PERSPECTIVES: The Ukrainian Bandura Chorus: an appreciation (10/12/97)

PERSPECTIVES

by Andrew Fedynsky

The Ukrainian Bandura Chorus: an appreciation

When most people plan their vacations, they think of going to a warm beach in Hawaii, maybe Disney World in Florida, a capital city like Washington or a national park out West. Not Roman Hnatyshyn, an aerospace engineer at the Patuxent River Naval Air Station in Maryland. He maps out his vacation schedule to have it mesh with the vacations of the other 44 members of the Ukrainian Bandura Chorus so they can all go on tour together. This year, the Chorus - or the capella as they call themselves - performs in Pittsburgh on October 3, then on to Washington, New York, Bound Brook, Boston, New Haven, Philadelphia and Montreal, before finishing in Hamilton, Ontario, on October 12. That's nine cities in 10 days. Detroit and Cleveland will be weekend gigs on November 1 and 2.

Talk about dedication! And that's just the concert schedule. During the rest of the year, there's rehearsal once a month. For Mr. Hnatyshyn that's a 10-hour drive or round-trip airfare to Detroit that he pays for himself. The other 44 bandurists are just as dedicated. They come from the New York/New Jersey area, Detroit, Cleveland, Toronto, Edmonton, Philadelphia and Baltimore. Members include students, an architect, physicians, dentists, engineers, bankers, a university professor, a corrections officer and some retirees. They all travel to rehearsal at their own expense: all of them coordinate their schedules to accommodate the needs of the capella.

Taras Mahlay, a 34-year-old physician from Cleveland, has been doing it for 21 years. One recent Saturday morning before a rehearsal that was scheduled for Cleveland, home to 12 of the bandurists, I asked him: Why?

"I don't know," he said. "I started doing it when I was 13 and it was fun. At some point it turned into love." Fooled around and fell in love ...

Taras's younger brother, Oleh, a 27-year-old attorney with the state of Ohio and in real life the artistic director and conductor of the Ukrainian Bandura Chorus, has a more sophisticated answer, but jut as mystical: "I have to; it's my destiny. The bandura is the soul of Ukraine. Everything is inherent in the instrument. Ukraine's history, all the joy and all the sorrow."

Oleh, the youngest director in the capella's history, comes well prepared to continue the 79-year tradition of the Ukrainian Bandura Chorus. Born in Cleveland to immigrant parents from Ukraine's Poltava region, Oleh began to study the piano at age 5 and later the violin. He attended the Cleveland Institute of Music, and the Bolzano Institute in Italy. He has performed as a piano soloist, winning the Baldwin Wallace Conservatory Summer Music competition with a Mozart piano concerto, and so on. A magna cum laude graduate and a Phi Beta Kappa member, Oleh knows his stuff. He's a worthy successor to the late Hryhoriy Kytasty, the capella's legendary director and Oleh's mentor.

Oleh, Taras, their older brother Ihor (a dentist in the Cleveland area), Mr. Hnatyshyn and the other bandurists are continuing a tradition in this country that began nearly half a century ago in 1949, when the members of the State Bandurist Chorus of the Ukrainian SSR who had survived World War II emigrated en masse from the displaced persons camps in Germany to a new home base in Detroit. Like Oleh, a bandurist who happens to be an attorney on the side, they were bandurists who were autoworkers on the side.

The bandura tradition in Ukraine is centuries-old. The modern instrument that people see on the concert stage evolved from the original kobza, a small, circular lute-like instrument played by wandering minstrels - many of them blind. These blind minstrels - the kobzars - played a crucial role in Ukrainian history.

Taras Shevchenko describes one of them in his famous poem, "Perebendia." Perebendia, old and blind, sings love songs for the girls, bawdy ones for the guys at the drinking establishment or at the marketplace; he sings about the destruction of the Kozak Sich, "Just so people know." Shevchenko grew up listening to the lore and legends of these minstrels. Their stories and songs became the basis for Shevchenko's monumental book, the "Kobzar," published in 1840, when the nation was barely alive. Shevchenko's "Kobzar" with its memorable verse provided a heroic past for an illiterate, unorganized nation that still existed largely at an oral level.

The original Bandura Chorus was formed in Kyiv in 1918 during Ukraine's brief period of independence, under the direction of bandura virtuoso Vasyl Yemetz. He, along with others like Hnat Khotkeych and Volodymyr Kabachok, collected traditional songs, organized amateur bandura ensembles and developed more versatile, sophisticated instruments. The chorus toured Western Europe to promote Ukrainian culture during a crucial time in the nation's history and then remained intact during the early years of Soviet rule in Ukraine.

In the 1930s the tradition of blind kobzari still existed in the many villages of rural Ukraine. Not only did these kobzari continue the tradition of Ukrainian folklore and song, they also served as a national communication network, independent of the central authorities. Then in 1935 catastrophe struck. Joseph Stalin assembled these blind musicians from all corners of Soviet Ukraine and ordered their mass execution.

That's about the time when a strictly regimented and controlled State Bandurist Chorus of the Ukrainian SSR was organized. This was the group that escaped Soviet Ukraine en masse after World War II and ended up in Michigan with the help of already established Ukrainian Americans like Detroit City Councilwoman Mary Beck.

Once here, the Ukrainian Bandura chorus continued its mission to bring Ukrainian culture to the world. They've done so with a level of excellence that is unsurpassed. Those of you who've heard them know what I'm talking about.

I heard the old-timers when they'd come to Cleveland 40 years ago. The thunderous chorus, rising above a ringing cascade of 20 banduras was thrilling to my 10-year-old ears. At other times, I shivered to the emphatically gentle trill accompanying a lament or love song. You have to hear it. If you live in any of the cities listed above, you can. In fact, you can listen to it on your car radio or, as they say, in the comfort of your own home. Over the years, the Ukrainian Bandura Chorus has released more than 20 record albums, three CDs and three videos, in addition to completing a couple dozen tours, including Ukraine twice, Europe, Australia, the United States and Canada. (Nothing beats a live performance.)

The story of the Ukrainian Bandura Chorus is one of the more inspirational ones you're ever likely to hear. You can be part of it. You should be part of it. Go to a concert. Buy a CD. Look them up on the World Wide Web: http://brama.com/bandura/. Join the tradition and help to take it into the 21st century.

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