NEWS AND VIEWS: Chicago community honors Shevchenko (04/02/06)

NEWS AND VIEWS: Chicago community honors Shevchenko

by Marta Farion

CHICAGO Chicago's annual concert, organized by the Ukrainian Congress Committee of America, on Sunday, March 12, signaled an unexpectedly inspiring rebirth of the Ukrainian diaspora's cultural life in this city. More than its extraordinary tribute to Ukraine's most celebrated poet, the occasion marked a pivotal turning point in the Ukrainian diaspora's cultural succession from one generation to the next.

Positive change has arrived in the Ukrainian American community, and this Shevchenko concert proved it with a dazzling display of professionally performed creative talent.

Remembering the past

I've been a critic of these ritual occasions for many years, and my reluctance was driven by a trained sense of duty, loyalty and personal sacrifice the predictable sympathy of first-generation Ukrainian immigrants who understood their family's need to continually memorialize Ukrainian history, culture and language.

The annual Shevchenko concerts, in particular, are remembered as endlessly long programs that inevitably included a fiery speech by a community leader who emphasized the need for patriotism and active engagement in the fight for Ukraine's freedom as advocated by the prophet Shevchenko, poetry readings by children who had no understanding of either their words' meaning or delivery, and the inevitable performance of a well-meaning choir and soloist. And as a result, young people used the occasion to socialize and ignore the well-meaning performers and speakers. As times passed, attendance became more limited at these events.

Although memories of the past continued to be part of my emotional schema, I dutifully decided to attend this year's Shevchenko concert, hoping that it would not last too long and spoil the entire Sunday. My a priori negativity was programmed by my membership as the "child" of the so-called Third Wave of Ukrainian immigration. As the children of parents and grandparents forced to leave Ukraine during the second world war, we became war refugees (the contemporary term), at the time officially tagged as Displaced Persons.

And displaced we indeed were first, when our parents were housed in camps run by the United Nations managed by the Allies, and later when they were assigned to live in various countries around the world, countries that were intended to become temporary settlements, but became permanent new homes for people of my generation.

Displaced or not, we attended American schools and universities, established ourselves in various careers and professions, and eventually more or less assimilated into the American mainstream although we still lived a dual existence, leading double lives with one foot in the American world and the other foot in what we understood to be the Ukrainian world.

But that Ukrainian world was not inside Ukraine. It was located in America, inside the churches, civic organizations, Saturday schools and summer grounds built by our parents and grandparents to ensure the survival of Ukrainian patriotism, nationalism and culture.

Welcoming the future

With the Soviet Union's dissolution and Ukraine's independence, the diaspora was unexpectedly enlarged by an influx of a new wave of Ukrainian immigrants, the so-called Fourth Wave. Their arrival here was sometimes welcomed, and sometimes not, by the prior generations of Ukrainian immigrants.

The new immigrants were persons born and raised in a different country than the one our parents and grandparents left 50 years ago. And although these new immigrants also had suffered and worked and survived difficult circumstances, they were different younger and eager to seize economic and professional opportunities, in frequent contact with their families in Ukraine.

Unlike our parents' generation, they were free to travel to Ukraine and visit. They spoke and wrote a Ukrainian language that was current and alive with a new vocabulary and idioms, some sprinkled with Russisms or Americanisms, and they were informed about current events in Ukraine as well as sure of themselves without apology or fear about their futures. Our new friends "unpacked their suitcases" because they did not feel displaced. They know who they are, why they are here and where they are going.

It was sometimes difficult for us older immigrants to appreciate that these new arrivals came from a changed Ukraine, a country that had undergone a structural and cultural metamorphosis in recent decades. We, on the other hand, had been living in a changing and developing American world, while clinging to a static Ukraine, unchanged for 50 years. The Ukrainian language we used was and is a language spoken by our parents and grandparents when they were young; it was and is not a contemporary language, but a sacred relic from the past.

The Third and Fourth Wave sisters and brothers had a lot to learn from each other. It became apparent that we wasted too much time on petty misunderstandings, often fanned by distrust or unrealistic demands on both sides, and different expectations of "entitlement" or "duty" toward each other and toward our mother country. The time had finally come to understand, respect and learn from one another.

