|
BRAMA
Arts & Culture
Artists
Essays
Image Gallery
Language
Literature
Music
Museums, etc.
Traditions
e-Shopping
Directory
Arts/Culture Links
"Ukrainian Minstrels: and the blind shall sing" by Natalie Kononenko
Virtual Bandura Museum
More N. Kononenko fotos at U. of Virginia
|
|
|
Ukrainian Minstrels
by Natalie Kononenko
Click the images below for enlargements
|
Pavlo Suprun performing in Charlottesville, Virginia in 1996. Next to him is the author.
Although Suprun is totally blind (he cannot distinguish the difference between night and day) and
although he speaks little English, he has successfully traveled to perform in Europe and the United
States. He has been in the United States two times, most recently in 1998.
|
|
Kobzar Pavlo Stepanovych Suprun performing in Kyiv in 1995. Although Suprun was
friends with Movchan and other kobzari who learned in the traditional way and although, like
them, he is blind, he never served an apprenticeship. Suprun, like his wife Nadiia Mykolaivna are
both casualties of World War II. Both were injured as children when they picked up land mines
left over after the war. Both were sent to a special school for the blind where Pavlo's musical
talent was recognized and he taken for special instruction at the conservatory.
|
|
An unknown lirnyk and his guide with village children in the background. The
photograph was taken in 1910 near Poltava. As pointed out in the article, lirnyky were more
numerous in the Ukrainian countryside than kobzari. They have received less scholarly attention
than kobzari, but they were very important to their village audience.
|
|
Kobzari (from left to right) Stepan Pasiuha, Ivan Kuchuhura-Kucherenko, Pavlo
Hashchenko, and Petro Drevchenko. Please note the variety of playing techniques.
|
|
The Kyiv ethnographic ensemble, 1939. Front row, left to right: Petro Hudz, Ivanenko,
Ehor Movchan. Back row, left to right: Volodymyr Perepeliuk, Pavlo Nosach, Oleksandr
Markevych. As scholars interfered in the tradition more and more, minstrels were brought into
cities. Instead of singing solo, the traditional performance method, they were organized into
groups and ensembles.
|
|
Two unknown lirnyky brought to Kyiv in 1939 to perform in a folklore ensemble.
Although lirnyky were not as popular with the urban and scholarly communities as kobzari, they
too were brought in to cities, asked to perform in groups, and otherwise encouraged to adapt to
an urban audience.
|
|
Kobzar Evhen Adamtsevych, 1950. Like Movchan, Adamtsevych was blind and trained
in the old manner, that is, he was apprenticed as a child to a kobzar master, learned from him and
then went through an initiation. Like Movchan, Adamtsevych survived Stalin's purges of
minstrels and performed Soviet songs along with traditional material.
|
|
Kobzar Ivan Kuchuhura-Kucherenko with a group of young women. Photo taken
1929. With time more attention was paid to kobzari by intellectuals and by urban dwellers than
by the village folk among whom the tradition had thrived for centuries. By the time of
Kuchuhura-Kucherenko, kobzari were a tourist attraction of sorts.
|
BACK TO MINSTRELS
|