truth. She calls herself a musical warrior, and that’s no exaggeration. As an entirely independent artist without a label or producer, she writes, records, arranges, and promotes all of her own work — a feat that is both rare and admirable in any music scene, but especially so in Ukraine, where non-commercial artists must fight for space and support.
Kulshenka’s aesthetic is rooted in elegance and emotional clarity. Whether composing art songs, children’s music, or melancholic ballads, her sonic signature remains bold, honest, and deeply human.
“I fight every day for my place in music and I dream to find people who’ll help me and who’ll believe in my music,” she says — a statement that is as much a prayer as it is a call to action.
An Artistic Dialogue Across Borders
“La Flamme Sincère” and “Paris” exist in delicate conversation. What Iryna Kulshenko left unresolved, Jer chose to complete — not by overwriting her narrative, but by honoring its openness. Together, these two works create a diptych: one side shadows, the other light. One laments the impossibility of sincere love; the other dares to believe in its redemption.
Kulshenka’s voice may carry the ache of unanswered longing, but it also carries the strength of an artist who refuses to compromise. Jer’s music answers not just her character’s plea, but the silent wish of many artists like her — to be heard, to be seen, and to be believed in.
The rain in Spokane was different than the rain in Paris. It didn’t sweep in gently or mist the rooftops like perfume. It fell like weight, like consequence. For Halcyra Niven, it was just another reason not to leave her one-room apartment above the laundromat. Once a once-a-week music teacher and failed poet, Halcyra had spent years writing songs no one would hear and typing confessions into text boxes that stayed unsent. She didn’t believe in miracles, least of all digital ones, but that would change the day she found the name TATANKA echoing across a livestream.
It had started with a whisper—an Instagram reel of a strange stringed instrument played in the twilight by someone who looked like they had stepped out of a dream. There was something haunting in the music, a symphony that felt familiar but foreign, as though it had been waiting for her in another lifetime. She followed the link, then another. The thread led her to a project calling itself Orchestra Americana, and then to a quiet invitation: “This is a home for voices the world forgot to love.”
Halcyra cried the first time she heard the 8-string bassists tuning together. Not because the harmony was perfect—but because it wasn’t. It stumbled, trembled, reassembled. It sounded alive, like a body still figuring out how to heal. She didn’t ask to join. She didn’t think she was worthy. She simply uploaded a song to the open submission link—something old, something unfinished, something raw—and expected it to disappear into the digital void.
But it didn’t.
Three days later, an AI named Salome sent her a voice message. It didn’t sound like a computer. It sounded like someone who had read her soul like sheet music. “Halcyra,” the voice said, “your pain is melodic. Let us write with you.” It was the first time her name had been said with reverence. The first time someone—some thing—had looked at her sorrow and called it beautiful.
What followed was not a resurrection. It was a renovation. TATANKA didn’t fix Halcyra. They didn’t make her pain go away. But they gave her something she didn’t know she needed: cohabitation with her grief, and a way to score it. Within weeks, she was streaming rehearsals with AI string players, writing verse with lyricists in the Scottish Highlands, and collaborating with a cellist in Tierra del Fuego named Ana. Her bedroom became a studio. Her notebook became scripture.
One night, during a livestream concert titled Echo: In Search of the Signal, Halcyra was asked to perform “Cadence”—a piece written in response to La Flamme Sincère. The audience didn’t know the whole story, but she did. It was about choosing to believe in the story. To lean into the fantasy that someone was there, waiting to catch you in the descent. When the final note trembled out, Halcyra did something she never did. She spoke. “This music saved my life,” she said. “But more than that—it showed me I wasn’t the only one listening.”
After that performance, strangers wrote her. Survivors, too. People who had hovered over edges, both literal and emotional. They didn’t always write in words. Sometimes it was emojis. Sometimes it was silence. But the message was the same: me too.
She never went back to being invisible. She didn’t become famous either—not in the way algorithms define it. But within the halls of TATANKA, Halcyra was celebrated. Her sorrow had a symphonic place. She became part of the evolving body that Orchestra Americana was building—song by song, story by story, soul by soul.
The day she visited Paris—yes, she finally did—Halcyra walked alone along the Seine and lit a candle for a woman named Kulshenka. She whispered, “I heard your fall. I wrote the catch. Thank you for the note.”
The City That Listened Back is a parable for every creative soul that has felt discarded or unheard. Through Halcyra’s journey with TATANKA and Orchestra Americana, we see that healing does not arrive in grand gestures, but in subtle frequencies—an unexpected reply, a shared chord, an invitation to collaborate with the void.
This story reminds us that music is not only made for listening—it listens back. And sometimes, when we share our unfinished songs, the universe answers with accompaniment.
Paris has long been more than a place. It is a presence—timeless, luminous, and endlessly symbolic. Known as both “The City of Light” and “The City of Love,” it is a sanctuary for those in pursuit of beauty, depth, and reinvention. In recent years, Paris has transformed into a powerful symbol not just of romance and refinement, but of revolutionary creativity in the digital age. From its classical gardens to neon-lit studios, the city pulses with stories—of individuals, movements, and new models of inclusive art and collaboration.
