Photo Credits: Steve Raymer
Ukraine is the rarely acknowledged musical heartland of the former Russian Empire, home to its first professional music academy, which opened in the mid-18th century and produced numerous early musicians and composers popular at the tsars' courts. Ukraine's fertile and varied regions are also home to deep folk traditions with long histories of striking polyphonic songs, heroic steppe epics, and complex instrumental music. It was also home to a large number of Jewish communities in the Pale of Settlement, and many klezmer greats emerged on Ukrainian soil in the 19th century.
After Ukrainian Cossacks rebelled against their Polish overlords in the mid-17th century, the land gradually came under Russian rule, though some areas of modern Ukraine were not incorporated into the country until far later. Ukrainian intellectuals in the 19th century objected to this arrangement and worked to establish an independent Ukrainian state, in part by crafting a Ukrainian literary language and documenting Ukrainian traditions. This led to the tsarist prohibition of Ukrainian in schools and print, but a strong cultural movement continued to evolve and create new works of art and music nonetheless.
The proponents of an independent Ukrainian identity were fascinated by the country's musical traditions, which continue to spark new music today. The kobzars or lyrniki, blind itinerant musicians who often played the bandura (zither), particularly captured their imagination. These musicians, organized into their own guild and playing and singing unique repertoire, became national symbols as well as excellent sources of traditional poetry and music. This tradition nearly died out in 1933 when the overwhelming majority Ukraine's blind musicians were invited to a conference, arrested, and shot as part of Stalin's brutal political purges. Only one traditional kobzar escaped who had been unable to attend, and he quietly passed his knowledge on. This single thread connects today's traditional bandurists to the lively world of Ukraine's kobzars.
The bandura was more than a wandering minstrel's best friend, however. A favorite instrument of East European nobles in the 18th century, it fell out of courtly favor but remained popular among Ukraine's Cossacks. Then, starting in the late 19th century, it became the focus of a nationalist musical movement that incorporated folk melodies and techniques into composed musical pieces. Soon, progressive university students took up the bandura, and bandura ensembles appeared, sometimes with dozens of players, and performed original works celebrating Ukraine's heritage. The first large-scale commercial workshop building banduras opened at the turn of the 20th century in Moscow. Bandura ensembles remained a mainstay of Ukrainian music in the Soviet era, and conservatories began to train musicians to play Western Classical music as well as Ukrainian music on the ever expanding zither, which grew to such proportions it required a floor peg to support its unwieldy bulk.
The romantic nationalist images of bandura-playing Cossacks and kobzars conceal the great diversity of cultural regions in Ukraine. Although many consider Western Ukraine "more Ukrainian" than the now industrialized and primarily Russian-speaking Eastern Ukraine, both areas have their own indigenous Ukrainian-language folk traditions. In the Carpathian Mountains to the southwest, the once isolated, fiercely independent Hutsuls created unique instruments such as the several yard-long trembita (alpenhorn). On the balmy Crimean peninsula to the southeast, the city of Odessa is famous for its Jewish culture, and for its klezmer and Western Classical musicians, while Muslim Crimean Tatars are reviving their own centuries-old traditions of lyrical songs. Ukraine's many regions, accents, dialects, and peoples have forged a musical landscape still compelling for musicians of all kinds, in both Ukraine and in the Ukrainian diaspora.
Ukrainian music has become an international venture, in part due to the country's troubled history during the era of the World Wars. After a brief attempt at political independence, World War I and the Civil War sparked by the Bolshevik coup in St. Petersburg drove many Ukrainians to emigrate. World War II, when Ukraine was occupied by the advancing Nazi army, proved particularly devastating for the region, already weakened by years of artificially induced famine and Stalinist political terror. Seven million civilians, including one million Ukrainian Jews, were killed, and millions more were displaced. These refugees ended up in places like Manitoba and Detroit, or in Argentina and Brazil. In their new homes, Ukrainians set up music schools and summer camps, and for many Ukrainian-Americans, learning bandura or favorite Ukrainian songs became a requisite right of passage. The diaspora continues to produce and support innovative musicians playing everything from Ukrainian Baroque compositions to Hutsul-inspired punk.
After Ukraine once again won its independence in 1990, Ukrainian pop and rock exploded. Though many Ukrainian pop singers had gained Soviet Union-wide fame in the 1970s and 1980s, they only did so when performing in Russian. Now, Ukrainian is everywhere, from Eurovision-winning pop confections to the hip hop-inflected anthem of the 2004 Orange Revolution, when Ukrainians rallied across the country for fair democratic elections. Bands continue to incorporate traditional sounds into their songs and to sing the praises of their beloved homeland for global fans.- Tristra Newyear
