Film Treatment Plus

Note: What I have here is essentially an ungainly combination of Film Treatment and Research Document. More specifically, it represents a Film Treatment Plus, as I refer to it—a Treatment into which I am at the current moment cramming aspects of a Research Document as well.

The intention is that, at some subsequent juncture—certainly at that point at which I will be readying everything to send off to various potential funding sources—I will strip away the “research document” aspects, placing these in either endnotes or one or more addenda, and will then make use of what's left over as the actual working Film Treatment.

For the moment, some of what is below—especially again, that which serves “research document functionalities”—make for rather awkward, and even possibly somewhat burdensome reading, unfortunately.

However, the greater purpose of including all this material in this single bulky text now is that much of it represent matters I am not entirely clear on, that I am unsure or not fully certain about, or that touch on doubtful points that I need to clear up—in short, matters I need to do more research on. For this particular portion of my overall research, moreover, I will likely need to call on the help of others in order to obtain the requisite answers at hand.

Hence, rather than distributing out a series of particular questions to each individual whom I might contact asking for assistance in the matter (although I will no doubt still need to do take this approach in some part, too), it makes sense I think to combine together all of these matters in one place, so that I can then ask particular individuals to go through it all as best they can, and see if they can offer help on any specific detail.

The typographical device I am using to indicate any matter regarding which I am doubtful is the question mark. Any portion of the text herein that ends in a question mark, therefore, and does not seem to perform the grammatical function of an interrogation within the context of the text's ongoing discussion, can be thus assumed to be an indication of matters that I still need to clear up. All of this again, no doubt makes for a rather inelegant reading experience, but this is merely a temporary condition that I hope, as the project continues to progress, to be more and more in a position to clear up bit by bit.

While I have managed to piece together by this point what I think amounts to a decent grasp of the matters at hand, there is at the same time a fair amount I am unclear about, to be sure. No doubt some of the interpretations proffered below—and not unlikely, even some of the basic facts—will require some emendation. It is certainly my intention to be assiduous as possible in clearing up any mistakes at every step along the way as this project proceeds.

Also: It should be noted that I am of course drawing from a variety of sources in the narrative I am constructing here; most often I am explicitly referencing these sources directly in the text below. On certain occasions, however, I do not do so, but instead include the source—usually a particular individual I have in one way or another derived the line of thought in question from—as someone whose commentary will (aspirationally speaking) form part of the DISCUSSION at that particular juncture in the film. This too is a temporary measure, moreover: At some point in the near future, I will be inserting endnotes that will more properly and clearly document everything.

In summation: The overriding purpose that this “Treament Plus” is designed to serve is as a general guideline for the narrative that the film will be in the business of constructing. The fact that I have at the current moment a lot of material mixed into this that again, fulfill “research document functionalities”, does I would admit make for somewhat laborious reading. I have at least attempted to mitigate some of this by inserting a sort of hyper-text index immediately above, that not only sketches out the overall structure that the film will follow, but also allows readers to jump straightaway into various discrete individual sections that might be of immediate interest to them, without having to first wade through considerable oceans of text to get there.

Again, this project is decidedly a work in progress.

Note: I am utilizing ALL-CAPS here not only for the “Cast of Characters”—those individuals who have a part to play in the film, either as topics of interest in the storyline, or as interviewees, or as both—but also for aspects that perform what might be called structural functionalities. These are those devices, in other words, that serve to give concrete form to the ongoing narrative. Hence: VOICEOVER, or DISCUSSION (meaning here commentary given by one or more interview subjects), VIDEO or AUDIO components, a sequence of MONTAGE, etc. At times I use the term VISUAL simply to denote what is shown on the screen at any given moment—i.e., the VISUAL at this moment displays a series of overhead images taken from a drone, etc.


Introduction: The Pilgrimage to Kryachkivka

The film begins with an introductory MONTAGE sequence, which not only acquaints the viewer by way of VOICEOVER with the topic matter at hand—the Ukrainian “authentic” music revival and its multifarious “offshoots”—but introduces the whole spectrum of this music through a sharply juxtaposed series of brief audio-video fragments. What is presented here, then, is a very rapid “MTV-like” MONTAGE of the actual music the film will be focused on—not only “authentic” traditional music, but the entire plethora of diverse stylistic modes that have “branched-out” from the traditional music movement in recent years in Ukraine.

Here are some possibilities as far as the components that will comprise this opening MONTAGE:

The first snippet will be the evocative initial 16 seconds of Joryj Kłoc's “Lis”, and the last will be the final seconds (before the music ends) of this same video, or else the final seconds of AUDIO of another Joryj Kłoc video, “Verbovaya Doshchechka” (albeit without the laughter tagged on at the end).

In between will be snippets taken from likely the following videos, although not necessarily in the order presented here (this order does give perhaps some incipient conception of what I have in mind, however). I will be adding things to this list, no doubt, and of course this overall set of videos will almost certainly change to one degree or another as things proceed:

DakhaBrakha “Na Dobranich”

Hurtopravtsi “Kupala Ritual”

TaRuta “Horhanskyi Front”

Ulyana Horbachevska/Mark Tokar/
Yuriy Andrukhovych “Antonych
At Home: Idol Night”

Susanna Karpenko
“Sidit Zayets Na Verbi”

Bozhychi “Oy, Na Dubovi
Ta Hilky Hnutsya”

Natalia Polovynka
“Slava Rozhdennomu”

Ulyana Horbachevska, etc.
“Dedication To Vasyl Slipak”

Maryana Sadovska “Where
Are You From, Dark Caravan?”

Danylo Pertsov “Bitter Star”

Electroacoustic's Ensemble
“Nord/Ouest II”

Julian Kytasty
“Black Sea Winds”

Joryj Kłoc
“Lis”

Drevo/Maisternia Pisni
“Oy Tam Za Moryamy”

Susanna Karpenko
“Yavrumla Salgirnin Boyu”

Khoreya Kozatska
“Yikhav Kozak Za Dunay”

Hycz Orkestr “Lyubit Ukrayinu”

Joryj Kłoc
“Verbovaja Doščečka”

Burdon “Zozulechka”

The Doox “Soloveyko”

Ulyana Horbachevska/Mark Tokar/
Yuriy Andrukhovych “Antonych
At Home: Wedding”

Dychka “Psykhbolnytsa”

Dakh Daughters “Rozy/Donbassa”

DakhaBrakha “Buvayte Zdorovi”

Eduard Drach
[“Performance on Kobza”]

Drevo “Dyvnaya Hodyna
Po Vsim Svitu Stala”

Volodymyr Kushpet
[“Performance on Lira”]

Joryj Kłoc “Siadaj Siadaj”

HulayHorod “Chornomortsi”

The Doox
“Pid Borom”

DakhaBrakha “Oy, U Kyevi”

Iryna Danyleiko, “Proshchai, Svite”

Natalia Polovynka [“Concert
at All Saints Parish, Part I”]

Cloud Jam “Cosmic Horilka”

Maisternia Pisni “Po Narodzeniu”

Ulyana Horbachevska/Mark Tokar/
Petras Vyšniauskas/Klaus Kugel
“Ultramarine”

Susanna Karpenko
“Viryazhala Mati Sina”

Maryana Sadovska “Chornobyl”

Burdon “Vesnyanka”

Bozhychi “Shcho V Pana
Khazyayina Da Na Yoho Dvori”

DakhaBrakha @ Ivan Honchar

Burdon “Pod Biloyu Berоzoyu”

Ulyana Horbachevska “Solospivy”

DakhaBrakha “Vanyusha”

Joryj Kłoc
“Verbovaja Doščečka”

[My idea would be to not simply advance from one snippet to another in a strictly linear fashion, by the way, but to interweave the whole set of videos together, such that the MONTAGE jumps back and forth disjunctively between various selections. In other words, the MONTAGE should begin probably with the earlier moments of each video that is featured, then return at some point in a progressive manner to later moments of these same videos, as each one moves through its own development.

Hence, a few early moments from the first video will be interrupted by a few early moments of another video, then another and another, but then the MONTAGE will eventually shift back to the first video, showing some later portion of the particular progressive development of this first video, to be followed by the same from some of the other videos.

This is how the pattern would operate in general terms, although it should not be rendered in a too mathematically ordered and programattic way, but rather things should be allowed to get fairly mixed up at certain junctures also. This would be so as to serve the greater purpose of dramatic heightening. Thus, some of the videos will only have only one or two sections included, while others will have three, four, or five, and so on.

The latter portion of the MONTAGE, in any event, will definitely feature the most dramatic moments that are to be found in this set of videos, such that the whole MONTAGE will thereby progess towards a climatic ending.

At some point in the (hopefully not too distant future), I will include a “mock-up” of what I have in mind as part of the presentation here.]

VOICEOVER of possible text:

“This is the music of Ukraine...an 'authentic' music that was forced to endure through the harshest conditions of cultural deprivation and suppression, and managed to not merely survive, but to flourish even...Here are its ancient pagan roots, its earthy communal core, its stirring expressions of individual personality...Here is its profound sacred side...its wild festive side...Here are a multitude of wide-ranging 'offshoots' of this 'authentic' culture, that trace a line from the hoary mists of the pre-historical to the sun-filled moments of yesterday afternoon, encompassing everything from Rock to Jazz to World Beat to experimental Art music to contemporary Classical...This is the music of Ukraine...”

After this quick and rather frenetic introduction, the film abruptly changes pace, taking on a markedly unhurried, stately, even contemplative rhythm, as the scene shifts to the small Ukrainian village of Kryachkivka—or rather, to the pilgrimage to Kryachkivka, a protracted voyage enacted visually through a long approach to this rural outpost, as seen mostly from within a moving vehicle, revealing all along the way the hallowed steppe-landscape of the ancient Ukrainian heartland.

This series of shots indicating the “pilgrimage to Kryachkivka”—what amounts to not only a much slower-paced, but a much more unified MONTAGE vis-a-vis its content than the one presented at the film's opening—is accompanied by the evocative strains of DREVO's “Oy, U Poli Drevo”. The slight, wavering, barely audible start of this track actually commences immediately with the cessation of the “MTV-like MONTAGE”, providing thereby a very sudden, very stark contrast with what had gone immediately before.

In giving VISUAL and AUDIO expression to what will in fact prove to be the underlying key thematic of the film overall—the “pilgrimage to Kryachkivka”, and all that is associated with and is symbolized by that—what is being set up here at the same time is a sort of “motif library”, comprised precisely of the series of shots (with accompanying music) that indicate this “pilgrimage”, small excerpts of which will then be made use of in a recurring fashion during the rest of the film.

In other words, as this key thematic of making a “pilgrimage to Kryachkivka” is recapitulated by a variety of people, stemming from often quite different circumstances, throughout the proceeding narrative, various VIDEO/AUDIO snippets, bits and pieces drawn from this “library”, are brought back into play in various ways, so as to accompany each instantiation of this key thematic.

After a few moments of this VIDEO/AUDIO setup, a VOICEOVER now asserts itself above the music (the volume of which is first turned down somewhat, then gradually turned all the way off) so as to convey a condensed, introductory account of what is known about Ukrainian musical traditions, their pre-historical, Pagan origins, particularly with reference to its small-choral vocal traditions—a snapshot summary of the commonly-accepted scholarly assumptions, or at least most prevalent theories at this moment regarding precisely how old such traditions might be, how they might have developed over the centuries, etc.

VOICEOVER of possible text:

“While no-one knows for certain how old some of the elements are that have come down to us in the body of practices that make up present-day Ukrainian traditional music, it is clear that many date from a pre-Christian, Pagan era...”

Brief DISCUSSION here w/ experts such as KLYMENKO, YEFREMOV, etc. on what is known about Slavic Pagan musical traditions, as well as those of early Kyivan Rus, especially concerning aspects such as Vesnyanka, Kolyadka, Khorovod, etc.

VIDEO shots of a variety of re-enacted Slavic pagan rites, perhaps intermixed with some fine art depictions; AUDIO possibly of DREVO's “Volodar-Volodarchyku”, to begin moments after VOICEOVER begins.

Possible VOICEOVER text:

“With the coming of Christianity to the world of the Eastern Slavs, many of these Pagan-era elements were then incorporated, to one degree or another, into Christian rituals...”

More very brief DISCUSSION commentary here, not more than a few words, from leading experts on such matters—YEFREMOV, KLYMENKO, SONEVYTSKY, etc.—to give some succinct indication of the sort of transformation that likely occurred as aspects of the music accompanying Pagan rites were then insinuated into a Christian context.

So as to give the viewer some sense, however concise, of the nature and character of the matter at hand here in its broader contours, a brief and condensed chronicle of general historical developments in Ukraine up to the end of the 19th century is then presented by VOICEOVER as well (what immediately follows isn't intended to be the actual text of that VOICEOVER—I have so far only a small portion of what this text might possibly end up as included just below, but will be adding more and more to this eventually as things progress—but simply a “telegraphic” summary account):

The rise of Kyivan Rus civilization...the Eastern Slavic conversion to Christianity...the Mongol Invasion and the collapse of Kyivan Rus...the rise of Halychyna and Volyn...the incorporation of Ukrainian territories first into Lithuanian, then Polish-Lithuanian states...the emergence of the Cossacks...the Khmelnytsky Uprising, leading to political engagement with Moscow, and then gradual incorporation of substantial territories of central and eastern Ukraine into the Tsarist Russian Empire...

(cont.) ...The situation of the majority of the westernmost Ukrainian territories at this same time as first remaining part of the Polish Commonwealth, then being incorporated into Hapsburg Austria and Tsarist Russia as result of the partitions of Poland...the rise of a Ukrainian national movement, beginning in the east, in Kharkiv, and gradually spreading westward...the related Romantic cultural movement in Ukraine...the full emergence of Ukrainian as a literary language...the advent of Shevchenko, as well as other Ukrainian literary and cultural figures...engagement on the part of general Romantic sensibility with “folk culture”, with all the modes of cultural expression practiced by the rural masses of Ukraine—including of course, musical expression.

Here is some initial possible VOICEOVER text for this section:

“How is one to best account for the emergence of Ukraine as a 'nation'?

“Ukraine has long been a difficult nation to get a proper fix on, in fact, certainly for many people outside its borders, and even for some inside its borders. Its history has been seemingly broken up into a number of discrete fragments, bit and pieces of its overall story that have at different times gotten themselves dispersed out to a variety of other national narratives, so to speak, within which they have been temporarily trapped. Yet remarkably enough, Ukraine's story does still exhibit its own manner of tenacious consistency all the same.

“This remarkable story enters the historical record more or less with the establishment of Kyivan Rus...”

This very condensed historical account is accompanied by a shifting array of VISUAL images illustrating the historical developments that are being related—e.g., fine art portraits of historical figures, depiction of historical events, etc.—yet at the same time the VISUAL continuously reverts in between each new set of IMAGES back to the unfolding scenic display that represents “the voyage to Kryachkivka”, as seen from a moving vehicle.

Accompanying this historical chronicle should be appropriate musical accompaniment provided throughout, perhaps snippets taken from different choral settings of Taras Shevchenko's poetry. Here is one possible example.

This compact historical account leads up then to the moment in the later 19th century in which attempts were beginning to be undertaken, operating in terms of a sort of “Late Romantic” sensibility, to present rural, traditional music within the context of the “official” urban-based culture of the day. This represents the beginnings of what is referred to here as the “Renovationist approach”. These attempts, in other words, were put forth in such a way so as to “re-package” this traditional music, to in effect renovate it, relieving it of its rough edges, its overall rustic character, and thereby make it more acceptable to the urban-based, academic-oriented standards of the day. This thus marks the origins of the so-called “Folk Orchestras”. DISCUSSION commentary here from music historians, etc.

Now the VOICEOVER shifts back to its synoptic historical chronicle to recount the events that shaped the early 20th century in Ukraine:

World War I, and a whole series of ensuing systematic disruption and upheaval, culminating in the “Ukrainian Revolution” and the formation of a Ukrainian state that took place in Kyiv in 1917, alongside the “Russian Revolution” that occured in the Imperial center at that same time. This historical juncture then comes to a violent conclusion with the arrival of Bolshevik rule in Ukraine, the collapse of independent Ukrainian statehood, and the start thereby of the decades-long Soviet imposition. Historical narrative here is again to be conveyed by way of VOICEOVER, but perhaps at this point is also introduced very brief DISCUSSION commentary by expert historians of this era: PLOKHY, HRYTSAK, etc.

MUSICAL accompaniment should now feature sounds representing the tumult of this historical era, perhaps snippets of Stravinsky's Rite of Spring and/or Schoenberg's Pierrot Lunaire, etc.

VOICEOVER accounts the fate of Ukrainian traditional music culture throughout the Soviet era, interspersed with brief summarizations of the sequence of events that comprised Soviet governance in Ukraine overall: The initial Bolshevik takeover, the “Ukrainization” period of the 1920s, highlighted by the urban-based “Cultural Renaissance” of this era, followed then by Stalin's rise to power near the close of the 1920s, his so-called “Revolution from Above”, and everything that ensued from that:

Mass agricultural collectivization and industrialization, the general supression of Ukrainian language and culture, harassment, repression and murder of its urban intellectuals and other cultural figures, and the hideous mass murder through deliberate starvation of the Holodomor that took place in the Ukrainian countryside, all of which was then followed upon by the horrors of World War II and the Nazi Invasion. This tumultous, nearly unimaginably destructive period then comes to an end with the conclusion of World War II and the onset of the Cold War, within which context occurred the limited, but by no means entirely inconsequential moment of Khrushchev's “thaw”.

Ukrainian traditional music culture, to the extent that it exists at all during this period on the level of “official” culture, does so primarily in the form of the “State Orchestras”—the massive agglomerations of huge vocal choirs, vast arrays of dancers, orchestral accompaniment, etc., that the Bolsheviks adapted from the earlier “Folk Orchestras”, and that graced the stages of urban concert halls and opera houses? throughout the Soviet Union. Brief DISCUSSION commentary through this whole section by both expert historians—PLOKHY, HRYTSAK, etc.—and music scholars—SONEVYTSKY, etc.

AUDIO-VISUAL examples are given here, along with DISCUSSION regarding the character of these “State Orchestras”—the primary upshot here is that, whatever else might be said for good or for ill about these “State Orchestras”, they decidedly did not put forward a very accurate presentation of traditional music practices.

