Memorial plaque recalls international bandura promoter

LVIV - On historic Market Square (Ploscha Rynok), on Sunday, June 13, almost five years after the death of Mykola Dosinchuk-Chorny, a memorial plaque was unveiled on the building where he lived in the late 1930s.

Mr. Dosinchuk-Chorny was born in northwestern Ukraine in 1918, but relocated in the early 1930s to Lviv where he became an active participant in the Ukrainian student movement that had begun to fervently assert the rights of Ukrainians then living under Polish rule. He subsequently joined the anti-Soviet Ukrainian underground movement and was forced to flee to the West at the close of World War II.

From his home in New York City, Mr. Dosinchuk-Chorny took up the cause of promoting Ukraine's cultural heritage, devoting his life to popularizing Ukraine's national instrument, the bandura. He established the New York School of Bandura in 1973, and in 1981 launched the publication of a special quarterly, Bandura Magazine, dedicated to featuring articles on Ukrainian music history as well as providing a forum for the exchange of information, music, ideas and news among bandurists throughout the world.

He traveled extensively throughout North and South America and Europe to promote the bandura. In the case of Ukrainian communities in South America, Mr. Dosinchuk-Chorny organized visiting instructors and the mass delivery of almost 300 instruments to meet the growing demand among youths to learn how to play Ukraine's unique stringed instrument.

When Ukrainian independence was restored in 1991, he began traveling throughout Ukraine, gathering information about the bandura and the many performers scattered throughout the country, helping them organize and promoting their accomplishments through the press within Ukraine and abroad.

Several dozen people gathered for the unveiling ceremony, which included remarks by Prof. Vasyl Herasymenko of Lviv's Lysenko Music Academy and historian Bohdan Zheplynsky, and bandura performances by acclaimed musicians Lyudmila Posykira, Oleh Sozansky and Taras Lazurkevych. Dr. Dosinchuk-Chorny's daughter, Lydia Matiaszek, who resides in Kyiv, also spoke to the gathering about her father's commitment to promoting the bandura and its rich heritage.

The plaque was designed by Lviv sculptor Mykola Posykira and architect Mykhailo Fedyk. Building No. 36 on Lviv's historic UNESCO-listed Market Square dates to the Renaissance Period. Prior to the Soviet occupation of Lviv in 1939, it housed Ukrainska Narodna Torhivlia, or the Ukrainian People's Trade cooperative association.

Copyright © The Ukrainian Weekly, July 25, 2004, No. 30, Vol. LXXII

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