THE THINGS WE DO...: Mamyna pisnia - Mama's song (10/05/97)

THE THINGS WE DO...

by Orysia Paszczak Tracz

Mamyna pisnia - Mama's song

My mother, who passed away in June, always sang. As a child growing up in Jersey City, Newark and Irvington, N.J., in the 1950s, I especially remember her songs and her clear soprano. She sang the way she must have sung back in her village near Lviv when she was growing up, whenever and wherever she felt like it, on the spur of the moment, just because.

I think about Mama and her songs, first of all because I am grateful that she passed them on to me, and it is because of her that I know so many melodies and verses of even quite obscure songs. There are certain songs that I had not heard on any album or stage in either Ukraine or North America, and there are others that I heard performed for the first time only after the independence movement got rolling. Yet to me these songs were already familiar, I knew them well, because Mama always used to sing them at home.

For example, "Poviyav viter stepovyi," a seemingly ordinary folk/historical song about a young man (Kozak or Strilets, depending upon the version) dying, and his mother, sister and girlfriend mourning him. Not even a patriotic word in it - just that "ne odnoho Kozaka syra zemlia nakryla," or not one [i.e., many more than one] Kozak was covered by the cold moist earth. There seems to be a mystery surrounding this song.

I had heard it since childhood, and always liked it. I think I heard other people singing it long ago at social get-togethers. But as far as I know, it had never been sung publicly or recorded in Soviet Ukraine. The first time I heard it was in videos from the first marches in Lviv in the late 1980s, when it seemed to be an independence anthem of sorts, and when the quartet Yavir sang it in Winnipeg and on their cassette. In asking many people about the origin of this song, I have received remarkably few answers so far (so here's your chance, dear reader). To my thinking, it could be an old Kozak song or a Ukrainian Sich Riflemen's (World War I) song, but it doesn't appear in any songbook at all. Someone suggested that it could be a Ukrainian Insurgent Army (World War II) song , but it doesn't appear in the UPA songbook either. I even tried Zynovii Lysko's 10-volume compilation of Ukrainian folk songs, but only "Povii vitre na Vkrayinu" shows up.

"Kozak vidizdzhaie, divchynonka plache" (the Kozak is Riding Off, his girl is crying) is another song from my childhood that has stayed with me. In the last few years, I was pleased to hear Maria Burmaka's version, as well as the one by the trio Bila Krynytsia. This song does appear in some songbooks and is definitely old. The Kozak is leaving for faraway Ukraina (could be from one region to another), and his girl asks that he take her with him. He asks what will you do there, what will you eat there, where will you sleep? She replies each time that she will do laundry and reap rye, will eat dry flat bread (sukhari) with water, will sleep in the steppe under the willow, "koby sertse iz toboiu" (sweetheart, as long as I'm with you). It has to be the combination of simple lyrics and melody that makes this song so special to me.

"Liubyv Kozak divchynonku" (the Kozak loved the girl) tells the story of him not getting engaged, even though he loves her (her family doesn't want him), then going away for a long time, and upon his return finds out that she had died pining away for him. This is one song to which I don't remember all the lyrics, except for the ending. I'm guessing that this is more of a ballad-style song, and from Halychyna. Upon his return the Kozak rides to the home of his girl, and her mother tells him where she is buried. This one is a real tear-jerker. "... Yide Kozak dorohoiu, ta na tsvyntar vstupaie, brama sia vtvoraie, rozha sia vklaniaie, yoho myla ne staie. Ustan myla, chornobryva, ta do mene hovory, ia by hovoryla, bo ia tia liubyla, syra zemlia ne daie" (... he rides to the cemetery, the gate opens, the rose hangs down, his girl doesn't get up. Wake up, dear, black-browed one, and speak to me. I would talk to you because I loved you, but the moist earth won't let me).

Another story song, this time a real ballad, I think, is "Pishov vidvazhnyi haiovyi do lisa temnoho" (the brave forester went into the dark forest). After many verses about loving his girl, it turns out that something terrible happens (I don't remember all the lyrics): "... vin vymiryv i vystrilyv, divchyni do sertsia strilyv, tse temna nich nevydnaia i vin yi zastrilyv" (... he took aim and fired, and hit his girl in the heart; it was a dark night and he shot her). I had never heard this one anywhere, but serendipity does happen.