The “State Orchestras” of course represented a “Renovationist” approach to traditional music: Although certain aspects of traditional music were in fact carried over from preceding eras into the modern era by means of these orchestras—specific songs, melodic lines, rhythmic approaches, lyrical texts, etc.—and thus, were more or less effectively preserved as a living presence within the contemporaneous cultural sphere, what needs to be most of all emphasized here again, is that the music making of these “State Orchestras” did not in any sense manifest an “authentic” rendering of traditional music.

In short, the whole series of age-old habits, tendencies, approaches—the entire manner of music making that informs traditional music, that defines it as a specific mode of practice—is for the most part absent in the sort of music making that characterizes the “State Orchestras”. Even though there might be some worthwhile qualities found in the music of the “State Orchestras”—and indeed, these orchestras could at times be quite impressive in their own fashion—the real threat that they nonetheless represented was the possibility that they would come to utterly replace “authentic” traditional music practices.

In other words, in adapting traditional music in such a way that translated it into a new form of expression, one that was thought to be better suited to the modern era, it was not at all difficult to conceive that these Orchestras would sooner or later work to effectively wipe out, to eradicate “authentic” traditional music practices themselves. And as it was the case that this was actually the intent of the Soviet authorities, who in fact promoted the “State Orchestras” as the “proper”, the preferred, the official form of traditional music for the purposes and requirements of Soviet civilization, this was no idle threat.

And it was indeed true that, throughout the Ukrainian countryside, “authentic” traditional music practices were starting to wither away, and in many regions to even die out altogether. This was taking place again, as a result of official government disapproval and constraints, as well as of the violent upheavals that Ukraine was repeatedly prey to in this historical period, but to some extent, this gradual decay and disappearance of “authentic” traditional music practices could be also said to be simply the consequence of the general drift of 20th century life. This was especially the case vis-a-vis the new “mass communications systems” that were beginning to slowly spread out and take hold throughout Soviet Ukraine: recorded music, radio, etc.

[In the documentary film “Povernennya” (“Come Back”), the VOICEOVER states at 31:17 that “the village became silent in the mid-1950s. Not only Krachkivka became silent, but hundreds and thousands of villages across Ukraine. The songs survived reprisals, collectivization, the Second World War, and vanished at the very peak of the Soviet Age, somewhere in between Nikita Krushchev's thaw, and Leonid Brezhnev's stagnation. Silence gripped the soul of the people, encoded in the lines of ancient songs”. As succinctly stated by HALYNA POPKO at 30:55: “The village now is deaf and dumb”. This might suggest that it was really the new “mass communications systems” that were predominantly responsible for the deterioration of traditional music culture.

What is at hand here, in any event, is of course a very complex state of affairs with almost certainly more than one determining factor; this film means to present this matter, therefore, in all of its complexity as best it can. More research, nonetheless, needs to be undertaken to attain a better grasp on the actual likely causal processes behind this phenomenon.

It should be noted in addition here, though, that this whole question regarding the possible corrosive effects of “mass communication systems”, and everything associated thereby—their tendency towards not only encouraging neglect of and disdain for “authentic” music, but also towards a cheapening and debasing of such music, even as they at the same time help to keep this music alive through their mass broadcasting capacities—is one of the pressing underlying issues the film is overall concerned with, and will likely be discussed in an explicit manner near the end of the film, in a sort of general Symposium convened to address such matters.]

Hence, the commonplace, familiar process, which to one degree or another occurred in virtually all nations throughout the developed world in the 20th century, in which “authentic” traditional music practices were more and more set aside, ignored and neglected by not only the majority of the urban populace, but increasingly by much of the rural populace too, was certainly underway in Ukraine as well.

By the arrival of the mid-20th century in Ukraine therefore, if the question had been posed whether or not traditional music would be preserved into the future in any form that could legitimately be considered “authentic”, the most reasonable and well-informed answer would likely have been a negative one.

The entire foregoing account regarding the state of “authentic” traditional music practices in Ukraine circa the mid-20th century is to be conveyed by way of both DISCUSSION and VOICEOVER. Experts featured here in DISCUSSION: YEFREMOV, KLYMENKO, SONEVYTSKY, etc.


Volodymyr Matviyenko and Kryachkivka

It is at this point that VOLODYMYR MATVIYENKO enters the story.

As the VOICEOVER introduces MATVIYENKO, the stylistic manner of VISUAL that had prevailed throughout the opening section of the film—i.e., the series of scenes indicating “the voyage to Kryachkivka”, with intermittent portraits and depictions representing historical matters superimposed thereupon—now shifts to another VISUAL approach, a fact that is immediately indicated through a series of stationary scenes (no longer shot from a moving vehicle, that is) which confer the sense that that the desired destination, Kryachkivka itself, has in fact been arrived at. The “pilgrimage” has thus reached its intended “shrine”.

VOICEOVER narrates the tale of VOLODYMYR MATVIYENKO, a music scholar and professor at the Kyiv Conservatory? who in the year 1958, deep in the depths of the Cold War (although the Soviet Union itself was now undergoing its brief “Khrushchevian thaw” period) happens upon the tiny village of Kryachkivka in the Poltava Region of Ukraine, with its still-thriving tradition of ancient choral singing.

Show photographic images here of VOLODYMYR MATVIYENKO—assuming these exist—as well as perhaps some brief reminiscences given through DISCUSSION by those who knew the man (the individuals who give these brief reminiscences, all of whom will have important parts to play later on in the narrative, are not explicitly introduced here—in terms of first and last name, etc.—but will be instead given a proper introduction at that point in the narrative in which their own particular part in the story comes most fully into play. Exceptions to this general rule will take effect here in regards to any individuals who appear at this juncture of the film with reminiscences of MATVIYENKO, but who do not have any part to play later on in the film. This general rule, then—fully introducing individuals only at that moment in which their own part in the story, assuming they do have a substantial part to play in the story, arises into view—will in fact be maintained throughout the film as a whole).

Thoroughly captivated and enchanted by this largely forgotten and now quite obscure, yet all the same deeply-rooted and well-nigh primordial musical culture that he discovers alive and kicking in Kryachkivka, MATVIYENKO begins on a very informal, and perhaps not quite entirely sanctioned? basis, to surround himself with a cadre of ethnomusicology-trained academics back at Kyiv Conservatory, both students and professors?, who dedicate themselves to learning this age-old art in the only way that was at this point still open to them—which is to say, traveling whenever they could to Kryachkivka to confer and commune? with the rural masters of this ancient art.

What was at work here, then—and this is in many respects the most remarkable and most defining aspect of this whole story—was not simply a matter of ethnomusicology-scholars who ventured out to a small rural outpost so as to observe, and then abstractly analyze the “authentic” traditional music-making they found there, but one in which these scholars effectively situated themselves “horizontally” on the “ground level” of this rural community, so to speak, precisely in order to join in with that music making.

And this participation in traditional rural music making on the part of these urban scholars, moreover, was endeavored not on the basis of academic-derived standards imposed “vertically” from above, but instead in such a way that accepted the practice customs of this rural music culture itself as the proper, authoritative standard to follow.

In short, those who were “academic researchers” now become transformed in a sense into students, and the “research subjects” themselves into educators, into guides, into gurus. No longer merely “subjects” of a research endeavor, these living exemplars of an ancient art form are now recognized as the hallowed preceptors of its ways and means—as the rustic Magi of the precious tradition.

A sort of dynamic structure of active collaboration was thus established between the ethnomusicology-trained urban cadre and the “keepers of the flame” from Kryachkivka, a model of collaboration that would go on then to serve as the entire structural basis of the emergent “authentic” music revival in Ukraine—hereafter referred to as the Avtentyka Revival Movement [“avtentyka” = “authentic” in Ukrainian]—as well as its diverse profusion of “offshoots”.

[It would certainly seem to be the case, based on everything I have read, that the sort of activities which the Pokrovsky Ensemble—formed in Moscow in 1973—engaged in did involve very much this same sort of “collaborative relationship” with the native village music makers of rural Russia. Whether or not the “model” established by VOLODYMR MATVIYENKO could be considered the forerunner, the pioneer in forging this sort of “collaborative relationship”, then, would depend on to what degree such a relationship did in fact arise as a consequence of MATVIYENKO's discovery of Kraychkivka back in 1958, and how soon it did so.

To formulate this in a better way: Some manner of “collaborative relationship” did apparently emerge at some point between MATVIYENKO and his acolytes and the music makers in Kryachkivka; the question then is when exactly this occurred, and what did this “relationship” fully amount to? This, in short, is what still needs to be researched.

DREVO KYIV, it's worth noting, did not officially form until 1979, and did so at least in part as a response to the official founding of the Pokrovsky Ensemble in Moscow; the question then would be to what extent was there some manner of “collaborative relationship” set up between MATVIYENKO and his students from Kyiv Conservatory prior to that moment, even if not yet given any explicit official expression on the part of the Kyiv Conservatory contingent?

NADEZHDA ROZDABARA does mention that MATVIYENKO kept continuously sending out his students to Kryachkivka, presumably to engage in active participatory study with the music makers there, and it is thus on this basis that I have concluded that there was indeed some manner of “collaborative relationship”, however loose and “beneath the radar”, established between the Kyiv contingent and the Kryachkivka contingent fairly early on, at some point in the years subsequent to MATVIYENKO's first arrival in Kryachkivka in 1958, and that this relationship moreover not only helped instigate the more or less official founding of DREVO KRYACHKIVKA, but also set up the foundations of what would eventually become DREVO KYIV.

Whatever the case may be in this regard, though, what I believe really distinguishes the “authentic” music revival movement in Ukraine is both the overflowing abundance of what came out of this “collaborative relationship”—in terms of not just the impressive number of avtentyka ensembles, but also of its great plethora of “offshoots”— and in some ways even more so, the exceptional aesthetic value of this outpouring. It is this latter aspect, especially, that this film will endeavor to not simply talk about, but to show, or rather present—to expressly put forward through ongoing MUSICAL ILLUSTRATION at nearly every juncture. It is ultimately through the compelling nature of this music itself, then, that this film intends to make its most decisive points, and its greatest overall impact.]


The Formation of Drevo Kryachkivka

The most immediate product of this “collaborative relationship” was in fact the music group DREVO—the ensemble that can be considered the unequivocal pioneer, the “mother of all” Ukrainian avtentyka music ensembles —not only the very first such ensemble, but in many ways the exemplar for all those that would follow.

DREVO itself, however, was from the start a two-sided affair, comprised of both a KRYACHKIVKA contingent and a KYIV contingent—again, each side cooperating with, and continuously learning from the other?, yet for the most part performing and recording separately?

And it was actually DREVO KRYACHKIVKA that got underway first. Hence we find sometime in 1960 the more or less formal establishment of a singing ensemble in the village, drawn from the loose circle of friends who had always sung there on an informal basis, but who now began coming together in a more organized fashion. This was led from the start by HALYNA POPKO, the native Kryachkivka resident who had been encharged with the task of collecting songs in the village for Prof. MATVIYENKO [It can be inferred from all this, I think, that it was MATVIYENKO's presence in Kryachkivka, and his activities there overall, that had pretty much spurred on the formation of DREVO KRYACHKIVA as a more formal, as opposed to informal group, but further research should be done to confirm and bolster this].

At this point, a select number of the individual members of DREVO KRYACHKIVKA are introduced. In addition to HALYNA POPKO, other Kryachkivka inhabitants who were members of the singing ensemble at this early point included NADEZHDA and FEDIR ROZDABARA, TETIANA KREVENKO? [NINA REVA joined much later? When exactly?...Presumably one of the older women in Pavlo Farenyuk's film is KREVENKO...double check this...what are the names of all the women in this film?] These individuals will be introduced directly, live before the camera, where this is possible; members who have passed on, on the other hand, will be introduced through the reminescences, stories, etc. from those in the village who knew them. PHOTOGRAPHS of these deceased individuals—perhaps shown held up in the hands of those actually engaged in the act of reminiscencing about them at that moment—are displayed, as are whatever other early photographs that can be located here of the group.

Meanwhile back in Kyiv, the informal clique of students and scholars that Prof. MATVIYENKO had gathered around himself at Kyiv Conservatory carried on as well?, focused mainly on the process of learning the ins and outs of this traditional music, and translating its disciplinary practice into terms that would allow it to be taught within an academic context? This was however done so, again, in a manner that accepted the actual practices of this traditional music itself as the proper standard to be followed, rather than transforming the music by “vertically” super-imposing academic standards. At this point in time, however, this Kyiv contingent did not have any real public profile?, but instead confined their activities solely to the environs of the Kyiv Conservatory? [More research is needed to double-check, bolster this account].

Moreover, the DREVO ensemble in Kryachkivka itself had only a very small and modest public profile at this early point, performing on an entirely unofficial basis? only within the confines of their own very remote village?, wholly unknown to virtually everyone outside this rural outpost itself, with the sole exception of the contingent of scholars and students at Kyiv Conservatory? [More research is needed to double-check, bolster this account]

All this was of course the simple consequence of the fact that, even during this relatively more tolerant moment of “Khrushchevian thaw”, an actively-pursued interest in “authentic” traditional music was not by any means a sanctioned, much less encouraged activity on the part of the Soviet authorities.

[Need more research here overall to confirm, to fill in the many details, and gaps in understanding as to exactly how both DREVO contingents first came together, as well as the relationship between the “Kryachkivka contingent” and the “Kyiv contingent”:i.e., what impact this collaborative engagement and interaction with this cadre of urban academics had on the members of DREVO KYRACHKIVKA, how it effected the development of their own discrete group, what were the general inter-personal dynamics involved, and the general reactions to the set-up overall, and also the relationship that any or all of such activities might have resulted in vis-a-vis the Soviet authorities?]

Indeed, even in Russia, in relation to ethnic Russian traditional music, this was in fact the case as well. And given the neo-Colonialism that was always in operation vis-a-vis relations between the Russian, Moscow-based center of the Soviet Imperium, and the provincial Ukrainian periphery—as well as the ever-present threat of being accused of “bourgeois nationalist” tendencies, such that any interest in “things Ukrainian” not officially sanctioned by the State always carried along with it—this was all the more so with reference to Ukrainian folk traditions [This paragraph needs some additional research to double-check, and bolster the general account and interpretations given].

Yet the informal Kyivan contingent persisted all the same, continuing to actively pursue their interests in the “authentic” music practices they had discovered in Kryachkiva, building up in the process a growing competency in enacting this music on their own, and in teaching it to others. And at the same time, the Kryackivka music makers likewise kept at it on their end, cultivating in the process a slowly-growing reputation at least in the local area for their conspicuously evident skill and dedication [more research needed here as well].


Distinguishing Aspects and Larger
Significance of Ukrainian Musical Traditions

[Note: The larger part of the section below falls into the category of what the note at the top of this page refers to as “research document functionalities”. Thus, even though this section is quite lengthy, this lengthiness should not be seen as a reflection of the “screen time” any of the matters discussed below will actually take up. What is below, rather, comprise matters I feel the need to research and consider more thoroughly, consult with experts in the field, etc., so as to eventually arrive at a clearer picture vis-a-vis the matter at hand. Once I have accomplished this task in regards to all the issues I am discussing below, what results may end up as little more than half a dozen to a dozen lines of VOICEOVER text, with some brief DISCUSSION commentary interspersed. The reader should understand, in short, that the time spent discussing the issues below will not necessarily be reflected in the time spent discussing these matters in the film itself.]

Shift to a fuller DISCUSSION at this point with various experts, along with perhaps some VOICEOVER included so as to provide an overall structure, regarding the nature and character of both what I am calling here the “small choral tradition” in Ukraine, and the distinctiveness of Ukrainian traditional music as a whole.

It is this second aspect that is to be addressed first: Hence, prior to engaging in a broader consideration of the Ukrainian small choral tradition, and the degree to which it may be conceived as bearing its own manner of distinctiveness, mention should first be made, in at least very succinct form, of other aspects of the Ukrainian traditional music world which confer upon it a highly distinct character.

What may be referred to as the “Kobza tradition”, as well as those modes of traditional music making that are characteristic of the Carpathian mountain communities, will in fact be both dealt with in greater detail towards the end of this film. Yet these two extremely important “traditions”—which are by no means wholly without a degree of interaction with the small choral tradition, even though all three maintain a definite separate character—should be given a brief encapsulation here, if only to convey a proper summary understanding of the highly particular, special nature of Ukrainian music overall.

It is the small choral tradition, though—the genre for which Kryachkiva is primarily known—that is the core focus of this film: While there is a considerable area of overlap between Ukrainian, Russian, as well as Belarusian traditional musics in this manner of practice, it can be viably asserted that Ukrainian musical traditions still stand out to a decent extent from the other two Eastern Slavic traditions, even in this sector. This is the case for a variety of reasons, but most of all due to the larger presence in Ukrainian music of polyphonic and/or heterophonic singing practices, precisely that vocal approach which the inhabitants of Kryachkivka are most renowned for.

[It will need to be pointed out here that there is much in the way of polyphonic singing practices in Russian traditional music too—although apparently this is mostly rooted in southern Russia, which as it happens, is that area in Russia that has historically had the largest degree of ethnic Ukrainian settlement? This is presumably also the case in regards to Belarusian traditional music?, especially that music rooted in the entire southern swath of Belarus that belongs to the greater Polissya region—an area very rich in traditional polyphonic singing practices. It is my understanding, nonetheless, that it is really Ukrainian music that most of all emphasizes such practices, and it is only within Ukrainian music that polyphonic singing, moreover, plays such a central and defining role? Do more research to double-check, bolster this account, however.]

[It is likewise my understanding that a certain important portion of Russian traditional music does tends towards monophony—the articulation of a single melodic line, even if undertaken in unison by multiple voices in different octaves. This is what I am largely hearing in the Pokrovsky Ensemble's exceptionally powerful “Porushka”, although there does seem to be a certain amount of heterophonic variation at work here also. Do more research to double-check all this.]

