The Ukrainian Bandurist Chorus: our roots and our future (11/12/00)

The Ukrainian Bandurist Chorus: our roots and our future

by Tamara Stadnychenko
Special to The Ukrainian Weekly

PHILADELPHIA - For Ukrainians, music is not some ethereal and ecclectic art form, but a way of life. It is rooted in tradition - the ubiquitous folksong, grand liturgical music, the distinctive and uniquely Ukrainian sound of the bandura.

Combining the vocal and instrumental components of Ukrainian music is as natural as breathing and can be traced to early Ukrainian history, the days when wandering bards called "kobzari" composed and performed epic historical songs called "dumy." They had two instruments - their voices and their banduras. The songs were passed on to their students who continued the tradition.

In the Middle Ages, prominent bandurists performed before the crown heads of Eastern Europe. During the 17th and 18th centuries their dumy on the heroic exploits of the Ukrainian Kozaks and their quest for freedom became legendary. They were the symbol of the spirit of Ukraine and were loved and revered by the Ukrainian nobility and by common folk alike. Their ideals - God, truth, freedom and human dignity - were the ideals of a nation daring to aspire to sovereignty.

In the 19th century a repressive tsarist regime determined to maintain its hold over the Ukrainian lands and Ukrainian people saw the wandering bandurist as a dangerous symbol, capable of encouraging nationalist tendencies as well as sparking unrest and insurrection. Fiercely persecuted, slowly the familiar figure of the wandering blind bard disappeared from the Ukrainian landscape.

There were, fortunately, those who refused to let the tradition die, and it remained quietly in the background, practiced privately and often in secrecy by individual devotees whose bandura strings and voices would not be stilled.

In 1918, during Ukraine's brief period of independence, the banduras and the voices emerged from the shadows. The solitary wandering bard, by now all but extinct, was replaced by ensembles and choruses. The first professional bandurist chorus, numbering 15 members, was formed in Kyiv under the direction of bandura virtuoso Vasyl Yemetz. In 1925 another bandurist chorus was formed in Poltava under the direction of Volodymyr Kabachok.

In the 1920s Ukraine enjoyed a brief but significant cultural and artistic renaissance. Through the efforts of prominent musicologists like Mykola Lysenko and ethnographers like Hnat Khotkevych, interest in the bandura was revived and its popularity as the instrument that represented the musical soul of the Ukrainian people flourished. Khotkevych, Lysenko and others encouraged both popular and professional interest in the bandura and the all but forgotten dumy.

Through their efforts, conservatory courses were organized and professional composers were commissioned to create new compositions specifically written for the bandura. Bandura studies became an integral part of the curriculum of the nation's most prestigious schools of music. Innovation and experimentation in technique and structure flourished, as did the Ukrainian Bandurist Chorus, and through the alchemy of musical expertise and adaptation, the bandura tradition began to change from folk to classical concert form.

Unfortunately, the renaissance of patriotism, nationalism and cultural growth in Ukraine was short-lived. The persecutions and repression the nation had endured under the tsarist regime returned with a vengeance under a Soviet government determined to wipe out all vestiges of Ukrainian nationalism. Among its targets were all cultural and intellectual personages and institutions. Their measures were brutal and thorough.

In 1935 blind kobzari from all regions of Ukraine were assembled in Kharkiv, ostensibly to participate in an ethnographic conference. Told that their songs and stories were to be collected and recorded for posterity, they came. What followed was one of the most callous and infamous acts of the Soviet regime against the Ukrainian nation. The blind kobzari, who had come so eagerly and so hopefully to have their oral tradition preserved and documented in written records, were executed.

The Ukrainian Bandurist Chorus, by this time a professional touring group with an extensive membership and repertoire, also was targeted. Many chorus members were persecuted, executed or deported. Those remaining were forced to reorganize into the State Bandurist Chorus of the Ukrainian SSR. Exploited and persecuted, they were denied the right to express their Ukrainian heritage in both private and public lives.

World War II brought new horrors. The chorus all but disintegrated as war engulfed the eastern front and Kyiv endured the turmoil of assaults and counterassaults by Soviet and German forces. In 1941 the concertmaster and director of the State Bandurist Chorus, Hryhory Kytasty, was conscripted into the Red Army.