The common spirit

Just as Taras Shevchenko's voice united countless Ukrainians of different generations and persuasions in the pursuit of liberty and love of their country, this year's commemoration in Chicago established a new order in the diasporan community, a new community where new immigrants of the Fourth Wave were an integral part of the audience and dominated the ranks of its brilliant performers and keynote speakers.

Orest Baranyk, president of the Chicago branch of the Ukrainian Congress Committee of America, opened the event and referred to Shevchenko's prophetic words as they come alive in our own time, particularly at this time of Ukraine's current elections for Parliament. Mr. Baranyk introduced the new consul general of Ukraine to the Chicago community.

The concert was a most appropriate opportunity for the new consul general, Vasyl H. Korzachenko, to introduce himself with his own evocation of Shevchenko, aptly referring to the waves of the Dnipro as a symbol of the river of Ukrainian life and linking that symbolism to the waves of immigration of Ukrainians throughout the world.

The performing talent belonged on a professional stage and concert venue. The riveting keynote speech by Oksana Verbovska spoke of Shevchenko's strength of spirit and prophetic words, and constituted a timely description of developments in contemporary Ukraine. It was a revelation as I listened admiringly to the soloists who performed: Myroslava Kuka, Halyna Herjavenko and Alla Kuryltsiv. Indeed, these are singers of such talent, voices and sophistication that they belong on professional stages.

As is traditional at such events, a group of children declaimed poetry by Shevchenko and sang popular tunes. But there was nothing traditional in this group of children. There were eight of them, all taught by their teacher, Nadia Ilkiw. What an exceptional teacher and what exceptional children! Two of them, Mariana Oharenko, 8, and Nastia Lototska, 9, performed as if they were mature experienced singers, with voices belonging in music careers.

The Chicago Surma Choir presented the Shevchenko music repertoire with the Shevchenko hymn "Reve Ta Stohne," "Dumy Moji" (in a soft, fluid and sensitive performance), "Zapovit" (the Shevchenko "Testament" carried in the soul of every Ukrainian) and the beautiful melodic "Vladyko Neba i Zemli" from the operetta "Zaporozhets za Dunayem," with J. Lemishko as soloist.

But the extraordinary surprise of the event was the performance of Leonida Mytnychuk, the master of ceremonies, who delivered verbal "collages" of Shevchenko poetry interspersed with the poetry of the contemporary giant of Ukrainian literature, Lina Kostenko. These pieces were not read, but were recited from Ms. Mytnychuk's extraordinary memory and, although the long passages were familiar, we had never heard them presented with such intelligence and conviction.

Ms. Mytnychuk's interpretations of Shevchenko's words masterfully struck a cord of urgency in understanding contemporary Ukraine, and her gifted presentation showed her to be an exceptional and uniquely creative artist.

At the end of this exceptional tribute to Shevchenko, the audience spontaneously rose with a rousing bravo to demonstrate its awe and pride and its long overdue sense of having finally "arrived" at a prominent place in the Ukrainian diaspora, and perhaps with hope that the Ukrainian diaspora is entering a new stage in its life.

These remarkably creative and unpretentious artists who performed for Shevchenko and for the rest of us should be noticed and appreciated because they are rare jewels in our own midst. We welcome them to our community.

Closing our diasporan circle

Leaving this annual Shevchenko concert in Chicago, I faced my internal struggle to reconcile prior understandings of Ukrainian immigrants, past and present. And I realized that the recited words of our cultural icon Shevchenko finally had come alive to me, provoking private thought about this event's integration of Shevchenko's prophetic wisdom with Ukraine's present circumstances.

This year's commemoration of Shevchenko gave me much more than I had expected. I realized that it had taken me far too long to arrive here to approach an appreciation of the emerging ethnic bridge that spans all our waves of immigration. I realized that so many of our new friends who recently immigrated from Ukraine really are our cultural brothers and sisters who also understand our grandparents' and parents' commitments to protect and preserve Ukrainian culture, and that they will eventually play a role in bringing a common understanding to the role and mission of what is called "the diaspora."

Marta Farion is an attorney and chair of the Chicago-Kyiv Sister Cities Committee.

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