[SONEVYTSKY claims for the traditional singing practices of Polissya both polyphonic—a vocal texture comprised of multiple melodic lines woven together—and heterophonic—a vocal texture made up of a single melodic line treated to recurrent variations on the part of different voices—features. My grasp of the matter is that this is also the case for the vocal art characteristic of Kryachkivka, which happens to be located in the Poltavshchyna region of Ukraine that is adjacent to Polissya. It's worth noting, though, that some music theorists claim heterophony to be actually a subset of polyphony, while others define it apparently as a separate phenomenon. For what it's worth, this Georgian-based website, dedicated to the study of “folk polyphony”, actually depicts YEVHEN YEFREMOV as adhering to the former standpoint. Research more to bolster all this].

[Would it be too much to assert in larger terms, then, that Ukrainian traditional music, although sharing many aspects with the two other main Eastern Slavic groups, does tend to feature to a greater, more emphasized degree a richness and complexity—a certain beautiful complication of the very texture of the vocal line, as it might be put—what might termed poly-textured complexity, that is not present to the same extent in the traditional musics of the other two Eastern Slavic traditions? Bozhychi's Ilya Fetisov does certainly seem to be claiming as much in an interview published some years back in the Den newspaper, stating that Ukrainian “vocal art” possesses a “larger, more polyphonic structure, with several layers, whereas in Russia it sounds more on the heathen, archaic side”; and also that “[t]he form is simpler in Russia and more capricious in Ukraine.”

More research, in any event, is needed to double-check, and bolster all this].

[MUSICAL ILLUSTRATION during this section might present the Pokrovsky Ensemble's “Porushka”, and then by way of contrast, an example of Ukraine's characteristically? more complex “poly-textured” vocal textures, such as featured in the work of DREVO.

Feature DISCUSSION here on all these matters with a number of music scholars: YEFREMOV, KLYMENKO, SONEVYTSKY and others.

Find a way here, either by VOICEOVER, or preferably DISCUSSION, to make some reference to the late Yakov Soroker's work, detailed in his book Ukrainian Musical Elements in Classical Music, which claims a privileged position for Ukrainian traditional music. This is not only in terms of Ukraine being a sort of age-old “cultural center” for Eastern Slavic and Eastern European musical culture as a whole, but also vis-a-vis its (all too often) unrecognized and mis-represented influence on European music as a whole—particularly the Classical music of Central and Western Europe. This might be obtained through DISCUSSION with ROMAN TUROVSKY-SAVCHUK, who would seem to be referencing Soroker's argument in this article here.

Utilize either VOICEOVER or DISCUSSION, or both, to express the notion that Ukraine's more extensive poly-textured vocal traditions go not only to the core of Ukrainian traditional music, but in a certain sense—in terms of what might even be called a deeper philosophical level—go to the very heart of Ukrainian culture and civilization overall. Reference here by some means SERHIY PLOKHY's notion of Ukraine as a “frontier civilization”—constituted in this manner not only in geographical, or perhaps, geopolitical terms, but in sociocultural terms as well. It is a civilization, that is to say, characteristically situated between “East” and “West”, between the “First World” that has grown up in Western and Central Europe in the last half millennium or so (and spread outward from there), and the “Second World” civilization that predominates in much of the territories that lie to the east of Ukraine.

A claim might even be made here, then, that Ukraine's poly-textured musical traditions not only manifest a “frontier character” within the context of cultural expression, in a manner that conforms along these lines, but that in some ways even manages to bring together the best aspects of both “worlds”.

The argument here, in other words, is that one can find implicit in such native Ukrainian musical practices not only a conflation, a mere mixing together of cultural forms, but a mediation between them as well, such that pertain to the much more individualistic-oriented “West” or “First World” on the one hand, and those that pertain to the more communally-oriented “East” or “Second World” on the other. One might posit, that is to say, that such Ukrainian musical practices combine together, in both an aesthetically and socioculturally effective manner, the essential communal character that profoundly grounds the small choral format overall, with a manner of “expressive individualism” that multi-part, polyphonic, or even hetereophonic singing tends to allow for.

[The point would needed to be made here that, again, the same sort of analysis could be as germane to Russian and Belarusian traditional music, which also feature polyphonic or poly-textured practices, rendering thereby the same sort of conclusion, more or less. If there is a distinction to be made here, then, it would really have to be one of degree, rather than of kind. The same manner of characterization, the same set of possibilities would have to be seen as applicable and available to these other two Eastern Slavic cultures (to confine the discussion here to the Eastern Slavic world), but only more extensively so vis-a-vis Ukrainian culture. And this difference in degree might moreover be attributable to Ukraine's historically more consistent and stronger engagement with “the West”, or the “First World”.

It would probably be not too much to furthermore characterize Ukraine's current geopolitical status along these same lines: decidedly still situated in the “Second World”, but in ever-closer relationship with, and inching ever closer to fully joining the “First World”, however far off in time this may yet be.

In summary terms then, it might be asserted that Ukraine, vis-a-vis its geopolitical situation, is in a sense condemned to mediate between the “First World” and the “Second World”: It needs to do this simply in order to survive. At the same time, and likewise for the sake of Ukraine's survival, any such mediation needs to occur from within the “First World”—as soon as this can be managed—and not from within the “Second World”, or from some supposed “space in between”, which geopolitically speaking, doesn't in fact really exist.

The trick, then, is to engage in this manner of activity in the most efficacious and beneficial way that is possible. And this is precisely where culture comes in, for it is precisely by way of cultural forms that this manner of activity is most cogently pursued.

All of this amounts, in any event, to a worthwhile line of thought to mull over, I believe; suffice it to say, however, that all such “philosophical” conceptualizations would need to be somewhat more rigorously considered, before given any sort of summary presentation in the film here.]

[Another matter to consider here is the whole argument regarding whether such polyphonic or poly-textured singing traditions in Ukraine are true instances of “folk polyphony”: That is to say, whether or not they are of ancient provenance—and thus can be considered an “aboriginal” native folk practice—or are instead of more recent provenance, which would presumably posit them, then, as an adaptation of Western Art music practices.

The same Georgian-based website mentioned above notes that earlier Ukrainian musicologists such as Filaret Kolessa and Klyment Kvitka, working in the later 19th and early 20th century, argued for the latter standpoint, but that sometime in the decades thereafter, general opinion on this issue began to shift towards the former standpoint. The website also interestingly asserts that VOLODYMYR MATVIYENKO's 1967 article on this issue, “On Some Peculiarities of Ukrainian Traditional Polyphony”, represents perhaps the most informative and comprehensive argument in favor of the former standpoint, while mentioning YEVHEN YEFREMOV's contributions to the matter also.

Assuming that Ukrainian vocal practices do in fact represent a true “folk polyphony”, one would have to further contemplate, vis-a-vis the sort of “philosophical” conceptualizations engaged in just above, the relevance that such European “folk polyphonies” (also present in the traditional musics of Georgia and Corsica) might have in regards to the emergence of systematic polyphonic practices in the Art music of the “First World”. This of course occurred in the late Medieval/Early Modern era, arguably in conjunction with other “individualistic-orientated” cultural forms that began to likewise emerge at this time, roughly speaking, not just in the realm of musical expression—e.g., the madrigal—but also in literature—e.g, the sonnet, the rise of the modern novel, the rise of modern stage drama, etc.

Hence: If what we are dealing with in regards to Ukrainian musical traditions is an example of a true “folk polyphony”, presumably of ancient provenance, then pace Kolessa and Kvitka, its existence cannot be explained simply by way of the influence that such “First World” Art music might have had on Ukrainian polyphony. And therefore, if one wants to argue for the notion specified above—that Ukrainian small choral vocal traditions can be seen as a mediation between the sort of cultural forms that pertain to both the “First World” and the “Second World”—the implied congruity of Ukrainian folk polyphony practices with “First World” Art music polyphonic practices, in so far as both contain aspects of “expressive individualism”, would have to be mostly a matter of “natural”, innate accordance, rather than of direct influence.

However, one could argue that the extent to which this tendency in Ukrainian “folk practices” is emphasized to a greater degree than is the case with the other two Eastern Slavic cultures, this might possibly have been the result of not only subsequent influence that might have occurred long after the initial formation of this particular cultural form, but in addition, a more generalized influence of “First World” cultural forms on Ukrainian culture too:

That is to say, in that Early Modern era “First World” cultural forms in general often embodied tendencies towards this manner of “expressive individualism”, the impact of such cultural forms as they gradually pervaded Ukraine (this is generally acknowledged to have occurred during the time in which most of Ukraine's territories were part of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth) might well have amounted to the increased or heightened emphasis of aspects of its own native culture—namely, the tendencies towards “expressive individualism” inherent in its own “folk polyphony”—that happened to stand in a state of natural congruence with such “First World” forms. One would have to account why this might have happened in Ukraine, however, but not in Belarus, in that the latter was also a part of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.]

Furthermore, Ukrainian music overall (not just in its small choral traditions, that is) likewise exhibits many other features that could be seen as combining together, and indeed, mediating between “East” and “West”, such as its use of a plenitude of musical materials—particular scales and/or modes, melodic and rhythmic patterns, etc.—that draw from both “sides of the equation”, as it were. What would need to be highlighted here, that is, are the various aspects of traditional Ukrainian musical culture that can be seen to connect it to both the traditional musics of Central and Western Europe, and at the same time to such “Eastern” traditions as can found in the musics of Jewish, Turkish (including Crimean Tatar), Roma and Middle Eastern cultures.

Much DISCUSSION here needed on all these matters with music theorists, etc.

Give some account at this point of why the village of Kryachkivka itself was so special—this is perhaps due to the fact that the small choral traditions that the whole area of Poltavshchyna, as well as of the adjacent region of Polissya have long featured, simply happened to be especially well-preserved in Kryachkivka, much more so than in other villages in Poltavshchyna or Pollisya, or perhaps Kryachkivka had always been a wellspring of this manner of vocal art? [Research this question].

Also make clear here that there were a number of other villages which have featured similar types of polyphonic singing, even if not as well-preserved as in Kryachkivka? [Research the extent to which this is the case]. Highlight briefly here other areas in Ukraine with strong vocal traditions, with multiple MUSICAL ILLUSTRATION, both AUDIO and VIDEO passages to the extent they can be found. DISCUSSION here with experts: YEFREMOV, KLYMENKO, SONEVYTSKY and others.

In short, the point to be made at this juncture of the film is that, on the one hand, it is not only Kryachkivka that is possessed of wonderful song traditions—and the film means to celebrate these other areas too, at least briefly, and to include them in the general celebration of Ukrainian music making that this film is endeavoring—but on the other hand, Kryachkivka is special in any number of ways. At the very least, this is so if only because it was at Kryachkivka that an ongoing “collaborative relationship” was established between the urban academic enthusiasts of this traditional music, and the “rustic Magi of the precious tradition” who had actually managed to preserve its practice.

It is once again, this “collaborative relationship” between these two groups—i.e., the “DREVO model”— that for whatever set of reasons, happened to take shape in the tiny village of Kryachkivka, that essentially kicked-started the whole Avtentyka Revival Movement in Ukraine. And it is in tracing the gradual, step by step process by which this Movement, as well as its plethora of offshoots actually emerged that the remainder of this film will concern itself.

[Setting aside the question regarding whether it was the VOLODYMYR MATVIYENKO and the DREVO people in Ukraine, or instead the Pokrovsky Ensemble people in Russia who might have first forged the manner of “collaborative relationship” described above within the context of the mid-20th century Soviet Union, one should probably also consider here, and further research, the broader cultural background that this approach might have stemmed from. In other words, where and in what circumstances might have anything whatsoever resembling this “collaborative relationship”—of a sort that involves not simply interactive engagement between academic researchers and their research subjects, but collaboration between the two contingents in the form of musical performance projects—first arose?

It is very likely that it had at least some of its roots elsewhere, of course, although it is worth noting that both what Bela Bartok and Zoldan Kodaly where up to in Eastern Europe in the earlier part of the 20th century, did not as far as I know really involve any sort of extensive musical performance collaboration of the sort described here.

Some of the research work done in the experimental theatre world in conjunction with traditional music practices, especially by Jerzy Grotowski, or by figures influenced by Grotowski such as Włodzimierz Staniewski, did make use of a similar “collaborative model” it would seem, but again, the question would be whether or not this occurred before what the “DREVO people” in Ukraine, or for that matter, the Pokrovsky group in Russia, undertook down these same paths?

The ethnomusicological discipline itself, the practice of “field research”, which has not infrequently included within it a participatory approach—see for example, John Miller Chernoff's superlative African Rhythm and African Sensibility, the research for which was done in the 1970s?—must without question be considered a primary source for this “collaborative model”, but are there any instances “before Kryachkivka” of large-scale musical performance projects on the order of DREVO emerging out of such participatory research (and this was not really the case with Chernoff, although his story came much later anyhow), much less a whole “authentic” music revival movement?

The American ethnomusicologist Steven Feld has engaged in interesting collaborative experiments with a Ghanian musician, Nii Otoo Annan, but this was only a decade or so ago. Feld in this paper here also makes reference to similar experiments conducted with African musicians by the French-Israeli ethnomusicologist Simha Arom, but this goes back no farther than the 1970s. And it's probably worth mentioning that these endeavors were essentially cross-cultural affairs, while what the “DREVO people” and the “Pokrovsky people” engaged in was intra-cultural.

And again, these examples just noted are relatively smaller-scaled endeavors—perhaps not quite “one-offs”, but nonetheless confined to a certain, relatively limited period of time—while what occurred in Ukraine involved the formation eventually of a whole musical movement that was decades in the making (something of the same order would appear to have also taken place in Russia, although it seems to me to a much lesser extent, in both its substance and its breadth: There is after all no real Russian equivalent, as far as I am aware, of a group like DAKHABRAKHA, or for that matter, of artists such as MARYANA SADOVSKA or MAISTERNIA PISNI, etc.).

However, putting the matter in these terms, and thinking it over somewhat more thoroughly, made me realize there is a precedent of sorts to the narrative I am piecing together here regarding Ukraine—an at least analogous phenomenon, in some respects, which likewise featured something like the “collaborative relationship” that I have delineated, although other aspects of this story are at the same time very much distinct from what went on in Ukraine.

This is the Folk Revival Movement that occurred in North America, beginning more or less in the 1940s—albeit with roots in the decades just prior—and lasting up to the early to mid 1960s—although its influence extended much beyond that point.

Although the group of people who effectively inaugurated the Folk Revival Movement were not quite exactly themselves ethnomusicological “academic researchers”, they did have a very close relationship to this manner of endeavor. Pete Seeger's father, Charles Seeger, was in fact both a prominent Classically-trained composer, and a leading academic who helped establish the field of musicology in the United States in the first place, and is also recognized as one of the founders in the U.S. of the sub-field of ethnomusicology.

Moreover, Charles Seeger was an instrumental figure as well in directly engaging with the mostly rural music makers who embodied American “folk music”—directly learning from them, performing their music, and establishing with them in the process what in many ways could indeed be called a “collaborative relationship”. Seeger was also friend and associate to John and Alan Lomax, the father-and-son team who were the principal ethnomusicological “field researchers” of American folk music throughout this era, and who happened to be the figures credited with “discovering” Lead Belly.

Pete Seeger's whole engagement with American folk music therefore really originated within the context of such endeavors on the part of his father and his father's friends. And the early musical activities he was involved in thus brought together himself—and other young people very much likewise exposed to and influenced by this whole ethnomusicological approach of close engagement with “indigenous” American music makers—with such “indigenous music” makers themselves.

This can be seen in the formation of the Almanac Singers —the group that in many respects really launched the North American Folk Revival Movement in the early 1940s—which included within its ranks at various times not only Seeger and Bess Lomax Hawes (daughter of John, sister of Alan Lomax), but also such “indigenous” performers as Lead Belly, Josh White, and of course Woody Guthrie himself (although Guthrie's middle class roots really positioned him as a sort of “betwixt and between” liminal figure here).

Hence, one can readily see in the roots of the Folk Revival Movement in North America something much like what happened in Ukraine, in certain respects at least. In other ways, though, there are very pronounced differences.

For one, many of the most important players in the “Ukrainian story” maintained a close relationship to academia, and to insitutional structures in general, whereas Pete Seeger dropped out of university, and associated with many people, such as Guthrie, who were quite radically disconnected from such institutional structures.

The “Preservationist” focus that was so centrally important in the “Ukrainian story” has a certain presence in the “American story” as well, but it held much less prominence, and was quite often subsumed under what was felt to be larger concerns vis-a-vis the imperatives of topical song etc. There were certainly instances in which more “Preservationist” impulses prevailed, however, in the North American Folk Revival Movement. Pete Seeger's half-brother Michael Seeger and his band the New Lost City Ramblers were, for example, definite proponents of a “Preservationist” approach.

The “Ukrainian story” is much more tightly focused in its contours also, while the “North American story” is quite loose and even diffuse—the enormous geographical proportions of the United States, and the immense diversity of its society and culture, no doubt has much to do with this. The two “indigenous folk cultures” at hand here are markedly divergent along much these same lines, too. Ukrainian folk culture has ancient roots going back millenia, to pre-historical times in fact, situated more or less in the same geographical area, and correlated with an ethnos that possesses at least a substantial degree of coherence throughout this whole stretch of time. American folk culture is much more conspicuously syncretic, was formed in the Modern era, and stems from an abundance of heterogeneous sources and peoples.

There are all the same many resonances that flow between these two “stories”, in ways that are quite illuminating, I think. The “American story” is a bit older, of course, and I would guess there is likely some degree of influence that it bore on the “Ukrainian story”: The Left Wing and at earlier moments especially, often outright Communist sympathies of many of those who made up the former probably resulted in aspects of their story being made familiar, perhaps even trumpeted to some extent in the Soviet Union, especially during the “Popular Front” era (somewhat ironically, then, the “authentic” music revival movement in Ukraine eventually became one source of definite resistance to the Soviet regime).

And there is a darker aspect that is present in regards to these two “stories”, too. Figures such as Guthrie, Seeger and others toed the Stalinist line quite rigorously for a time at least, in a way that certainly makes them now appear as dupes. Their egregiously questionable standpoint during the period of the Hitler-Stalin pact, for instance, definitely stands out in this regard. It should be said, though, that most of these figures reversed this tendency soon after, and that Seeger later expressly repudiated Soviet Communism altogether, even doing benefits for Poland's Solidarity movement. He handled himself fairly admirably, too, during the McCarthyite hysteria that subsequently attempted to exploit such matters for Populist purposes. Nonetheless, the likelihood that back in the day, such figures fell hook, line and sinker for Stalinst propaganda vis-a-vis the Holodomor is, I would guess, all but certain.