Captured by the Germans, he escaped and returned to Kyiv, where he founded the Shevchenko Ukrainian Bandurist Kapelle, reuniting under a new name and a new spirit former members of the defunct State Bandurist Chorus. Members of the newly formed kapelle were subsequently arrested and interned in a Nazi concentration camp.

After the war, energized by Kytasty, the group toured displaced persons camps in Western Europe. The indefatigable Kytasty performed as soloist, conducted the kapelle, and organized bandura classes for camp internees.

Like thousands upon thousands of other displaced persons, Kytasty and the other members of the Ukrainian Bandurist Kapelle emigrated. Many members of the ensemble settled in Detroit. They became the Ukrainian Bandurist Chorus and supported themselves and their families by taking jobs as assembly-line workers in Detroit's automobile factories. Working long hours and adapting to the language and customs of their new homeland, they remained constant in their love of Ukraine and its musical heritage. They practiced and they performed, at first locally and then in other cities and towns where Ukrainian immigrants had settled and established their small community enclaves.

Kytasty, as the driving force of the reborn Ukrainian Bandurist Chorus, composed original works for the ensemble; he taught, mentored and conducted the chorus from 1949 to 1954 and from 1967 until his death in 1984.

Today the Ukrainian Bandurist Chorus numbers 50 active members and sporadically active others. One-third of the group lives and works in and around the Detroit area. Others are in Cleveland, Toronto or Edmonton, with a small but active contingent representing the East Coast from New Jersey, New York, Maryland and Philadelphia.

The majority are second- and third- generation Americans and Canadians whose association with the group is a labor of love. Three of the members are recent immigrants from Ukraine. They are, in real life, attorneys and butchers, retirees and students, Catholic and Orthodox, adherents of this Ukrainian political persuasion or another. All are united by their talents as singers and/or bandura players, and in their love of Ukrainian music.

The chorus, like most other Ukrainian diaspora organizations, is a non-profit group, dependent to a great extent on donations, fund-raisers and community support for its existence. The volunteer spirit of its members shows a remarkable devotion to the group and its artistry - members finance their own travel costs to distant venues and travel three or four hours (one way) to attend rehearsals, participate in meetings and perform in concerts.

Every summer for the last 20 years or so the Ukrainian Bandurist Chorus has sponsored two summer camps where a new generation of bandura devotees has the opportunity to hone its skills and study with old masters. The camp in London, Ontario, is for youngsters from age 6 to 13. Students 13 and older attend the camp in Emlenton, Pa. Average annual attendance is 30 campers in each camp, which is staffed by chorus members who provide not only musical instruction, but who perpetuate a centuries-old tradition and instill in their students a love of the craft and a desire to remain connected to their heritage.

Many camp graduates eventually become members of the chorus, which is a unique conglomerate of Ukrainian males ranging in age from their teens to their 70s working in harmony to perfect a beloved craft. There is a "bratstvo" here that transcends age differences. The younger members learn bandura techniques and the discipline that is demanded of artistic excellence; the older members are invigorated by the influx of new talent and new ideas that are the quintessential ingredients for any organization's survival.

There is a mutual respect that permits an old-timer to impart to a teenage colleague a "how to live life" parable and permits the teenager to teach the old-timer some new tricks, whether musically oriented or on the computer. It is a win-win situation that strengthens the group as a whole.

"De nasha molod?" - the lament frequently heard in many other diaspora organizations - is a non-issue. The president of the Ukrainian Bandurist Chorus is Anatoli Murha, a 22-year-old graduate student whose father is also a bandurist. Mr. Murha, who was weaned on his father's rendition of "Tiutiunnyk," attended the Emlenton camp as a teenage student, then as instructor, then as administrator. While a camper he was taught by Oleh Mahlay, the current conductor and artistic director of the Ukrainian Bandurist Chorus. Maestro Mahlay, 31, is an attorney who practices in Cleveland. His association with the chorus began at age 6, when family friend Kytasty invited him to conduct "Dudaryk" during a concert in Youngstown, Ohio.

Following in the footsteps of their respective predecessors, the two have developed lofty goals for the chorus. Mr. Mahlay became artistic director after the death of Wolodymyr Kolesnyk, best known in the Ukrainian diaspora community as the engineering force behind the Millennium Choir assembled to mark the millennium celebration of Christianity in Rus'-Ukraine.

