Turning the pages back... October 28, 1872 (10/27/96)

Turning the pages back...

October 28, 1872

Terentiy Parkhomenko was born in the village of Voloskivtsi, about 50 miles east of Chernihiv, and lost his sight at age 10. In the classic Ukrainian manner, he became a kobzar.

Taught by a master, Andriy Hoidenko, Parkhomenko studied for five years, and then for five years wandered about Ukraine with his teacher. Over the years, he also became a renowned lira player.

Parkhomenko became a teacher himself, and counted Avram Hrebin (whose recordings were preserved by Ukraine's Institute of Fine Arts, Folklore and Ethnography at the Academy of Sciences) among his pupils.

Parkhomenko's extensive repertoire of dumas, historical songs, psalms, lyrical songs and satires attracted the attention of writers and ethnographers, and was in contact with the leaders in the field, including Volodymyr Hnatiuk, Ivan Franko, Oleksander Malynka, Opanas Slastion. Parkhomenko also had a strong influence on composer Mykola Lysenko.

In 1902, Parkhomenko joined other famous kobzari, including Hnat Honcharenko, Mykhailo Kravchenko, and Ivan Kucherenko-Kuchuruha in a series of performances at the 12th Russian Archeographic Congress in Kharkiv.

After the congress, official Russian imperial attitudes to the kobzari softened somewhat. Parkhomenko accepted invitations to appear in Lviv and Drohobych, and later gave concerts in Kyiv, Poltava, Nizhyn, Uman, Vinnytsia, Yelysavethrad (now Kirovohrad) and Warsaw.

Because his singing awakened national consciousness among the peasantry, after the revolution of 1905 he met with increasing harassment.

In the spring of 1910, Parkhomenko was given a terrible beating by police, and on March 23, back in his native village of Voloskivtsi, he died of his injuries.

Sources: "Kobzars," "Parkhomenko, Terentii," Encyclopedia of Ukraine, Vols. 2, 3 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1988, 1993).