These figures did much that was worthwhile on the cultural stage, nonetheless, and the importance for American cultural history, and indeed for global cultural history, of the sort of “collaborative relationship” they helped forge with “indigenous” American music makers is nothing less than enormous.

The role that all this played in the formation of Rock culture, for instance, is much larger than is usually understood. The Blues Revival did not actually rise up “organically” from 50's Rock & Roll, as is often assumed, but really occurred initially under the aegis of the Folk Revival, which first brought into the light for mass audiences such figures as Robert Johnson, Skip James, etc., and to some extent, even Muddy Waters and Howling Wolf. Without all this, Blues Rock probably would not exist, and neither would the whole British Blues Revival out of which the Rolling Stones and so many other groups arose.

Even Psychedelia, although it had various roots, owed huge debts to the spotlighting of world music that the Folk Revival undertook. And I would posit further that Garage Rock, from which the larger parts of both Punk and Heavy Metal were spawned, originated in a movement in which young Americans in the late 50s and early 60s, mostly from the lower-middle class and working class, essentially adopted the sensibility of the Folk Revival, but applied it to 50's Rock & Roll music, instead of to “indigenous” American folk forms.

So this very complex “American story”, I would have to say upon further contemplation, no doubt echoes in various complex ways with the “Ukrainian story” I am dealing with here. This “Ukrainian story” is notwithstanding quite unique in its own regard. Its own version of this manner of “collaborative relationship” possesses its own very distinct, deep-seated character, in some respects unlike any other in its substance and ramifications, and is one that has furthermore blossomed out in quite wondrous ways, the equal of which I don't believe can be found in any other such narrative. It is the purpose of this film to cogently put forward this argument.

Pursuant of the further research that will need to be done into the whole matter, therefore, the point might at least be made somewhere in the film that, what happened in Kryachkivka between the academic-based scholars from Kyiv and the native music makers of the village can be seen as one significant formation point of this “collaborative model” that has had such significant impact on world music making culture as a whole in the last century or so.


The Formation of Drevo Kyiv

The next important step by which the construction of the Ukrainian Avtentyka Revival Movement took shape then occurs with the official appearance in 1973 in Moscow of the Pokrovsky Ensemble. The Pokrovsky Ensemble essentially began in a not dissimilar manner as DREVO— by doing field research in the rural areas of Russia, at some point perhaps leading up to this moment [if this is indeed the case, the point should of course be made here that this was a decade or so subsequent to that moment when the analogous process began in Ukraine. See discussion above].

Although only rather grudgingly tolerated by the Soviet authorities at first?, the ensemble did nonetheless attract a great deal of attention—so lively and dynamic were its performances—and even then a certain amount of gradual acceptance from the authorities, so that they were eventually allowed to undertake small tours? throughout the Soviet Union [More research is needed to double-check, bolster this account].

And it was thus the arrival in Kyiv? of the Pokrovsky Ensemble in 1978? that effectively inspired the Kyiv contingent of DREVO—who will herein be referred to as DREVO KYIV—to begin to venture out from their Conservatory purlieu that had given protective shelter to their activities up to that point?, and to finally enter upon the public stage, as it were. Given the not particularly enthusiastic attitudes on the part of the Soviet authorities still at this point, this was rather slow-going at first, yet the example of the Pokrovsky Ensemble did at least show the way, and proved moreover that an appreciative audience actually existed for this type of music? [More research is needed to double-check, bolster this account].

[Research all of this some more: the nature and degree of influence the Pokrovsky Ensemble had on DREVO at this point; what the dynamics involved here were; was it actually the case that such activities were gradually now becoming more and more accepted by the Soviet state, even in Ukraine? What were the factors that impinged on the group along these lines; what was the full nature of the example that the Pokrovsky Ensemble was able to set for other “authentic” music groups, not just in Ukraine, but throughout the Soviet Union at this time?]

It is at this point that YEVHEN YEFREMOV enters the picture. Having been involved as a member in the VOLODYMYR MATVIYENKO-led Kyiv contingent himself while he was a student [I am really just taking a guess here; is this actually the case?], it was YEFREMOV who now rose up at this stage to assume leadership of the up-to-that-point informal Kyivan contingent [not real sure of the sequence of events here—research]—a role that he indeed holds to this day. It was thus precisely through YEFREMOV's leadership, then, that DREVO KYIV, as a now formally-established entity with a definite public profile, fully comes into being for the first time.

This in many ways signals the point at which the younger generation, the acolytes of VOLODYMYR MATVIYENKO, now step up to in a sense bring to a full realization the implications that were present all along in the “collaborative relationship” MATVIYENKO established between his academic cadre and the music makers of Kryachkivka.

Hence, these young acolytes, having learned this ancient manner of music making by way of first-hand performance participation with “the Magi” of Kryachkivka, now assert themselves as not only valid performers of this art, carving out a place for themselves within the public realm in the process, but as the tradition's true inheritors—as precisely that group of people who have taken upon themselves the task of carrying on this tradition, and to do so in a manner that will ensure its preservation, that it will continue in a substantial, viable, and bona fide manner into future generations.

And in a sense, then, this marks the real moment in which the Avtentyka Revival Movement begins to take on its defining shape and character—everything leading up to this moment simply served to prepare the way—laying down the model thereby which would then be followed by virtually all subsequent avtentyka groups.

Much DISCUSSION with YEFREMOV here—who is now formally introduced—regarding his story, the field research he did in KRYACHKIVKA and elsewhere, his initial involvement with MATVIYENKO, etc., and his assumption of a leadership role within the group, etc.

[Somewhere in my research I came across a statement that MATVIYENKO gave YEFREMOV his “blessing” in assuming the leadership role at this point vis-a-vis the “Kyiv contingent”, presumably thereby encouraging him to take over the role MATVIYENKO himself had previously filled. Will need to check up on this whole story, and whatever its details, present it at this juncture in the narrative, with much imput of course from YEFREMOV himself. Will also of course need at some point to find out exactly when MATVIYENKO passed away, and relate this occurrence here in the narrative as well.]

[Who were the other members of DREVO KYIV at this early moment? Can their voices be included here too? Also, what exactly were the public activities of DREVO KYIV at this point? Where did they perform publicly and how often did they do so? Perhaps only at other academic institutions? Museums? What were the nature of their reception from the public overall? From the Soviet authorities?]

[Also, what was happening vis-a-vis DREVO KRYACHKIVKA at this same time? What might have been the effect upon them of what the Kyiv contingent was now doing, in terms of the latter's at least somewhat more enhanced public profile?]


Drevo Kryachkivka: First Recording,
Once Upon a Dog, Nina Matviyenko

Then, at a certain point in the year of 1982—which as it turned out, happened to be the precise moment that the Brezhnev era in the Soviet Union was quite literally to take its last breaths—the members of DREVO KRYACHKIVKA were called to Moscow for a recording session:

It was indeed on the very day of their arrival in Moscow that the Soviet leader's death was announced to the public, and it was moreover on the day of his funereal that the recording session itself took place [need to find out more details of this session: How was it initiated in the first place? How did the responsible parties in Moscow even know about existence of DREVO KRYACHKIVKA? Did the Kyiv Contingent at Kyiv Conservatory have anything to do with this?]. Feature much DISCUSSION here regarding this recording session, with remaining members who were present: NADEZHDA ROZDABARA, NINA REVA?

Next, in that same year of 1982, some of the tracks recorded by DREVO KRYACHKIVKA in Moscow on that day, most memorably the haunting traditional song “Oy Tam Na Hori” (“Oh There on the Mountain”), were featured in a wonderful, quite charming animated film short directed by Eduard Nazarov called Once Upon a Time There Lived a Dog (sometimes referred to as Once Upon a Dog). This animated short became quite renowned throughout the Soviet Union, well-known in fact to virtually everyone it would seem (an analogue within the North American cultural context might be the Peanuts Christmas or Halloween specials).

And it was this turn of events, moreover, that made DREVO itself well known, and that perhaps even might be said to have sparked the first real interest amongst the larger public during the Soviet era in Ukrainian traditional music—most of all in Ukraine itself? [Research to bolster this account more]

Include much DISCUSSION here, from a variety of individuals who have a part in the overall story, regarding their memories of seeing this animated film for the first time, the impact it had on them, in provoking an interest in DREVO, and in Ukrainian “authentic” traditional music in general.

[Research whether or not “Oy Tam Na Hori” is the only DREVO KRYACHKIVKA song featured in the film—ROZDABARA seems to be claiming that the song “Oh, Nightingale” is by another “authentic” singing group from Poltava; how about “Ta Kosyv Batko, Kosyv Ya”, this is DREVO KRYACHKIVKA, or no?]

NINA MATVIYENKO (no relation to VOLODYMYR MATVIYENKO?) enters the picture sometime in these years—perhaps mid-1980s?—coming off of a celebrated early career in which she was a soloist with what likely was the premier “State Orchestra” focused on Ukrainian traditional music: the Veryovka Choir. At some point she gets involved with DREVO KRYACHKIVKA, in conjunction with her three-person singing ensemble, Zoloti Kliuchi (the Golden Keys)? [Research all this: What is the story behind her involvement? How was contact made with the Kryachkivka contingent? Through Kyiv contingent? What exactly did her involvement consist of?]

An interesting and illuminative aspect of NINA MATVIYENKO here is that, in so far as she began her career as a soloist with what some consider the premier so-called “State Folk Choir” in Ukraine, the Veryovka Choir, and then later “went back to school”, as it were, with DREVO KRYACHKIVKA, it might be said that she did time with what amounts to perhaps the major representatives of both of the two primary approaches by which Ukrainian traditional music has been put forward in a present-day context: the “Renovationist” and the “Preservationist” (see below for a definition of this latter term). And in this way, it might be said further that her career could be seen as thereby mediating—both musically and institutionally—between these two approaches.

One might even assert further vis-a-vis MATVIYENKO's art that it was in this way that she was able to carve out her own unique creative space—a territory deeply informed by both approaches, even while at the same time, precisely by way of this process of mediating between the two, in some sense independent of both. Her fierce commitment to engage deeply with Ukrainian traditional music in its purest forms of course relates to her involvement with DREVO KRYACHKIVKA, yet her essentially theatrical approach, the manner in which she intensely inhabits and embodies a song almost as a Stanislavsky-trained actor would do for a role in a play or a film, undoubtedly pertains to the theatrical character of the”State Choirs”.

Feature some MUSICAL ILLUSTRATION here of MATVIYENKO's time in both Veryovka Choir and the Zoloti Kliuchi, as well of course of her solo work, plus DISCUSSION with her regarding her involvement with DREVO, as well as other aspects of her career, her relationship to Ukrainian traditional music, etc.


The Rise of Gorbachev, Chornobyl, Farenyuk Film, the Advent of
Chernova Ruta 1989

A condensed account, through DISCUSSION and/or VOICEOVER, of the Chornobyl disaster that occurred in 1986, emphasizing strongly the relationship of this event to the growing national cultural movement in Ukraine that was centered around “authentic” traditional music.

This is the case in a number of different respects, particularly in so far as it stirred awake national feelings in general in Ukraine, but also due to the simple fact that the Chornobyl plant happened to be situated in the Polissya region in Ukraine, which is not only adjacent to the Poltava region in which Kryachkivka is located, but which shares much of the same deep-rooted musical and and overall cultural characteristics: both regions can indeed be considered repositories of Slavic cultural traits—musical and otherwise—thought to be amongst the oldest, most well-preserved from pre-Christian, pre-historical eras. DISCUSSION with SONEVYTSKY, ADRIAN IVAKHIV, KLYMENKO and other experts on such matters.

In fact, many of the scholars who were inspired by the example of VOLODYMYR MATVIYENKO's engagement with the “rustic masters” of Kryachkivka, and by the whole “model” of collaboration between these rural music makers and the scholar/performers from the various ethnomusicology departments in Ukraine's university system, then went on to expand their own investigatory research into the Polissya region [Research to bolster the extent to which this is true. YEFREMOV did extensive research in Polissya, no?] DISCUSSION here with YEFREMOV, KLYMENKO, SONEVYTSKY and others.

In 1988, a very fine film featuring DREVO KRYACHKIVKA was made by the Ukrainian director Pavlo Farenyuk. Moody, dark in many ways, focused on the hardships and privations that made up the difficult lives endured by the now many elderly music makers of this relatively indigent village in central Ukraine, this quite profound film at the same time highlights the great camaraderie and often sheer joyousness that imbued the music making of this group of mostly older women, as well as the unmistakable dedication and seriousness with which they undertook their vocal art—and most of all, the extraordinary raw, earthy beauty they were able to engender in the process. NINA MATVIYENKO, along with the other two women? from Zoloti Kliuchi, show up in the later part of the film for a visit. Feature brief, yet numerous clips from this film. Also, DISCUSSION with the various figures who took part.

Both VOICEOVER and DISCUSSION (with reference to whatever pertinent recollections that the various participants in the story may have) present an account here of the rise of Mikhail Gorbachev, and the years of Glasnost and Perestroika that followed—what would in fact turn out to be the terminal years of the Soviet Imperium. Detail through both VOICEOVER and much DISCUSSION what was happening in Ukraine specifically in these years, particularly Ukraine's role in the progressive disintegration of the repressive governmental apparatus of Soviet Union, etc. DISCUSSION w/ historians, writers, journalists such as PLOKHY, HRYTSAK, BOHDAN NAHAYLO, etc.

[What was the impact of all of these goings-on vis-a-vis the “authentic” music movement?] Much DISCUSSION at this point in the film here from members of the Kyivan contingent, as well as from the Kryachkivka contingent, as to what DREVO—inclusive of both contingents—was up to throughout the 1980s, leading up to the concluding days of the Soviet Union.

Make some brief mention here too, through DISCUSSION and/or VOICEOVER of the first Chervona Ruta concert, held in 1989, and its importance in regards to national consciousness formation, and more specifically, the development of a national cultural consciousness. DISCUSSION with JULIAN KYTASTY, VIKTOR MOROZOV, EDUARD DRACH, SONEVYTSKY, etc.

One of the other main highlights of this period of time would have been the first recording DREVO KYIV made, listed on the Discography section of their Wikipedia Ukraine page as an “audio cassette” collection of “songs of native land”, released in 1990 [It might be concluded from this recording format that this was a rather inexpensively made offering, although more research would need to be done to confirm this, as well as to gain a better sense of the whole experience of making this recording, and of its reception, etc.]; MUSICAL EXAMPLES here?.


Collapse of the Soviet Union, and the
Emergence of an Independent Ukrainian State

Now occurs the epochal collapse of the Soviet Union, and along with it, the successful establishment of an independent Ukrainian state. Much DISCUSSION here from a large number of participating individuals regarding these epochal events, both those involved in the burgeoning “authentic” music movement as to their own personal reminiscences, as well as expert historians, journalists and other figures—PLOKHY, HRYTSAK, NAHAYLO etc.—for a broad, albeit brief, overview account.

It is likewise here that, with the coming of an independent Ukraine—a nation that, even if not by any means entirely free of Moscow's influence on its affairs at this point, is no longer so thoroughly, so systematically dominated by the old Imperial center—we can begin to observe the gradual coming into being of the Avtentyka Revival Movement in Ukraine.


The First “Shoots” of the Avtentyka
Revival Movement Begin to Appear

Throughout the chaotic, uncertain years of the early 1990s, though, this movement is only very slowly taking shape.

Feature much DISCUSSION here from various pertinent individuals regarding their memories of the early years of independence, what was happening in Ukraine on all fronts during that time—economic difficulties, political uncertainty, etc.

Although circumstances in Ukraine were perhaps not yet ripe for a full flowering of the “authentic” music movement, given all the uncertainty and disorder that was rife, not to mention the extensive economic difficulties of this period, certain “sprouts” were already beginning to show themselves all the same.

The central importance of Kyiv Conservatory to this narrative should be obvious enough—in many ways it not only served as the center of operations of the emerging Avtentyka Revival Movement, it could also, in conjunction with the village of Kryachkivka, be seen as its veritable birthplace. Yet there were things happening at other institutions, even in these earliest days, that will eventually make very significant contributions to this larger Movement, as well.

Perhaps the most ultimately consequential arose out of that moment in 1991 in which Professor IVAN SINELNIKOV at the Kyiv National University of Culture and Arts formed the traditional music youth ensemble KRALYTSYA, an endeavor that in the quarter century or so that followed would come to have great impact on the Avtentyka Revival Movement and its “offshoots”, and on the Ukrainian music making world as a whole.

Meanwhile back at the Kyiv Conservatory itself, Professor MYKHAILO KHAI inaugurated in 1992 an “authentic” music group focusing on instrumental music called Nadobryden, that would likewise bear considerable influence on the Revival Movement. As was the case with SINELNIKOV's endeavor at the Kyiv National University of Culture and Arts, this was so not least with reference to the young musical talent the ensemble fostered, some of whom would go on later to join DREVO KYIV, and a number of other avtentyka ensembles? [What was the relationship, if any, between DREVO KYIV and Nadobryden at this point?]

Some mention here should also be made here regarding the significance of the Ivan Honchar Museum, which first opened its doors in 1993—another institution that would come to play a very important role in the Avtentyka Revival Movement as it continued to develop in the years and decades to come.


Sadovska, Klymenko, Bozhychi: The “Drevo Model” Expands

Shifting then to developments seemingly a bit off the beaten path, yet still quite crucial all the same:

Interpolate here select AUDIO/VISUAL fragments from the “motif library” that serves to denote the “pilgrimage to Kryachkivka”.

Even before the official, terminal disintegration of the Soviet state in December 1991, the young Lviv-born and -raised? MARYANA SADOVSKA had starting in 1990? [double-check this date] begun spending her summers visiting small villages throughout the Ukrainian countryside, collecting, learning and recording traditional songs. Included in these activities were extended “pilgrimages” to Kryachkivka itself, where she not only befriended a number of its music-making inhabitants, but painstakingly learned directly from them a whole repertoire of songs, and the proper methodology by which to sing them, which she would make much creative use of in the ensuing years [Research the “Hidden Territories” project that Sadovska undertook in 1993—what was this about?—and possibly include mention of it here].