Under Maestro Kolesnyk's direction the chorus completed two major concert tours through Ukraine: one in 1991, and the second, the much-acclaimed Black Sea Tour, in 1994. Under Maestro Mahlay, the Ukrainian Bandurist Chorus has already toured the Eastern Seaboard of the United States and Canada - their critically acclaimed 1997 Ukrainian Steppe tour attested to an energetic prophesy of things to come.

Mr. Murha's predecessor, the late Petro Honcharenko, was president of the chorus from 1949 to 1989. An undisputed "renaissance man," according to Mr. Murha, he did everything. He was a vocalist, a master bandurist, a bandura builder and an unparalleled administrator. His death on September 19, at the age of 89, has left a void in the organization that Mr. Murha hopes to ameliorate by moving the chorus towards the goals that Mr. Honcharenko envisioned.

One of Mr. Murha's projected goals is to find a research grant that will fund the work of Andrij Birko, a bandura builder who is rediscovering and recreating the nearly lost art of hand-crafting the Poltava-style and Kharkiv-style banduras that the chorus uses.

Messrs. Murha and Mahlay are coordinating their administrative and artistic talents to expand the organization's work in a variety of ways. Future plans include a joint Christmas concert with Vesnivka, the Toronto-based women's choir under the directorship of Halyna Kvitka Kondracki. The concert tour, which will include performances in Detroit, Chicago and Monroe, Mich., is scheduled for the beginning of December this year.

A European tour is being planned for the year 2003. The chorus has been working with a U.S.-based impresario who is organizing performance dates and venues, booking hotels and providing appropriate advertising. Among the venues under serious consideration are St. Paul's Cathedral in London and Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris. The chorus will also be performing in Germany.

The thrust at playing big-name concert venues is not a new one for either Messrs. Murha or Mahlay. They are adamant about the need for Ukrainians to promote themselves, not only among themselves in assorted Ukrainian centers, but in prestigious venues that draw non-Ukrainian audiences in great numbers. In recent years, the chorus has performed in Cleveland's Palace Theater and in Detroit's Macomb Center for the Performing Arts, which has featured such talents as Tom Jones and The Beach Boys. In its two performances at Macomb they played to a packed house - tickets were sold out soon after the concerts were announced.

Both Messrs. Murha and Mahlay feel that this ambassadorial mission is good propaganda for Ukraine and things Ukrainian. According to Maestro Mahlay, "It is a way to teach them about music and history that is uniquely ours ... a way to show that our competition is on the level of the Detroit symphony, or opera, or ballet ... that we have world-class music, world-class talent and world-class standards."

And, to this end, Maestro Mahlay's approach to the refining and raising the artistry of the Ukrainian Bandurist Chorus is a nearly single-minded priority. Since he has assumed the directorship, the chorus has grown in many directions. One new project focuses on presenting a program of Ukrainian liturgical music by composers such as Maxim Berezovsky, Petro Bortniansky and Kyrylo Stetsenko.

In concerts where the audience is predominantly non-Ukrainian, a program with musical and historical commentary, is distributed. The conductor or a speaker representing the chorus might provide additional information during interludes. These may be purely musical in content, but may include historical anecdotes or trivia that allow non-Ukrainian audiences to know, for example, that J.S. Bach and Bortniansky were contemporaries.

Attaining a level of artistic excellence is a matter of pride, grunt work and inspiration in combination. "Old" repertoires are perfected and refined; new repertoires are eagerly pursued with the assistance of contemporary composers specially commissioned to create works that showcase the vocal and instrumental talent of the chorus. Among the composers who have been recruited for this purpose are Victor Mishalow (formerly of Australia and now of Toronto), Julian Kytasty of New York City, Zenon Lawryshyn of Toronto and Lesia Dychko of Ukraine. Songs that have not been performed for half a century are resurrected, dusted off and rejuvenated.

The Ukrainian Bandurist Chorus has produced a series of excellent CDs, representative of the diversity of its work under Maestro Kolesnyk and Maestro Mahlay. There is an interesting website, www.bandura.org) that provides a wealth of information about the bandura, the chorus and the conductors who have contributed to its lengthy and interesting history.

While looking ahead to a promising future in an international arena, the Ukrainian Bandurist Chorus has never forgotten its roots. Each member is poignantly aware of the moral and financial support of the Ukrainian American and Canadian Ukrainian communities that have sustained the organization through the leanest of times. In many respects, their role as the ambassadors who share Ukrainian music with non-Ukrainian audiences is a form of payback to those supporters.

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