Last summer I was substituting for Bohdana Bashuk on the daily Ukrainian radio program on CKJS Radio in Winnipeg. I do the programs live and leave the studio right after. As I was walking to my car in the studio parking lot, a man looked over his fence in the back lane and called to me. He had been listening to the program and realized the studio was right behind his house. A third- or fourth-generation Canadian, he had some tapes relatives had brought back from Ukraine and lent me one of them. This was a home-made anthology of all kinds of popular songs and artists, taped from radio or from other tapes. At first I thought I was hearing things, but there stuck between two other complete songs, for a few seconds, was "Pishov vidvazhnyi haiovyi." Just one phrase by a male quartet or group, but there it was, someone else actually knew this song and was still singing it!

"Luhom yidu, konia vedu (I am riding across the meadow, leading my horse) is another gorgeous melody, this one about the Kozak not even trying to send matchmakers to his girl. She tells him he should attempt courting her, so that at least people will remember that he tried. This song may have been recorded once or twice by a choir - and this one does need the sweep of a choir. I think in each of these songs it's not only the lovely melody, but also the unbelievable beauty of harmony that works its charm.

When they listen to Ukrainian songs, it still amazes my non-Ukrainian friends that we can sing as a "choir" in multi-part harmony without anyone directing! To us this is normal, as it should be, and I am often puzzled about how so many people can be singing and not fall into harmony?

I remember one very strange "kolysanka" (lullaby), that my mother sang for my sister (I was 8 years old at the time) and for her first grandchild, my son, Boyan. Nina Matvienko had said that a woman sings out her heartbreak, sorrow and worries in songs, and this lullaby surely illustrates a long-ago young mother's frustration with a crying baby. In the second verse she does repent. "Liuliu, liuliu, ia kolyshu, iak ne zasnesh to ti [tebe] lyshu; lyshu tebe pid lypkamy, sama pidu z kozakamy... Liuliu, liuliu, hoda, hoda, shchos' dytyni ne dohoda; treba ii dohodyty, yisty daty, kolysaty..." (Lullaby, lullaby, I am rocking you, if you don't fall asleep I will leave you; I'll leave you under the linden trees, and I'll go off with the Kozaky... Lullaby, lullaby, the baby is unhappy, it has to be made comfortable, fed and rocked).

I sang this one to my three sons, but hesitated to sing that first verse once I knew they understood what I was singing. The ritual songs, including some lullabies, have the archaic mode and melodies of a different time and place. This kolysanka sounds almost Middle Eastern in its curliques and endings. And this is one I have never heard anywhere else.

Some songs teach lessons, and this two-verse wonder sure spells it out. "Bulo ne khodyty po horishky pishky, bula by s ne mala, bula by s ne mala, i maloi potishky. Bulo ne khodyty u lis po malyny, bula by s ne mala, bula by s ne mala, i maloi dytyny" (You shouldn't have gone walking to pick nuts, you wouldn't have had a little (bundle of) joy. You shouldn't have gone into the woods for raspberries, you wouldn't have had a little baby). From metaphor to cold fact: you shouldn't have!

Another song about being careful is a delicate dialogue between a strilets and his girl, "Oi shumyt, shumyt ta dibrovon'ka" (the grove is rustling). He wants to kiss her hand, then her lips, but after some convincing she agrees to only the hand: "Dam ruchku na khvyliu ta ust ne nakhyliu, boiusia pohuby, mii ty holube" (I'll give you my hand for a moment, but won't lean my lips, because I'm afraid of seduction, my dove). He tries to convince her that it's very dark and no one will see: "Yasnii zori liahaiut's spaty, khto zh bude znaty" (the bright stars are going to sleep, who will know). The melody of this song is especially lovely.

I noticed that among some urban Ukrainians folk songs are not that well known, and that the pop songs of the past few decades are the ones sung, the Ivasiuk, Malyshko and newer composed songs. During a social event with post-graduate students visiting Winnipeg, we sat around and sang. I was quite surprised that the old songs I knew were unfamiliar to them. But I should not have been. The circumstances between then and now, and there and here were so different. Probably if I got together with their grandparents in the village, we would know the same oldies. (I hesitate to even think of the repercussions of this, although one of my sons once asked if I lived in the "olden days.")

Mama's songs have given me one more opportunity to be part of the Ukrainian community, joining in and knowing the oldies but goodies with the now elderly son of Saskatchewan pioneers at his granddaughter's wedding, as we harmonize on "Tam na hori kruta vezha" (another of my favorites), to sitting around a picnic table outside of Winnipeg celebrating Ukraine's independence with a barbecue and songs, to singing our way through Ukraine on a tour bus until there's no voice left, but the desire to sing is still very much there! Not that I have that spectacular a voice, but I can carry a tune, and once I get warmed up it's not too bad at all, expecially through at least five or 10 verses each!

I'm so grateful that the multitude of gorgeous songs is my inheritance, and that my Mama loved to sing and passed them on to me.

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