It can thus be claimed that what SADOVSKA was doing in Kryachkivka, and presumably in the other villages she visited on her expeditions as well, was a direct extension or extrapolation of the original “collaborative model” established by VOLODYMYR MATVIYENKO way back in 1958, the very “model” out of which DREVO itself emerged.

[Was there any direct influence at work here? What inspired SADOVSKA in her endeavors? What is the full story behind how SADOVSKA hooked up with music makers of Kryachkivka? Did she have any involvement at this, or at any subsequent juncture, with DREVO KYIV?].

[A matter here that will need to be resolved later: Should some snippets of MUSICAL ILLUSTRATION of Sadovska's earliest work be included here in this introductory section, or only in the later section on Sadovska which will deal in a more comprehensive manner with her work?]

But what SADOVSKA would begin to creatively extrapolate from the foundations laid down through her “research” activities, the imaginative ways in which she would come to make use of the musical materials she acquired on her “pilgrimages”, did not quite exactly form a part of the “main trunk” of the Avtentyka Revival Movement itself, so to speak, but rather represented what was really the first flowering of two of this Movement's most significant “offshoots”—both what may be referred to here as its “Avant Traditionalist” branch, as well as what is designated as its “Avant Populist” branch.

That is to say, SADOVSKA can be seen as that artist who took at least the initiating steps vis-a-vis both of the two approaches denoted here as “avant gardist” or “experimentalist” in its manner of engagement with Ukrainian tradtional music culture:

Her innovations along “Avant Traditionalist” lines—involving the utilization of avant garde mechanisms as a means of opening up new pathways into traditional culture—in many ways stand as her principal contribution, as this approach indeed most goes to the core of her art.

Yet in weaving together aspects drawn from the Cabaret tradition with Ukrainian traditional music elements, SADOVSKA at the same time should be recognized as a trailblazer also vis-a-vis the “Avant Populist” approach— an approach involving a blending together of popular music forms with traditional music elements, but informed again by an “experimentalist” or “avant gardist”, rather than a “mainstreamist” sensibility.

Extensive DISCUSSION here with SADOVSKA regarding both her experiences in “song collecting” in the Ukrainian countryside, what she was trying to do here, how it linked up with her development as an artist, etc. Also, some DISCUSSION regarding her involvement starting in 1991 with the New York-based Yara Theatre company, as well as with the Gardzienice Centre for Theatre Practices in Poland, and how these experiences in the world of experimental theatre impacted her seminal development of an “experimentalist” approach to Ukrainian traditional music.

Also: Three more recordings were made by DREVO KYIV in the decade of the 1990s, now in CD format: 1995, 1997 and 1998 [double-check this] [What are the stories involved in these recordings?]

A very important, overriding point that needs to be emphasized at around this juncture in the narrative is that in their live performances—and perhaps even more so vis-a-vis its broader influence, in their initial recordings —both DREVO KYIV and DREVO KRYACHKIVKA established the gold standard, as it were, for all of the Ukrainian avtentyka ensembles that would follow in their wake. This was the consequence of not merely being the incontestable pioneers in the whole endeavor of current- day “authentic” Ukrainian traditional music making, but resulting also from the extraordinary, indelible power of their music making itself, inclusive of both “contingents”: the profound soulfulness and sheerly elemental humanity that both “contingents” thereby attested to.

Extensive AUDIO and/or AUDIO/VIDEO excerpts from both DREVO “contingents”, in both live and studio recorded format. Here is one good example from DREVO KYIV.

Introduce here SERHIY and HANNA OKHRIMCHUK, HANNA KOROPNICHENKKO, DMYTRO POLYACHOK and other important early members of DREVO KYIV. Include both DISCUSSION and MUSICAL EXAMPLES.

[When exactly did these four get involved with DREVO KYIV? Were both Okhrimchuks involved with Nadobryden from the start, or only joined this later too? What are the stories behind all these developments?]

[Also: ALLA ZAGAYKEVYCH was presumably involved with DREVO KYIV as early as 1986. The decision here is to only detail this story, and introduce ZAGAYKEVYCH herself, at a later point in the narrative. More research is needed to fill this story in, though—i.e., what exactly was the extent of ZAGAYKEVYCH'S involvement during these years?—at which point it might be decided to introduce ZAGAYKEVYCH at an earlier juncture].

Here is also introduced IRYNA KLYMENKO, a figure who would go on to play an extremely important role—in many ways a pivotal role—as the Avtentyka Revival Movement would grow in subsequent years to reach its state of full development.

KLYMENKO in fact became a member of DREVO KYIV at the very early point of 1984, and then went on to form her own avtentyka ensemble called VOLODAR (even while remaining a participating member of DREVO), at the still quite early point of 1993. Not only was VOLODAR one of the first significant avtentyka ensembles to appear after the rise of DREVO?, then, it was moreover a group that was once more, very much based on the “collaborative model” established by DREVO.

Extensive DISCUSSION with KLYMENKO regarding her activities, perhaps also briefly bringing into play here by way of DISCUSSION some of the younger figures who first became involved with Ukrainian traditional music, at least in part through their involvement with VOLODAR and other KLYMENKO projects?, such as SUSANNA KARPENKO, YEVHEN and OLENA ROMANENKO, etc. [At what point in time did these three join VOLODAR?] AUDIO and/or AUDIO/VIDEO excerpts from VOLODAR here [Question whether any very early AUDIO or VIDEO footage of VOLODAR is extant?]. Here, here and here are three videos of VOLODAR, featuring OLENA ROMANENKO, OLEKSANDRA STRAZHNIK and others, presumably from 2005.

Then at the very end of the decade, in 1999, there emerged another very important “authentic” music group—perhaps the next avtentyka group of primary significance to emerge after VOLODAR?—and one that has maintained its eminent status to this very day: This is BOZHYCHI, formed by ILYA FETISOV and SUSANNA KARPENKO. Story of BOZHYCHI's formation here. Much DISCUSSION with ILYA FETISOV, SUSANNA KARPENKO, MARICHKA MARCZYK, VALERII HLADUNETS, ANNA ARKHIPCHUK and other early members regarding this major development.

[Was BOZHYCHI formed at Kyiv National University of Culture and Arts? How many of its early members attended there? I believe all five early members just mentioned, along with OLENA ROMANENKO, and all three female members of DAKHABRAKA too, can be seen here on a YouTube video of one of KRALYTSYA's performances, held it would appear at KNUCA. Presumably this event would have occurred after BOZHYCHI was formed? Were all five of these BOZHYCHI members also part of KRALYTSYA at this, or at at any other point, or perhaps just KARPENKO and HLADUNETS?]

[Questions: to what degree was BOZHYCHI directly influenced in what they were trying to do, the music they were focused on, as well as their whole approach and general philosophy, by DREVO? What was their connection, if any, to DREVO KRYACHKIVA? What involvement did their members have with DREVO KYIV at this early point? KARPENKO was a member early on of both VOLODAR and DREVO KYIV, as well as BOZHYCHI, no? What years did this encompass? Before, after and/or during BOZHYCHI's formation?]

Yet what was perhaps the most interesting and consequential aspect of what BOZHYCHI, IRYNA KLYMENKO, and MARYANA SADOVSKA were collectively up to in their respective activities throughout the 1990s and into the early Aughts, is the manner in which all three took up in these earliest years of Ukrainian independence the “collaborative model” first forged between VOLODYMYR MATVIYENKO and the music makers of Kryachkivka way back in 1958—“the DREVO model”—and not only endeavored to perpetuate this “model” into this new era, but in differing ways, actually took critical steps to further expand upon it:

Hence: SADOVSKA expanded upon the structural model set down by DREVO precisely in the manner that has already been touched upon: in taking the “authentic” musical practices she learned amongst the “rustic Magi” of Kryachkivka and other Ukrainian villages, and utilizing this as a basis by which to forge new paths, “experimentalist” or “avant gardist” offshoots that would give this ancient music a new life in in a new era, in an innovative new form, even while remaining faithful and true to its deep avtentyka character.

And indeed, it is through the example SADOVSKA thus set forth vis-a-vis this last aspect—establishing a model for all those who came after her by which avtentyka music could be employed, even at times in a radically experimentalist manner, that nonetheless maintains a deep reverential regard for the music itself, such that would not permit its desecration and despoilation—that SADOVSKA's ongoing career evinces some of its most vital importance.

BOZHYCHI's manner of path-breaking, on the other hand, might be said to lie, among other things, in their considerable expansion of the sort of “pilgrimage” approach that VOLODYMYR MATVIYENKO pioneered within the Ukrainian cultural sphere back in 1958—i.e., the act of journeying to a small village in the Ukrainian heartland to not only observe and record the (by now quickly-disappearing) traditional song culture they found there, but to learn directly, in a collaborative manner, how to perform these songs in the “authentic” form that was discovered thereby.

Interpolate here select AUDIO/VISUAL fragments from the “motif library” that serves to denote a “pilgrimage” to various “singing villages” throughout the Ukrainian countryside.

For BOZHYCHI did not limit themselves to simply one village, or even a series of villages interrelated geographically and socioculturally, but instead instituted the practice of conducting quite far-ranging kayak expeditions, traveling up and down the riverways all throughout Ukraine each summer, exploring in this manner a great number of Ukrainian villages so as to collect and record traditional songs.

This, along with the unswerving excellence of their art, and perhaps most of all, their unfaltering commitment to what is referred to here as the “Preservationist” approach —the whole attempt of finding ways of perpetuating “authentic” traditional music on its own communicative terms, which in fact stands as the core activity undergirding the Avtentyka Revival Movement—pretty much ensures this ensemble's central role in the larger story of that Movement.

Much DISCUSSION here regarding stories, reminiscences of these expeditions on the part of a significant number of relevant participants, such as FETISOV, KARPENKO, MARICHKA MARCZYK, HLADUNETS, ARKHIPCHUK and others. Extensive AUDIO and/or AUDIO/VIDEO excerpts from BOZHYCHI: Here, here and here are good examples, plus here's a performance on the stage at Maidan. Also, some very good footage here of house-to-house Holiday Kolyadka visiting.

Yet not by any means to be outdone, the manner that IRYNA KLYMENKO choose to expand upon “the DREVO model”—which as an early participating member of the ensemble, she would have in fact absorbed first hand—was to attempt to reconstruct, and thus make new again the entire ritualistic context within which avtentyka traditional music was originally situated. This feature was already present vis-a-vis her work with VOLODAR to some extent?, but came even more so to the fore with her formation of HURTOPRAVTSI in 2002.

Anchored by the powerful vocals of KLYMENKO herself, bolstered further by a number of other significant musical talents such as TARAS KOMPANICHENKO, as well as a whole passel of very talented younger people— many of whom were students of KLYMENKO from Kyiv Conservatory?—HURTOPRAVTSI distinguished itself from the start as one of the most important of Ukrainian avtentyka ensembles. And in a certain sense, this prominent status has continued to grow even as the group itself has effectively ceased to be an actively performing ensemble?, simply in that so many of its members have gone on to play important parts in both the Avtentyka Revival Movement itself, as well as many of its more important “offshoots”.

Much DISCUSSION here from the many members of HURTOPRAVTSI. One possible instance of MUSICAL ILLUSTRATION, to be featured vis-a-vis the matters delineated below, would be this. And here is a wondrous performance of “Mnohaya Lita”.

Nonetheless, it was likely in their extensive attempts at reconstructing the larger ancient ritual context correlated to traditional music practices that the group can stake claim to the greatest significance, as well as widest impact.

What needs to be pointed out here, though, is that it was to a considerable degree the collaborative relationship that KLYMENKO/HURTOPRAVTSI established with OLEH SKRYPKA, that more than anything else gave the necessary impetus for these events to come together in the first place? And what the greater upshot of this collaborative relationship altogether amounted to, furthermore, was to give a crucial boost to the Aventyka Revival Movement as a whole. [More research needed to ascertain the extent to which this is actually the case]


The Orange Revolution


...Coming Soon...


Iryna Klymenko, Oleh Skrypka
and Kraina Mriy

Here OLEH SKRYPKA is introduced by way of a succinct summary of his early career, beginning with the formation of Vopli Vidoplyasova in the immediate aftermath of the Chornobyl disaster, the band's rise to fame in the last years of the Soviet Union, its re-location to France in the first part of the 1990s, and then its return to Ukraine for good in 1996, accruing in the process its status as Ukraine's most enduring, and perhaps also its most enduringly accomplished popular music band. In 2004, moreover, Skrypka took the leading role? in establishing the Kraina Mriy music festival, one of the most influential institutions in the Ukrainian music world since that point in time.

Include MUSICAL ILLUSTRATIONS to support the account that is presented here of SKRYPKA's career, such that incorporate traditional music materials. One idea would be to construct a running AUDIO background (and interspersing the overall VISUAL of this section—which will likely be comprised of both VOICEOVER and DISCUSSION commentary—with some brief views of the VIDEO that corresponds to this AUDIO, especially those that feature shots of the audience, and of audience participation, etc.), made up of different snippets of live performances of such work. This would serve the purpose of conveying a proper feel for a performer who, more than anything else, is essentially a live performer, and one of the first order in fact, and whose deep-going connection with his Ukrainian audience goes very much to the heart of his music making overall.

Some ideas for this might be instances of “Horila Sosna, Palala”—such as here and here; “Yikhali Kozaky”—here, here, and here—and “Nese Halya Vodu” here and here. Perhaps also include some snippets from these two extraordinary, “audience participation-rich” videos here and here.

And it was primarily in conjunction with the Kraina Mriy festival that SKRYPKA initiated his series of collaborative endeavors with IRYNA KLYMENKO? It was again, this ongoing collaborative relationship—bolstered also by various activities that SKRYPKA undertook in collaboration with BOZHYCHI and other avtentyka ensembles around this same period, including a number of field expeditions he himself participated in, as well as his own influential forays in incorporating tradtional music materials—that really gave the needed stimulus to what can now be seen as that point in time at which the Avtentyka Revival Movement began to reach its consummate state of full flowering.

For what was at hand in the series of collaborations that SKYRPKA initiated with KLYMENKO was a process by which substantial aspects drawn from “authentic” Ukrainian traditional culture—aspects of its music and dance, but most especially the reconstructed rituals which combined together both music and dance—were more and more included as central features of the Kraina Mriy festival.

And it could be asserted that it was precisely through this incorporation of “authentic” Ukrainian traditional culture into what effectively became Ukraine's premier summer music festival? that in many ways lifted up the still-nascent Avtentyka Revival Movement to a whole new level, conferring upon it a visibility and stature within the overall environment of Ukrainian national culture that it had not previously possessed at any point in the contemporary era.

[This account, positing SKRYPKA and KLYMENKO's “collaborative relationship” as the pivotal factor at work here, is my inference drawing from what I know about the matters at hand: This is how things look to me, in short, based on everything I have learned about such matters. It is not impossible that I am misinterpreting certain things, or over-estimating the impact of others, but again, this is how things look to me at this time.

I am however, it should be said, extrapolating what seems to me a few logical conclusions based on this provisional understanding.

Hence: had SKRYPKA not got involved with “authentic” Ukrainian music, there would of course still have been an avtentyka movement—its rise predated his involvement by a number of years, after all—but this movement would very likely not have received the attention it did, and it moreover not unlikely might have been bereft of the sort of confidence it needed to expand to the considerable extent that it did.

And without KLYMENKO's contributions, although there would have almost certainly been something going on within the realm of avtentyka music, it seems quite possible that, given all the different projects she seems to have been engaged in—pretty much all of them of very high quality, aesthetically speaking—and the impact it looks to me that they likely had, that this movement wouldn't have been nearly as extensive, or as qualitatively fine as it was.]

[Some mention might be made here regarding the Sheshory/ArtPole Festival, which preceeded Krainy Mriy by a couple of years, starting out in 2002, and perhaps set down precedents vis-a-vis its incorporation of substantial aspects of Ukrainian traditional culture that Krainy Mriy would later pick up on? Research this whole matter more.]

And it can be moreover claimed, one might assert, that it was expressly in the period that immediately followed— from approximately the mid-Aughts to thereabouts 2015 or so—that the Ukrainian music making world as a whole was elevated to its highest peak yet.

Feature much DISCUSSION here with SKRYPKA, KLYMENKO, members of BOZHYCHI and others regarding the early years of Kraina Mriy and its incorporation of traditional music and cultural elements etc., accompanied by numerous excerpts of available AUDIO and VIDEO that document this, such as here.


The “Kyiv Wedding”, “Halyna and Vasyl” and other Klymenko Projects

Yet, not only did SKRYPKA include a number of KLYMENKO's reconstructed rituals in the Kraina Mriy festival, he also helped stage a number of these events in other venues, and even undertook to film some of these for subsequent presentation on TV. DISPLAY here extensive footage from a number of these events, such as “Halyna and Vasyl or Adam and Eva” which took place in 200? at the Ivan Honchar Museum and “Tomorrow Will Be Trinity”?, held at the Kyiv Conservatory in 2009 [Was this latter event entirely a KLYMENKO affair? Or did someone else put this together? She is listed in the text included with YouTube video as “host”?] SHOW clips from these productions—here and here—throughout this part of the segment.

KLYMENKO's most extensive and most ambitious ritual reconstruction, however—an event of quite impressive complexity indeed, and from any number of different angles—came in 2006, as she oversaw the design and actual enactment of the marriage of two of her students?, DANYLO and IRYNA DANYLEIKO.

What KLYMENKO endeavored here was not simply a reconstructed ritual, but represented rather a whole comprehensive attempt to carry the symbolically-enacted, theatrical “realm of ritual” into the factual “realm of real life”, as it might be put, merging the two together in a complex interweave of “real world” performative ceremony, “symbolic world” ritual-theatrical presentation, and scholarly-grounded folk celebration, suffused all throughout by a cornocopia of virtually non-stop “authentic” musical performance.

