CHICAGO – The University of Chicago held its 58th annual Folk Festival on February 9-10. The program included Friday evening concerts, and workshops Saturday at the historic Ida Noyes hall on the university’s Hyde Park campus. Despite a last-minute snowstorm, the event was well attended.
The Saturday interactive workshops included sessions in Scandinavian and Cajun dance, a barn dance, learning to play the recorder, shapenote and harmony singing, performances by various string ensembles and children’s activities.
As in previous years, included in the day’s schedule was a Ukrainian bandura workshop. Featured were members of the Char-Zillya women’s ensemble: Lesya Klimchenko, Motria Poshyvanyk Caudill and Oksana Rodak. They were joined by young bandura students from the ODUM bandura school, directed by Ms. Rodak, based at the Dyvosvit Ukrainian Saturday School in Bloomingdale, Ill.; and the School of Bandura directed by Ms. Poshyvanyk Caudill, which holds classes at Plast on Saturdays and at St. Joseph Ukrainian Catholic Church on Thursday evenings.
Ms. Rodak welcomed the audience, introduced the performers and provided a brief introduction to the bandura, as well as to Ukraine, its history and culture. The women began by playing the lively “Zaporizhan March” composed by Yevhen Adamtsevych. A selection of folk tunes and instrumental pieces highlighted the versatility of the bandura. The instrumental pieces were Hryhory Kytasty’s “Echo of the Steppes” and Mykola Deychakivsky’s “Bandura Conversation.”
Ms. Rodak then spoke of the bandura’s genesis as the kobza, an instrument that itinerant heralds, or “kobzari,” played to accompany their retelling of historical ballads, or dumy, as they wandered the villages of Ukraine in the 15th and 16th centuries. Ms. Klimchenko then played and sang the duma “Cossack Graves.”
Two of Ms. Rodak’s young bandura students, Liliya Viytyk and Katya Mykhailova, performed a duet, “A Lyrical Song” composed by Ola Herasymenko Oliynyk.
In keeping with the interactive nature of the workshops, Ms. Rodak then taught the audience the words to the folk song “The Boat is Floating.” Before long everyone was singing along with the bandura players: “ta vse khliup, khliup, khliup, khliup…”
The performance concluded with a medley of Ukrainian folk songs, and a rendition of the seasonal favorite “Shchedryk.”
Workshop participants were then invited to talk with the performers and get better acquainted with this beautiful and complex stringed instrument called the bandura.