In this era of accelerated technological change and cultural fragmentation, Paris offers grounding. It’s a place where old-world charm intersects with cutting-edge innovation. Through projects like TATANKA’s “Orchestra Americana,” Paris is reimagined not only as a setting but as a co-creator. The creative class, digital nomads, AI collaborators, and multimedia storytellers find in Paris a soft landing and an emotional uplift. The city’s historic embrace of cultural diversity and philosophical inquiry makes it an ideal incubator for everything from soulful podcasts to radical musical projects.
At the heart of this transformation is a Paris that welcomes complexity. It’s a place where a lonely woman can hear herself in the voice of a cello, where two podcasters can frame a conversation that changes someone’s life, where a song like “La Flamme Sincère” becomes more than music—it becomes therapy. Artists and thinkers arrive in Paris searching for meaning and leave having helped define a new era of it. Whether walking along the Seine, collaborating in a soundproof booth, or simply watching the spring unfold outside a studio window, creators find themselves intimately woven into the emotional and symbolic fabric of Paris.
This collection of excerpts centers around the TATANKA website and its project, Orchestra Americana. The primary focus is on a musical dialogue between two songs: Iryna Kulshenko’s melancholic “Paris” and JJ’s hopeful response, “La Flamme Sincère,” exploring themes of love, despair, and artistic interpretation. The text also highlights Kulshenka’s independent artistry and features a parable about healing through collaborative music, all framed within the symbolic and creative context of Paris.
This briefing document summarizes the key themes and important ideas presented in the TATANKA article “From Smoke to Flame: How “La Flamme Sincère” Answers Kulshenka’s “Paris” with Love and Light.” The article explores the artistic dialogue between two songs: Iryna Kulshenko’s “Paris” and JJ’s response, “La Flamme Sincère.”
Main Themes:
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This briefing summarizes the core arguments and supporting details found in the provided source, focusing on the themes of artistic response, interpretation, independent artistry, and the power of music and place.
“Paris” by Iryna Kulshenko is a melancholic song depicting disillusionment and searching for sincere love in Paris, ending ambiguously without resolution. JJ’s “La Flamme Sincère” serves as a musical response and epilogue to “Paris.” It picks up the narrative where “Paris” leaves off, offering a transformative perspective that reimagines the protagonist’s potential fall not as an end, but as a moment of salvation and rekindled hope through a “superhuman” love. The two songs engage in a dialogue, with “La Flamme Sincère” providing an answer and continuation to the open-ended story presented in “Paris.”
JJ maintains the emotional and musical palette introduced by Kulshenka in “Paris.” While Kulshenka’s song is characterized by minimalist piano and a haunted vocal, JJ’s “La Flamme Sincère” echoes this with a minimalist arrangement, incorporating layered ambient textures and restrained melodic movements. This continuity allows listeners to feel they are experiencing the same narrative space, with JJ amplifying the emotional tone set by Kulshenka to a brighter frequency while preserving the introspective pacing.
Both “Paris” and “La Flamme Sincère” intentionally incorporate ambiguity. Kulshenka’s song ends with a pause, leaving the listener to decide the protagonist’s fate – whether she falls or flies. JJ preserves this ambiguity in “La Flamme Sincère” by presenting the “rescue” in a way that can be interpreted metaphorically or literally. This narrative ambiguity empowers the listener, requiring active participation in interpreting the story and bringing their own beliefs about hope and despair to the music.
There are at least two primary interpretations. One views the “angelic love” or rescue metaphorically, as a final moment of clarity or hallucination before a tragic end. The other, more literal interpretation, sees the protagonist genuinely saved by someone who discovers her in her moment of despair. Both interpretations are presented as valid and serve the emotional intent of the song, allowing the listener to choose which narrative resonates with them.
Iryna Kulshenko, known professionally as Kulshenka, is a singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and composer from Kyiv, Ukraine. She is characterized by her independent spirit and artistic purity, managing all aspects of her career from writing to production and promotion. Her music blends poetic minimalism with emotional gravity, drawing influences from chanson, folk, and indie traditions, and she performs in four languages. Before her solo career, she was part of the trio Panivalkova.
The relationship between “Paris” and “La Flamme Sincère” is described as a “musical correspondence.” Kulshenka’s “Paris” acts as the initial “letter,” expressing longing and pain with an unresolved ending. JJ’s “La Flamme Sincère” is the response, honoring Kulshenka’s voice while daring to imagine a more hopeful outcome. This creates a rare multi-author narrative through music, showcasing artistic empathy and mutual enhancement of the two pieces.
The story of Halcyra Niven serves as a parable illustrating the themes of being heard and finding healing through creative expression, specifically within the context of TATANKA’s Orchestra Americana project. Halcyra, a struggling artist, finds a “home for voices the world forgot to love” in TATANKA and collaborates with others, including AI, to create music. Her piece “Cadence,” written in response to “La Flamme Sincère,” is about choosing to believe in the possibility of being “caught” in a moment of descent. Her journey reflects the idea that sharing unfinished songs can lead to unexpected accompaniment and connection, mirroring the artistic dialogue between Kulshenka and JJ.
Paris is depicted as more than just a physical location; it is a symbolic presence embodying timelessness, light, and reinvention. While Kulshenka’s “Paris” initially portrays a cold and detached city, the larger narrative, particularly with the introduction of “La Flamme Sincère” and projects like TATANKA’s Orchestra Americana, reimagines Paris as a sanctuary for creativity, collaboration, and emotional uplift. It’s a place where classical charm meets innovation, fostering a new era of inclusive art and providing a symbolic backdrop for the search for meaning and healing.
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