In short, what KLYMENKO undertook was a thorough-going reconstruction of a traditional Ukrainian wedding, encompassing elements derived from both Christian Orthodox and Pagan sources?, and that involved a multitude of participants—not only the bride and groom, and the immediate family of the bride and groom, but also a large circle of their friends and acquaintances, most of whom were themselves members of the “authentic” music movement. Each participant, then, was given an assigned “role” to perform in the overall fête, whether as musical performers, “actors” in the larger theatrical presentation, or participants in the wedding ceremony—in some cases, all three functionalities virtually at one and the same time.

[The research I have been able to do into this event does seem to indicate that KLYMENKO was the primary figure in conceiving it and putting it together; research some more to ascertain whether or not this is completely correct, whether and to what degree she was assisted by others, etc. This is of course important so as to not leave out the critical contributions of other people not specified here as of yet.]

And in many respects, this whole endeavor—which SKRYPKA himself took part in, and also arranged to be filmed for TV presentation—could be thought of as not only a wedding celebration, but at the same time a greater celebration of the burgeoning Avtentyka Revival Movement itself, just at that moment it was beginning to attain to its fully consummated state. Indeed, many of the participants in the event—including both the bride and groom—would go on to take important parts in this burgeoning Movement in the years that followed.

SHOW extensive clips from the “Kyiv Wedding” here.


The Scene Now Shifts to Lviv:
Maisternia Pisni

Although the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv was inarguably the center of the Avtentyka Revival Movement in its incipient moments, there were nonetheless things happening in other urban centers, too, even at this early point. Following not so far behind Kyiv in importance, in fact, was the Western cultural capital of Ukraine, the ancient city of Lviv.

In addition to the various instances of MUSICAL ILLUSTRATIONS from MAISTERNIA PISNI directly referenced below, here and here are some further examples of AUDIO and/or VIDEO ILLUSTRATIONS worth excerpting throughout this whole section. Also much DISCUSSION regarding all the facets of the group's development, etc. from all pertinent individuals featured throughout as well: SERGEY KOVALEVICH, NATALIA POLOVYNKA, ULYANA HORBACHEVSKA, OLENA KOSTYUK, KLAUS KUGEL.

Perhaps at least in some part? inspired by the example that Lviv-born and raised? MARYANA SADOVSKA had already set forth—with her deeply reverential, yet fervently “experimentalist” treatments of traditional Ukrainian music—there arose now in the early Aughts another group of artists who were to take up what was an analogous approach in some ways, albeit markedly different in others. This was the very important ensemble MAISTERNIA PISNI, whose name means “workshop song” in Ukrainian.

Formed in 2002? [some sources state 1996 as the group's start date, others state 2003: research this] by the Russian-born? “methodologist” and dramaturge SERGEY KOVALEVICH, along with the long-time Lviv-based? NATALIA POLOVYNKA as its creative director, the ensemble was in practice a world-class all-female vocal trio comprised of POLOVYNKA, ULYANA HORBACHEVSKA, and OLENA KOSTYUK. Yet it was a great many more things in addition.

Thus, defining itself as an “art laboratory” operating “at the intersection of theater and traditional music”, the group proceeded to carve out a highly distinct, intensely original approach whereby Ukrainian traditional music served as the foundation for a whole series of experimental projects that combined different, often theatre-based “avant garde” approaches vis-a-vis overall conception and presentation, with the most deep-rooted modes of avtentyka musical expression.

As was the case with SADOVSKA, the group had a quite extensive background in experimental theatre: Both POLOVYNKA and KOVALEVICH had studied and/or worked with the company of Jerzy Grotowksi, the highly influential Polish theatre director and theorist (it was Grotowski, incidentally, who had been the primary inspiration? of Włodzimierz Staniewski, the founder of the Gardzienice Centre, where SADOVSKA apprenticed). POLOVYNKA had also spent time as the principal actress for Lviv's Les Kurbas Theatre, one of Ukraine's foremost experimental theatres.

Interpolate here select fragments from the “motif library” that serves to denote the “pilgrimage to Kryachkivka”.

And as was likewise the case with SADOVSKA, MAISTERNIA PISNI endeavored to make their own “pilgrimage to Kryachkivka”, establishing in the process what would become a very close, long-standing and productive relationship with the village's music makers—one that especially in terms of POLOVYNKA's continuing involvement, has in fact served as a substantial basis for much of DREVO KRYACHKIVKA's public profile in recent years.

DISPLAY extensive excerpts from the two videos—here and here—made during the group's “pilgrimage to Kryachkivka” in 2006, featuring members of MAISTERNIA PISNI working with and performing alongside of members of DREVO KRYACHKIVKA.

Not only will these two videos advantageously bring back into the midst of the ongoing film narrative various individuals from the “Kryachkivka contingent”, such as NADEZHDA and FEDIR ROZDABARA, NINA REVA and HALYNA POPKO, these two videos are also extremely important, and need therefore to be given a position of particular emphasis, in that they in many respects epitomize what is most exceptional and valuable in Ukrainian traditional music-making: Its gloriously unpretentious earthiness, undertaken in the main on a horizontal, “vernacular” level, that all the same attains to great heights of beauty and profoundity.

Even more than this, though, these two videos in certain respects present in “acted-out” form what might be considered the whole structural basis upon which the Avtentyka Revival Movement is grounded—i.e., precisely the “collaborative model”, first forged almost a half century previous to the moment that these two videos take place, by VOLODYMYR MATVIYENKO and the music makers of Kryachkivka, some of the latter of whom are themselves present in these videos.

It is almost as if these two videos put forward what amounts to a model of a model: In other words, they manage to give articulation in even more succinct, or at least more direct and concrete form to the underlying structural model in terms of which they operate, precisely by demonstrably enacting the model itself in real time.

Hence, what we find here are a contingent of urban dwellers—trained if not specifically in ethnomusicology, then in a related sphere of ethnomusicological-focused experimental theatre—who have travelled out to this rural outpost, and who have effectively situated themselves “horizontally” on the “ground level” of this rural community so as to join in with the music making culture they find there.

Indeed, this particular contingent of urbanites might even be said to have taken things to the next level, in a sense, by conducting a live, interactive workshop with the Kyrachkivka music makers, a veritable collaborative research investigation into the ways and means of this ancient culture.

And in many of their projects undertaken apart from Kryachkivka, MAISTERNIA PISNI was able to retain much of this “horizontal”-oriented, dynamically interactive experimental focus.

One of the more interesting of these projects, to give one example of their modus operandi, was enacted right on the streets of Western Europe, in the Portuguese city of Lisbon—what amounted to a “site specific” type of street theatre that interwove the looseness and spontaneity of this type of theatrical endeavor with “authentic” Ukrainian traditional music performance, overlaid with a sort of arcane Symbolist drama, all for the unexpecting eyes and ears of those who happened to be present at that particular moment in a certain section of Portugal's capital city. DISPLAY clips from this project here. [Research the full story behind this project]

Yet, even more original and distinctive was MAISTERNIA PISNI's incorporation of another aspect—one that was very divergent in character from the avant garde Cabaret influences that MARYANA SADOVSKA intermingled with Ukrainian traditional music foundations. This was the group's engagement with elements of age-old religious culture—involving what might be called the “deep aesthetics” of Christian religious culture, more specifically, its Eastern Slavic Orthodox/Greek Catholic varieties.

This particular aspect emerged primarily out of NATALIA POLOVYNKA's investigations into an obsolete mode of ancient Ukrainian spiritual chants called irmos. Her stirring and quite profoundly beautiful interpretations of these chants would furnish much of the artistic focus of POLOVYNKA's post-MAISTERNIA PISNI's career, in fact, as will be detailed below. Its impact on the sound textures of the group while it remained still active, though, was perhaps most of all revealed in its utilization of what is referred to here as “prayer speech”—a sort of (most often) softly-enunciated spoken word chant, very much of the sort found in religious ritual [Double-check this account/interpretation]. Here is one good MUSICAL ILLUSTRATION.

MAISTERNIA PISNI thus developed an overall approach to music making that can be said to have simultaneously drawn from humanistic-oriented, “avant gardist” theatrical experimentation and the “deep aesthetics” of age-old religious culture, while at the same time undergirding all this with a deep-seated foundation in Ukrainian small choral traditions—traditions that they in fact learnt first-hand, in direct collaborative engagement with the primordial sources themselves, in their “pilgrimages to Kryachkivka”.

And therefore, MAISTERNIA PISNI—again like SADOVSKA, BOZHYCHI and KLYMENKO—not only took up the same “collaborative model” first forged between VOLODYMYR MATVIYENKO and the music makers of Kryachkivka, but in their own highly distinct manner likewise expanded upon that model, introducing new elements into its ongoing, dynamic practice. Moreover, along with SADOVKSA, MAISTERNIA PISNI can also be claimed as among the very first practitioners of the “Avant Traditionalist” offshoot of the greater Avtentyka Revival Movement.


Back to Kyiv: Alla Zagaykevych

Yet, it was not solely artists from Lviv who were make significant contributions to this budding “avant gardist” or “experimentalist” offshoot of the Avtentyka Revival Movement. Kyiv had its own developments along these lines, the most important of which was set in motion by the renowned contemporary Classical cum experimental Electronic Art music composer ALLA ZAGAYKEVYCH.

ZAGAYKEVYCH was first a student at Kyiv Conservatory in the 1980s and 1990s, and then became a lecturer there herself at the end of the latter decade. More pertinently for this story, though, it was while still studying at the Conservatory—largely focused on Classical composition and experimental Art music?—that she hooked up with DREVO KYIV, becoming an actively participating member of the group at the very early date of 1986, both as a vocalist and as a “field researcher”.

Interpolate here select AUDIO/VISUAL fragments from the “motif library” that serves to denote the “pilgrimage to Kryachkivka”.

Thus, this decidedly “avant gardist”—some might even declare extreme “avant gardist”—composer endeavored to make her own “pilgrimage to Kryachkivka”, as well as to other villages throughout the Ukrainian hinterland?, as did many both before and after her. Yet it was the entirely unique, and really quite unprecedented manner in which ZAGAYKEVYCH made use of the primordial musical culture she encountered on such trips, that necessitates her inclusion in this story of the Avtentyka Revival Movement and its offshoots.

It was actually within the context of her explorations into “avant garde” electronic music, in fact, that ZAGAYKEVYCH began to employ aspects of “authentic” Ukrainian traditional music. This was undertaken chiefly? by way of Electroacoustic's Ensemble, a group she formed in 2009 which brought together the most esoteric and abstruse electronic sounds with some of the earthiest modes of avtentyka music.

The most consistent members of this somewhat loose, “project-based” group have been IRYNA KLYMENKO and SERHIY OKHRIMCHUK—two of the most important figures in the Avtentyka Revival Movement in Ukraine overall—along with the percussionist Vadim Jovich, and of course ZAGAYKEVYCH herself. And it was definitely ZAGAYKEVYCH who set the pace for the group in their live performances and recordings, with her endless generation of recondite streams of electronic sound textures which serves to establish an overall hyper-abstract environment—not infrequently redolent of deepest reaches of outer space—within which is situated the most deep-rooted and earthiest of avtentyka music making.

Yet although avtentyka music making is positioned in the midst of this rarified sonic environment, there is little attempt to blend this music into that environment. Unlike the “Avant Traditionalist” approach that both MARYANA SADOVSKA and MAISTERNIA PISNI embody, then—which essentially employs “experimentalist” means to tunnel into the heart of traditional music, uniting the two modes thereby in a common purpose, as it were—what the Electroacoustic's Ensemble would seem to be up to instead is to pointedly juxtapose these two radically distinct modes of music making

Setting aside any attempt to “treat” or in any way transform this traditional music, that is to say, ZAGAYKEVYCH and company simply accept such music as it is, leaving it alone in its “raw”, “primeval” state, and then endeavor to make rhetorical use of this state so as to set up a provocative contrast with the “advanced”, acutely futuristic mode of expression that the electronic sounds represent.

In this manner, then, ZAGAYKEVYCH has devised her own exceptionally unusual and idiosyncratic—and yet by this same token, very compelling—manner by which to extend the “DREVO model”, to greatly expand the viable parameters of what it is altogether capable of, to what might seem a nearly illimitable extent even.

MUSICAL ILLUSTRATIONS from Electroacoustic's Ensemble here: Two pieces, both from the Nord/Ouest project, entitled simply “Nord/Ouest: II” and “Nord/Ouest: III”.


The Rise of the Popular Music “Offshoot”
of the Avtentyka Revival Movement: TaRuta

Even while ZAGAYKEVYCH and company were busy realizing some more of the “avant gardist” possibilities that might be found inherent in the rich, fertile soil—the “black earth” (chornozem)—of Ukrainian traditional music, there began to arise in the later Aughts another “offshoot” or “branch” of the greater Avtentyka Revival Movement, intent on realizing an altogether different set of possibilities.

This was the Movement's Popular Music “branch”, representing an attempt to intertwine elements of musical expression drawn from mass commercial popular music—Rock, Pop, World Beat, etc.—into avtentyka music foundations, and to do so in a way that essentially integrates all elements involved into a “mainstreamist” sensibility, reflecting the common language shared by virtually everyone who in one way or another participates in the “global popular music discourse”.

And it was not at all a surprising fact that the artists who tended to be most adept and most successful at this endeavor were precisely those who possessed the deepest roots in the avtentyka music world. This was certainly the case with TARUTA, one of the earliest, and perhaps the first truly important popular music band to emerge whose sound was predominantly grounded on a deep Ukrainian traditional music base?

And TARUTA, who first came together in the year 2007, definitely had a very deep and close connection to the very beating heart of the Avtentyka Revival Movement. At least five of its early members were in fact “graduates” of HURTOPRAVTSI and/or other endeavors led by IRYNA KLYMENKO.

At the core of the group was the husband-and-wife team of YEVHEN and OLENA ROMANENKO, on rhythm guitar/lead vocals and lead vocals respectively, both of whom had a long-standing involvement with HURTOPRAVTSI (OLENA ROMANENKO was also a member of VOLODAR). Another individual who was briefly a member of the band early on was DANYLO DANYLEIKO, the groom of the “Kyiv Wedding” that KLYMENKO organized. Two more figures who came out the “HURTOPRAVTSI matrix”, as it might be called, were vocalist OLEKSANDRA STRAZHNIK and violinist/backup vocalist MARYANA MARKHEL. All five individuals can be in fact be seen as active participants of the “Kyiv Wedding” [YEVHEN ROMANENKO seems to be asserting in an interview that OLEKSANDRA STRAZHNIK is OLENA ROMANENKO's sister. Double-check this].

Show here clips here from the “Kyiv Wedding”, pointing up the appearances therein of the five individuals just named.

Yet the highly eclectic sound that TARUTA began to construct did not by any means amount simply to a “plugged-in”, popular music version of HURTOPRAVTSI, or Ukrainian avtentyka music in general. Rather, the band's sound was an at times very quirky mix of World Beat, Folk and Rock influences, quite creatively woven into all of the influences that band members were able to collectively bring into play from their deep Ukrainian traditional music roots.

Indeed, what this group was so accomplished at when at their very best—possibly better than anyone else in Ukrainian popular music in certain respects—was just this manner of “cross-pollinating” into their Ukrainian traditional music base all manner of disparate things, embracing a broad diversity of musical elements whose ultimate provenance might stem from any number of far-flung locales across the globe, in such a way that operates to effectively situate Ukrainian traditional music within the contemporary world.

An example of one of the more impressive results of this approach would be TARUTA's reworking of the traditional Ukrainian music song “Korabel”, which they have given the alternative title of “Synya Khmara” (“Blue Cloud”) [this is the exact same song, for what it's worth, that MAISTERNIA PISNI “workshops” with DREVO KRYACHKIVKA in the second video linked above that features these two ensembles]. Adopting in very straightforward terms then, without much in the way of modification, the poignant vocal line of this “authentic” traditional song—complete with constrasting voices that construct a stirring polyphonic texture—this traditional Ukrainian vocal superstructure is then grafted with rather astounding seamlessness and efficacity right on top of the ritual-based Afro-Cuban Rumba rhythm, “Guaguanco”.

[Although a long-time fan and listener of Afro-Cuban music, I am far from an expert thereof. To my hearing, then, this rhythm utilized in “Synya Khmara” is indeed a version of guanguanco—it is certainly Afro-Cuban, at the very least—but double-check with those possessing more definite expertise in Afro-Cuban rhythms whether or not this is precisely so. It might be some closely-related variant with an altogether different name].

Play extensive portions of “Synya Khmara” while description, analysis of its character is being presented by way of VOICEOVER [Here is a fine live performance of this song featuring rather poor sound quality. At a later date, hopefully the much superior studio original can be obtained to replace this live recording].

Other TARUTA music to play throughout this section might be this, this and this.

And hence, spearheading tendencies along lines that would in fact become extremely commonplace in Ukrainian popular music in the ensuing years, TARUTA could be said to have in this way also expanded upon the “DREVO model”, taking what they learned from that model into entirely new global hemispheres and altogether unfamiliar musico-cultural environments.

[Do research and consider more closely the degree to which TARUTA were pioneers in this manner of interweaving popular music elements into a Ukrainian traditional music foundation. Consider who else might have been engaged in this line of endeavor alongside them, or even before them?]


Further Consolidation of the “Preservationist” Core of the
Avtentyka Revival Movement, and
Further Extension of its "Offshoots":
HulayHorod and Mykhailove Chudo

With all of these compelling developments—arising from so many different stylistic fields of endeavor, yet all alike founded on Ukrainian traditional music roots—beginning to take shape all at one and the same time, all coming to a head right around about the beginning of the second decade of the still-incipient century, it might then be asserted that it was within a more narrowly defined period of time at the very height of its peak moment, a period of say, about five years—from 2010 to 2015—that Ukrainian music entered into its first true Golden Age in the modern era.

Yet not all of the compelling developments taking place in the Ukrainian music making world were happening vis-a-vis the wildly diverse “offshoots” of the Avtentyka Revival Movement.

At the exact same time as all the developments detailed above were breaking forth, in fact, the “main trunk” of the Avtentyka Revival Movement—what might be called its “Preservationist” wing—was also continuing to develop, continuing to consolidate ever more of its deep- rooted strength, as talent-rich new ensembles continued to emerge to take their stand within this burgeoning Golden Age of Ukrainian music.

And it was at least partially out the same “HURTOPRAVTSI matrix” that had, in conjunction with the supportive ministrations of OLEH SKRYPKA, played such a crucial role in kickstarting this Golden Age in the first place, and which moreover served as the “training school” for the popular-music-mixed-with-avtentyka -roots pioneers TARUTA, that two of the most impressive of these new “Preservationist”-oriented ensembles (at least at first) likewise arose:

This was the all-female ensemble MYKHAILOVE CHUDO and the “mixed gender” ensemble HULAYHOROD. Between these two groups there in fact existed a quite complex nexus, comprised of multiple lines of crisscrossing interconnection linking up the two with one another, and with the “HURTOPRAVTSI matrix” out of which they both in part arose, as well as at the same time to the commonly-rooted TARUTA.

Although the original formation of the ensemble that would become HULAYHOROD actually took place in the early year of 2002? in the city of Kirovohrad—this is where a number of its founding members originated from—the ensemble essentially consolidated its core membership in the Ukrainian capital itself, especially as its members took part in one or another of IRYNA KLYMENKO's avtentyka music projects?

[This is my interpretation of the group's formation, based on the research I have been able to do. I would acknowledge, though, that this interpretation contains a certain amount of guesswork. I might in fact be overestimating the role played by its member's participation in KLYMENKO's projects in Kyiv, for example, although it would seem to make sense that this common participation on the part of all four of its core members in these important projects probably had some role in consolidating the group—perhaps it might have even pushed the ensemble towards establishing itself in a more formal manner, as a consistently performing, explicitly professional entity, based now in the nation's capital.

Related to this guess, then, I am furthermore speculating that perhaps the group's earliest period back in Kirovohrad—which according to the group's Wikipedia page, actually grew out of two “student groups” called Dzy Karapet and Zlatopil—was on the other hand, a much more informal affair, maybe without much of a professionally-oriented public profile. Indeed, I don't really find much evidence of the group as an actively performing ensemble until about the time of its members participation in KLYMENKO's projects, which is what led me to actually make the initial guess.

Also, the Wikipedia article doesn't specify which of the ensemble's members were part of the “Kirovohrad group”, and which members might have joined later; and it makes sense too that whatever is the case vis-a-vis this factor, all this would probably have played a significant role in the shape and character of the group's development as well. But again, all this is just guesswork on my part. Do more research into all this].

Among the early members of HULAYHOROD were three Danyleiko brothers—DANYLO DANYLEIKO, who again, was the groom of the “Kyiv Wedding” (and he had, as just noted, been an original member of TARUTA too) as well as SEVERIN DANYLEIKO and KYI DANYLEIKO.

As it turned out, it was really only SEVERIN DANYLEIKO who would stay on to become one of the ensemble's abiding principle members, taking his place amongst what eventually coalesced as either a core quartet or quintet, depending on circumstances, comprised most often of two to three men and two women. Typically rounding out this small ensemble then was SERHIY POSTOLNIKOV, OLEKSANDR VOVK, IRYNA BARAMBA and ANASTASIYA FILATOVA.

Briefly show here portions from both the “Kyiv Wedding” and “Halyna and Vasyl or Adam and Eva” that feature these members of HULAYHOROD.

Although they did frequently make much use of instrumental music too—either as accompaniment to their vocals, or at times, even engaging in instrumental music sans vocals—what this ensemble specialized in most of all was an especially fine, very pared-down and concentrated version of the Ukrainian small choral tradition.

This was indeed a particularly spirited yet highly evocative, and even exquisite version of traditional polyphonic vocal practices, the four to five voices of the ensemble blending together in what seemed a near-ideal manner: Each of these voices perfectly fitted to and balanced vis-a-vis the others, the whole comprising a finely calibrated amalgamation: FILATOVA's resonant alto [pretty sure this is an alto, but probably should double-check this...could be a contralto possibly?] most often taking the lead, while BARAMBA generally took the high part above her, spiraling up and around FILATOVA's lower voice, a very beguiling separate polyphonic strand on top, while the two to three low-pitched voices of DANYLEIKO, VOVK and POSTOLNIKOV laid down a deep-voiced bedrock far beneath, so as to serve as indefatigable support.

Play MUSICAL ILLUSTRATION snippets throughout here of HULAYHOROD's vocal music. Here and here are good examples of this. And here is a good example of the band's festive-oriented, mostly instrumental music.

While it was in their “mixed-gender” character—which is to say again, their exquisite blending and balancing of male and female voices—that the ensemble really excelled, the male members of HULAYHOROD also from time to time went off on their own to engage in traditional all-male ensemble singing as well, usually taking on for the occasion a number of additional male vocalists. The song project “Chornomortsi”, based on Black Sea Cossack singing traditions, was particularly fine, as this example gives testament to.

Yet, in addition to their more strictly-construed avtentyka music, the band also started in quite early to experiment with a variety of popular music textures. Although the group at a subsequent, more recent point began to transmutate almost entirely into a Techno attempt at re-packaging Ukrainian traditional music—if not entirely abandoning its avtentyka roots, then predominantly doing so, and apparently breaking up in the process the near-perfectly balanced and calibrated composition of its original core membership [it would appear POSTOLNIKOV is either no longer in the band, or at least not really participating much in their current Techno music focus]—at least some of HULAYHOROD's earlier experiments with popular music textures, especially those that managed to keep intact the exquisite beauty of their polyphonic vocal art, could still be quite extraordinary.

Indeed, the song “Roza”, despite its Techno elements (which in this one case, are fortunately restrained enough not to entirely overwhelm and ruin the exquisite character of the ensemble's vocal art) might quite possibly represent the finest single contemporaneous example of Ukrainian polyphonic traditions.

Extended MUSICAL ILLUSTRATION excerpts here from “Roza” (“Rose Flower”).

[It will be clear enough to the reader, with reference to the foregoing, that the author of this piece is not at all persuaded by the notion that a Techno re-packaging of traditional music is an altogether beneficent thing. Indeed, it is the opinion of the author that, rather than “harmoniously” re-presenting ancient traditions in the contemporary world—as the claim is often put forth—that Techno appropriations of traditional music most often actually work to prevent such traditional music from having much of any real substantial role in the present-day cultural realm, at least on its own communicative terms.

What such Techno re-packaging of traditional music tends to really effect, I believe, is to erase or eliminate the real presence of traditional music in this realm, precisely in so far as it tends to principally replace traditional music approaches, practice standards, etc. with its own, quite radically distinct approaches and practice standards.

What is at hand here, in other words, is a dynamic in which one vernacular culture (and by “vernacular culture”, I mean the modes of music making that belong to everyone whatsoever, regardless of training, professional status, etc.)—in this case, a traditional music culture that has roots stretching back millenia (although there of course have been countless transformations along the way)—is essentially replaced by another vernacular culture, one that is constituted by wholly electro-technological means.

In the process, an entire sociocultural sphere centered on physically-enacted craft, and inclusive of everything that goes along with that—or rather, a whole host of such sociocultural spheres, encompassing not merely traditional music, but pretty much all music making prior to the advent of Techno—is replaced lock, stock, and barrel by a radically new technologically-enacted craft, along with a whole new sociocultural sphere that comes along with that.

(I am by no means opposed to rave culture, incidentally, or the DJ's prominent role within rave culture; what I am opposed to instead is the situation that arises when DJ/rave culture begins to expand outside its own natural parameters—which is to say, dance clubs, rave emporiums, etc.—so as to colonize, and start to replace, nearly the whole domain of vernacular music making altogether. This is certainly what has begun to take place in a great many locales in recent years, and is what unfortunately seems to be happening now in Ukraine itself.)

(It should be noted here also that the type of experimental, avant garde Electronic Art music that ALLA ZAGAYKEVYCH has put forward, as detailed above, in which she makes use of elements of Ukrainian traditional music, pointedly juxtaposing these with her own abstruse, electronically-generated sounds, is in essence of a fundamentally different character then the type of “vernacular-oriented” Techno music just described, and is so precisely for the reasons that were stated in the account of ZAGAYKEVYCH's work given above.

That is to say, ZAGAYKEVYCH's work does not attempt to dissolve the traditional music she makes use of into her own sound environment, but mostly leaves such music alone, as is, in its native, raw state. In this way, it can be said that rather than attempting to construct her own competing, radically new mode of vernacular music—wholly swallowing up the ancient vernacular music that is traditional music making in the process, leaving nothing behind in its wake—she is instead operating strictly on experimentalist, avant garde terms, which purposely maintains its distance from vernacular terms, precisely so as to best heighten the effect, rhetorically speaking, created by the radical juxtaposition of the two).

The argument would further be then, that other forms of commercial popular music, such as Rock and World Beat, although they at times can also have a corrosive effect vis-a-vis traditional music, at least do not work so thoroughly and so inexorably to completely replace traditional music approaches, practice standards, etc., with their own approaches and practice standards.

And therefore, there at least exists the possibility regarding these forms of popular music that not only some nominal state of co-existence between traditional music and popular music can be implemented, but at least in optimal circumstances, it might even be possible to construct a mutually beneficial state of co-existence between the two—a state in which such popular music forms can appropriate aspects of traditional music, but do so in a way that will effect the latter in chiefly constructive, rather than corrosive and destructive ways.

In practical terms, the beneficial character of this optimal state could be seen simply in the tendency that sometimes arises, in which substantial numbers of individuals making up the fan base of such popular music appropriations of traditional music, actually go on then to develop an appreciation for the traditional music itself in its raw form. This does not always happen in regards to such appropriations, of course, but it is my experience, anectodally speaking, that it does happen at times, and not so infrequently too (I would acknowledge the anecdotal, and therefore incomplete character of evidence I am employing here; I would be happy, though, I should note, to examine any more rigorously obtained empirical data on these matters that anyone is able to put forward).

It is my impression, conversely, that no such state of affairs tend to issue out of Techno appropriations of traditional music, and this is so because what fans of such appropriations actually like and appreciate is not the traditional music itself, but simply its Techno appropriation: i.e., what is thus felt to be cool—to speak in what is now perhaps, all-too-ancient colloquial terms—is the Techno appropriation of traditional music, and not at all the traditional music itself.

To be sure, there are admittedly many forms especially of Rock that tend to have a corrosive effect here as well. But it is still not uncommon that some versions of Rock (and Rock does itself have many vernacular music roots, it should be remembered) can in fact reach this optimal state of co-existence vis-a-vis traditional music. Within the context of Ukrainian music, for instance, I believe THE DOOX and JORYJ KŁOC have definitely attained to this state, as did in the past KAMO HRYDESHI and TARUTA (although the latter, it should be said, also incorporated many World Beat elements in doing so).

Yet, it would have to be said that, seen from a global perspective, it has definitely been World Beat music that has most often carried off this difficult task in the most persuasive and powerful manner—indeed, in some respects World Beat arose in the first place precisely in order to do so. And the absolute gold standard along these lines, in my opinion, is what the great Zimbabwean World Beat artist, Thomas Mapfumo, has done vis-a-vis the traditional music of the Shona people, a Southern African ethnos that he himself belongs to.

And it certainly is the case that DAKHABRAKHA, Ukraine's first great World Beat ensemble, has itself set a high standard up to this point in devising a riveting, experimentalist take on traditional Ukrainian music that bears constructive, rather than corrosive effects on the general “ecology” of Ukraine's music making culture overall.

The use of the term “ecology” here, incidentally, intentionally evokes the whole notion of “music sustainability”, and the broader theoretical discipline of “ecomusicology”. Without going too deep into the weeds at this juncture, I would want to mention at least that my own approach towards attempting to piece together some viable sense of what forms of musical expression tend towards the constructive, and what tend towards the corrosive, is much informed by the set of considerations involved in the ecomusicological notion of “music sustainability”.

Hence, I believe that an optimal, mutually beneficial state of co-existence can indeed be instituted between traditional avtentyka music and commercial popular music—including those versions of the latter that endeavor to appropriate aspects of traditional music—and that a “sustainable future” can be forged therefore that will allow for both avtentyka traditional music and its popular music “offshoots” to thrive at one and the same time, but only if a certain degree of attentive care and incisive thoughtfulness be applied to the situation.

(Incidentally, the whole issue that is so often brought up in this regard, of some manner of musical “purity” in relation to the preservation of traditional culture, vs. “non-purity”, really only muddles the debate here. That is to say, as it is the case that there's simply not any such thing in the realm of cultural expression as “purity” in the first place—this is a concept that might have some valid application in the realm of chemical analysis or what have you, but it is simply misapplied to any area of human endeavor involving cultural expression, and thus represents what Wittgenstein referred to as a “category mistake”—it should therefore be set aside, left out of the debate altogether, in my opinion.

In other words, what is at hand here is not at all a question of “purity” vs. “non-purity”, but rather of a culture of sustenance vs. a culture of corrosion, human culture worth preserving vs. intentionally disposable culture, the activity of maintaining some viable, appreciable connection with what went before in the realm of cultural expression—in such a way that manages to carry over into the present day at least substantial aspects of earlier modes of expression, earlier practice standards—as opposed to squandering that connection, debasing it, rendering it of little or no value.)

Interestingly, the Ukrainian-American music scholar MARIA SONEVTYSKY (from whom I borrow the phrase Aventyka Revival Movement) has published a paper with ADRIAN IVAKHIV entitled “Late Soviet Discourses of Nature and the Natural: Musical Avtentyka, Native Faith, and 'Cultural Ecology' after Chornobyl”, which links together the “authentic” music movement in Ukraine with reactions to the Chornobyl disaster in the late Soviet era, particularly vis-a-vis the interconnected rise of a “national cultural consciousness” and an “environmental consciousness”—both of which tended to take on the character of resistance to Soviet rule in the wake of Chornobyl.

The sort of concerns that inform the field of ecomusicology—including by implication I think, “music sustainability”—would thus seem to have been implicitly at work in the emergence of the Ukrainian Avtentyka Revival Movement from a relatively early point, even though the field of ecomusicology itself did not really begin to take explicit shape until some time subsequent to this moment. The article even suggests then that the Ukrainian “authentic” music movement “could be be interpreted as a form of ecomusicology avant la lettre [['before the fact']]”.

In any event, the point that really needs to be made here is that, although this film narrative will most certainly, and inevitably, manifest a definite point of view—simply the act of constructing a narrative, after all, manifests a point of view, and does so first of all at the very basic level of selecting the events, attitudes, and complex of details that comprise the narrative—it does not intend to “hit the viewer over the head” with its point of view, as it were.

That is to say, the opinions put forth just above, although they will in some respects be reflected within the textures of the film narrative (if in no other way, again, in the very act of selection that makes up the narrative), will not by any means be put forth in an egregiously argumentative manner. What the film will focus on instead, that is to say, is what is positively selected in, as it might be put, rather than what is negatively selected out.

Moreover, what the film intends to do, instead of directly advocating for the opinions articulated above in any express manner, is to actually make use of these opinions, and the set of issues they implicitly raise, as a basis for a larger explicit discussion on such matters, within the context of the film narrative itself.

That is to say, this film project intends to conduct a discussion, which will take the form of a Symposium on the Future of the Ukrainian “Authentic” Music Revival Movement that will be convened at some point in the production process. This Symposium will thus be recorded, and portions of it will then be included as part of the narrative itself near the film's conclusion.

The overall conception, then, is that this Symposium will essentially gather together all of the significant “players” in the film so as to engage in a broadly-conceived discussion—concerning not only the matters just touched upon, but also any number of other matters that the film would seem to have raised, related to the overriding issue regarding what sort of future the Ukrainian “authentic” music movement is likely to have. And in presenting snippets from this Symposium, it should be stipulated, the film will thus endeavor to present all of the opinions expressed therein as accurately as it can, representing a diversity of contrasting viewpoints, and do so true to the form in which they were originally given.

What will be presented, therefore, will be an actual dialogue, a real conversation between the group of people so gathered together—which as it happens, will be made up generally speaking of those whom the film itself holds to be Ukraine's most important and substantive musical artists, along with some important scholars, writers, and other “players” of some certain significance.

And to step even further past the bounds of the immmediately germane here, another idea—by no means entirely unrelated—would be that prior to this Symposium there will be a live Concert given first, at which all of the musical figures just noted will perform, and that segments from both of these events will then be presented at the end of the film. The thought would furthermore be to possibly hold both of these events in Kryachkivka itself—designating the return to Kryachkivka, the enactment of one final “pilgrimage”, as it were, to the tiny village where it all began, so as to mark the final culmination of the narrative arc.

This at least would be the ideal situation. Whether or not any of this would be feasible is another matter altogether, without any question, but it is part of the overall project here to at least look into the viability of such ideas as the project moves along. But to return now at long last to the narrative itself.]

MYKHAILOVE CHUDO, on the other hand, came together in 2008, and was led by IRYNA DANYLEIKO, the bride of the “Kyiv Wedding”, the wife of course of DANYLO DANYLEIKO, and the sister-in-law of SEVERIN and KYI DANYLEIKO. She also happens to be a singer who in some respects might even be considered the all-round finest, and at all events, very probably the most versatile vocalist in all of Ukrainian music.

Multiple MUSICAL ILLUSTRATIONS: Here is interesting footage of the ensemble performing with the Jah Surya dance troupe, plus a couple of more worthy performances here and here.

The most regular participant in the ensemble in addition to DANYLEIKO was HALYNA HONCHARENKO, who is the daughter of OLENA HONCHARENKO, a Kyiv Conservatory professor and traditional music researcher who was not only herself a member of HURTOPRAVTSI, but also served as IRYNA KLYMENKO's primary working partner in helping to set up her many projects? [I am really just taking a guess here in asserting OLENA to be HALYNA's mother; also regarding her role in helping KLYMENKO, although my research does seem to suggest that something like this was the case; research both matters further]. Another frequent participant in the ensemble was IVANNA DANYLEIKO, who is married to SEVERIN DANYLEIKO [double check this]—the HULAYHOROD member who is of course brother to DANYLO DANYLEIKO—and therefore again, the sister-in-law of IRYNA DANYLEIKO.

DISCUSSION here with members of MYKHAILOVE CHUDO.

Although it was perhaps the case that, as a result of its all-female composition, the ensemble did not necessarily bring out all the possibilities inherent in the small choral tradition to the same, fully comprehensive degree as HULAYHOROD was able to, MYKHAILOVE CHUDO did nonetheless put forth a similarly exemplary version of Ukrainian polyphonic traditions.

It was HALYNA HONCHARENKO who usually took the high part in MYKHAILOVE CHUDO, entwining up and around the lead voice—most frequently taken by IRYNA DANYLEIKO herself—a distinct polyphonic strand. And indeed, the voices of these two singers—who again, really formed the core of the ensemble—seemed to be especially suited to one another: When singing in unison, the two together were capable of constructing a finely beautiful, and quite seamlessly unified sound character, almost as if their two voices somehow comprised a single voice, only to then all of a sudden separate, as HONCHARENKO would shift into a higher polyphonic part, so as to carve out thereby what amounted to a quite cogent counterpoint effect.

And as was the case with their “sibling” ensemble HULAYHOROD, MYKHAILOVE CHUDO likewise upon occasion waded deep out into popular music waters. In MYKHAILOVE CHUDO's case, this primarily occurred vis-a-vis their involvement with the Ukrainian Heavy Metal outfit Nazad Slyahu Namaye (= No Way Back).

More specifically, it concerned helping to work out some variations of one rather strange, yet exceedingly excellent piece of music this outfit featured, a song called “Ptakh Dosha” (“Rain Bird”). And oddly enough, it was actually within the context of this peculiar endeavor—a long ways away, after all, from the ensemble's more usual avtentyka practices—that perhaps the finest example of MYKHAILOVE CHUDO's two core vocalists singing together was definitively brought into being.

The original version of “Ptakh Dosha” bore a more or less Rap Metal treatment, stylistically speaking. Yet DMYTRO MITUSOV, the lead singer of Nazad Slyahu Namaye, and the author of the song in question [I am assuming that MITUSOV is the author, as he is the only figure present for all of the song's many transformations, but this needs to be double-checked] was apparently never entirely satisfied with this original treatment, for he proceeded to then continuously experiment with a significant number of alternative approaches.

After an odd detour into a sort of updated early 1980s New Wavish style, MITUSOV began then to systematically strip away most of the Rap Metal aspects, paring things down to a more 1990's “alternative” Hard Rock feel, interwoven with a somewhat Thrash aesthetic, until finally happening upon the decisive step the song was calling out for all along by hooking up with MYKHAILOVE CHUDO. This development thus intriguingly brought to bear upon the situation definite aspects drawn from traditional Ukrainian music.

Yet even then, the song as it was performed live in concert—often with MYKHAILOVE CHUDO present to lend their vocals to the endeavor—was still predominantly centered on MITUSOV's vocals, with MYKHAILOVE CHUDO only singing back-up.

On one particular occasion, though, which happened to be a performance enacted on a TV program during the Holidays back in 2014, MITUSOV decided to himself take the supporting role, and thus instead to let DANYLEIKO and HONCHARENKO serve as the song's principal vocalists.

This then turned out to be the crucial move that proved capable of bringing to the fore all of the glorious magnificence that was already implicit within the song—attributes which up to that moment had existed only as unforeseen, unanticipated potentiality, perhaps. It was as if the song's core greatness—and indeed, it is one of the best things ever written in the Ukrainian popular music sphere—had to be brought out bit by bit, by way of extensive trial and error, through a whole series of zigzagging transformations.

And what is perhaps most of all revealed here in the process is the deep suasive power that Ukrainian traditional music possesses, as well as the extraordinarily flexibility it is capable of—attributes especially conspicuous precisely at those moments that these traditional music practices are applied to musical contexts very much disparate to it.

Construct here a quick “MTV-like” MONTAGE, comprised of a variety of snippets of the different versions of “Ptakh Dosha” that are extant, illustrating by means of this rapid succession the song's progressive development, as it moves through each of the stylistic stages just noted—from the original Rap Metal version, to updated early 1980s New Wavish style, to 1990's “alternative” Hard Rock cum Thrash feel , to still 90s Hard Rock, but now with MYKHAILOVE CHUDO on backing vocal, to version featuring both cello and MYKHAILOVE CHUDO, but the latter again as backup rather than lead vocals—ending up on the final version detailed above, which is then given an extended hearing so as to conclude the MONTAGE.

DISCUSSION here with members of MYKHAILOVE CHUDO, MITUSOV, etc.

Yet despite their far-ranging explorations into the spheres of popular music, members of both HULAYHOROD and MYKHAILOVE CHUDO at the same time participated in the primarily “Restorationist” group KHOREYA KOZATSKA, led by TARAS KOMPANICHENKO—someone who likewise stemmed from the same “HURTOPRAVTSI matrix”. This ensemble thus included SEVERIN DANYLEIKO as one of its core members alongside KOMPANICHENKO, and somewhat more sporadically, has also featured both IRYNA DANYLEIKO and IVANNA DANYLEIKO.

By “Restorationist”, incidentally, what is meant here is an approach to traditional music that, as with the “Preservationist” approach, is likewise engaged in an attempt at transferring into the present day as much as is possible the true, “authentic” mode of performance practices and sound character vis-a-vis a particular sector of traditional music. The fundamental distinction between the “Preservationist” mode and the “Restorationist” mode, however, is that the latter is concerned with a mode of music that is not merely dying out, but that has in effect already died out, or in any event very much belongs to a by-gone era.

Most often, this approach thus pertains to Medieval and Renaissance music—or rather, the attempt to in effect reconstruct such music in the present day, based on whatever knowledge exists of its character and performance practices.

Nonetheless, for any such “Restorationist” music to really succeed in the present day—which is to say, to put itself across in a cogent manner—such music must not merely reconstruct the ancient materials at hand in a validly “authentic” manner, it must at the same time make these materials somehow come alive in this present moment. At its best, KHOREYA KOZATSKA certainly succeeds at that task, and perhaps never more so than when its ranks are fully staffed with some of the most talented participants in Ukraine's “authentic” music movement.

Along with the members just mentioned, the ensemble has also featured a passel of Ukraine's most accomplished instrumental music performers in the “authentic” music sphere, such as SERHIY OKHRIMCHUK, MYKHAILO KACHELOV and DANYLO PERTSOV (the latter is also an important composer, it should be noted, as will be discussed below).

Brief DISCUSSION here with the three figures noted just above, as well as with KOMPANICHENKO.

MUSICAL ILLUSTRATION excerpts here from a feverishly dramatic performance of “Yikhav Kozak Za Dunay”, plus “Piyte, Brattya, Popyite”, and this stirring setting of Shevchenko on which IRYNA DANYLEIKO shares lead vocals, “Oy Choho Ty Pochornilo”.

And it has actually been within the context of musical performances organized by KHOREYA KOZATSKA, backed up by musicians who comprise this ensemble, that IRYNA DANYLEIKO has given some of her most impressive performances as a solo singer. Here are excerpts from two such performances, taken from the same concert in 2013—both of which show off her truly exceptional versatility, and both of which are given very finely sensitive piano accompaniment by DANYLO PERTSOV.

MUSICAL ILLUSTRATIONS are excerpts from two Classical music settings of Taras Shevchenko's poetry: One by Valentin Sylvestrov, “Proshchai, Svite”, and another by Mykola Lysenko, “Oy, Odna Ya, Odna”.

The vocal artistry exhibited in these two pieces give vivid testament to the sheer beauty of DANYLEIKO's voice —her only equal in this regard within the Ukrainian music world would be the great NATALIA POLOVYNKA—as well as a capacity for emotional nuance for which, along some certain lines at least, she might not have any equal whatsoever amongst Ukrainian vocalists.


Kralytsya I: DakhaBrakha

For what it's worth, IRYNA DANYLEIKO was herself a student at Kyiv Conservatory, studying under IRYNA KLYMENKO?, while both DANYLO DANYLEIKO and SEVERIN DANYLEIKO were students at the Kiev National University of Culture and Arts, studying under IVAN SINELNIKOV?, as was also OLENA ROMANENKO? of TARUTA—even though all three would of course later become participants in KLYMENKO's various projects?

In and around the middle Aughts, about the same time period that KLYMENKO, based at Kyiv Conservatory, was just beginning to ramp up her series of projects?, an endeavor that had its roots at KNUCA was likewise just starting up. Although this endeavor took shape in the world beyond KNUCA's university walls, it was in some essential respects an outgrowth of the KRALYTSYA student ensemble that was led by SINELNIKOV.

And as this particular KRALYTSYA-rooted project was to subsequently develop, it would eventually turn out to attract more attention to Ukrainian music, out in the world beyond Ukraine, than perhaps any Ukrainian music making endeavor yet.

This was DAKHABRAKHA (in addition to the videos featured below, also include MUSICAL ILLUSTRATION snippets throughout this whole section from the following sources: A fantastic performance at Ivan Honchar Museum from 2011—the band has quite possibly never sounded better than this—a sheerly incandescent extended performance in Oakland, Ca. from 2015, as well as from some of the band's most outstanding studio recordings, such as “Na Dobranich”, “Oy, U Kyevi” , and “Buvayte Zdorovi”. Perhaps also include some brief snippets from this and this, so as to further accentuate the band's “KRAYLYTSYA roots”).

The group effectively originated of course not at KNUCA, but at Kyiv's DAKH Theatre—more formally known as Center of Contemporary Art DAKH—under the tutelage of VLAD TROITSKY. And it originally came together very much in the shape and form of a theatrical project—or rather, as the musical support devised to serve as accompaniment for DAKH's various theatrical productions. Thus, the band from the start bore the distinct impress of the stage, so to speak, featuring extravagant costumes as a prominent component of its general presentation, in addition to a smartly paced, intently thought-through, and very well-calibrated live performance show.

However, it was all the same an endeavor very much centered around music making—most especially on the live, dynamic musical interactions of its four members. And the musical foundations of the band, again, first came fully together at KNUCA, under the tutelage of IVAN SINELNIKOV.

All three of DAKHABRAKHA's female members—OLENA TSYBULSKA, IRYNA KOVALENKO, and NINA HARENETSKA—were in fact students together at KNUCA at the same time, in the first half of the Aughts?, studying under SINELNIKOV's aegis in the Folklore Department?, and participating together in KRALYTSYA.

Yet the three women, all of whom grew up in Kyiv, had actually known each other long before they arrived at University—NINA and IRYNA from the third grade—having participated together in various children's folk groups, such as the well-known and still active group Yavorina. But it was nonetheless in the Folklore Department at KNUCA in the early Aughts, singing together in KRALYTSYA, that the three gained the crucial experience that would most of all impact the music they would go on to make together in DAKHABRAKHA.

And this was apparently a particularly fertile moment to be a student in the Folklore Department at KNUCA. Surrounding the three young women as their fellow students at this same moment were any number of other young people destined to become significant figures in the Ukrainian music making world:

Not only the three individuals already mentioned above—the two DANYLEIKO brothers and OLENA ROMANENKO—but also multiple members of BOZHYCHI, still in this ensemble's very earliest days? [again, not clear which members were actually students at KNUCA], as well as OLEH BUT? [same here], who would likewise go on to become an important participant in the Avtentyka Revival Movement.

KRALYTSYA was strictly a student ensemble, of course, and thus served in this capacity to ground the larger Folklore Studies program that SINELNIKOV oversaw—a program that was effectively designed to serve as a “training laboratory for future leaders of folk groups”.

And a very important facet of this this training, then, was the requirement that students do “field research”—in other words, go on “song collecting” expeditions across the Ukrainian countryside, but do so again, in such a way that the “researchers” do not merely conduct research, but are there to directly learn the practice customs of the rural music culture they have ventured out to engage with, and to themselves participate in this music culture.

Thus, as was the case at the ethnomusicological department at Kyiv Conservatory itself, what SINELNIKOV put into place vis-a-vis the “training laboratory” he set up at KNUCA effectively instituted within the context of the Folklore program the very manner of “collaborative field research” that VOLODYMYR MATVIYENKO, on a more informal basis, first forged in 1958 in conjunction with the music makers at Kryachkivka.

[Questions: What exactly was the degree of influence that the “DREVO model” might have had on what SINELNIKOV set up at KNUCA ? How direct was this influence, or was it instead more of an indirect nature? There was not unlikely some influence also drawn from what the Pokrovsky Ensemble were doing in Russia, yet it would make sense that the model established at Kyiv Conservatory, a “sister” institution in the same country, and indeed, in the very same city, would have had more impact on KNUCA's program. Research...]

Of course, one of the things that being a student ensemble entails is continuous turnover—students who proceed through the program eventually graduate, and new students then come in to take their places. As it came time for TSYBULSKA, KOVALENKO, and HARENETSKA to graduate, to move out into the world beyond KNUCA's protective roof, so to speak, they made the decision to stick together as a performing entity. And thus it was in this collective form that, upon the recommendation of a friend, they first showed up “under the roof” of VLAD TROITSKY's DAKH Theatre (“dakh” in Ukrainian means “roof”).

It should be noted, however, that at this point there were actually four, instead of three young KNUCA graduates, all who had performed together in KRALYTSYA, and who all went together as a performing collective to DAKH Theatre: In addition to the three women already discussed, the fourth member of the collective was Oleksandra Harbuzova [I am unsure at this moment as to the full story of Harbuzova's departure from the group, and therefore I am not specifying her as one of the “Cast of Characters”. This may well change later on, though].

In any event, it was not long, almost immediately in fact?, before the four young women found themselves sitting down with TROITSKY himself, talking over the theatrical possibilities that they might explore together vis-a-vis the Ukrainian traditional music culture the four had spent so much of their lives immersing themselves in.

TROITSKY had already some experience working along these lines, in fact, having previously devised various stage productions that had featured the traditional music making of DREVO and BOZHYCHI [Need to do more research regarding these productions: I believe the production BOZHYCHI did with DAKH was called “U Poshukakh Vtrachenoho Chasu” (“In Search of Lost Time”), and the DAKH/DREVO production was called “Kolo Zhyttia” (“Circle of Life”), but double-check this, and acquire more specific information overall, i.e., regarding background details, the nature of these productions, what were they about in more precise terms, etc.].

Yet at this juncture, TROITSKY was looking to do something else—or rather, really something more, something altogether different, something that no-one else had done up to that point with Ukrainian traditional music, to move past or expand upon the parameters of the “Preservationist” approach that informed both DREVO's and BOZHYCHI's music making.

In short, he was interested in attempting something along expressly experimentalist lines. His main idea was to try mixing up Ukrainian traditional music foundations with all manner of elements drawn from other traditional music cultures—most especially, aspects of a percussion-oriented approach, a facet of musical expression that was somewhat undeveloped within the domain of Ukrainian traditional music.

And it was precisely this conception that was given a sort of trial run then at the very first meeting? between TROITSKY and the four young KRALYTSYA women: TROITSKY had the four women sing some of their Ukrainian traditional songs, which he himself then began to provide accompaniment for with various percussion instruments drawn from Indian and African sources.

As it happens, passing by within hearing range at this very same moment was one MARCO HALANEVYCH, another young person who had gotten involved with DAKH Theatre at about this same time? HALANEVYCH had actually already become acquainted with the four women from KRALYTSYA at a get together held just recently at DAKH?, and so now, without further ado, he simply sat down and joined in with the music making at hand [Double check all the details in this account].

And in such a way, therefore, was DAKHABRAKHA born. And although Oleksandra Harbuzova dropped out not too long afterward?, what was put forth at this very first coming-together of all the principle players in the group has in many respects served as the overriding template for a great deal of what the group has done since that day—the core basis, really, of its essential sound character.

The phrase that the band itself coined to give expression to this sound character was ethno-chaos—roughly meaning, an approach that threw together aspects of various “ethnic” or traditional musics in such a way that might be interpreted as “chaotic”, or perhaps even “anarchistic”, giving rise in the process to a mode of music making that sounded quite unfamiliar and unorthodox to nearly all who heard it.

Such factors are of course directly manifested in their instrumentation too: A wild, “chaotic” mix of different percussion instruments, drawn mostly from African, Indian, and also Middle Eastern traditions, are blended together with various types of accordions, plus occasional keyboards and woodwinds, as well as a whole menagerie of wordless vocal sounds that the band collectively lets loose with at certain moments—the totality of which is then given a righteous undergirding by way of NINA HARENETSKA's darkly-strained cello, which also doubles as an (not infrequently funkified) upright acoustic bass.

Yet the foundations of this sound definitely remained the Ukrainian traditional singing practices that the female members of the band had become conversant with, all throughout their lives up to that point, but most of all during their time at KNUCA, as performers in KRALYTSYA, and as active “researchers” undertaking “song collecting” trips throughout the Ukrainian hinterland. And MARCO HALANEVYCH—who grew up not in Kyiv, but in the Vinnytsia region of Ukraine— also had many contributions to make to these foundations, having absorbed much Ukrainian traditional musical culture in the old-fashioned way, directly from his musically expressive grandparents.

The following videos thus present a fairly clear sonic illustration, first of KRALYTSYA's role in forming DAKHABRAKHA's musical foundations, and then perhaps some sense too of how these foundations were then expanded upon, so as to end up with the group's defining sound character.

This first video here shows OLENA TSYBULSKA, IRYNA KOVALENKO and Oleksandra Harbuzova performing a capella in a KRALYTSYA production, back in the day while still students at KNUCA, presumably at some point in the early Aughts?

And it is this particular video, then, that provides the most obvious testament to the impact of KRALYTSYA on DAKHABRAKHA's sound, as indeed, the traditional melody the trio are singing is exactly the same as utilized in DAKHABRAKHA's song “Yahudky”. In terms of performance style, interpretative approach, etc., the performance that the three young KRALYTSYA members give here is virtually indistinguishable from what they would later put forward (eventually sans Harbuzova) as members of DAKHABRAKHA—although in DAKHABRAKHA's version the melodic line is encased within a larger musical context quite a bit different from what we hear in this earlier a capella version.

The following two KRALYTSYA videos, on the other hand—here and here—which look like they are probably from the same day as the video just referenced above, give perhaps a fuller sense of the traditional music origins of the celebratory, even ritualistic fervor that often colors DAKHABRAKHA's music making. This is a presentation of ritual wedding songs from the Luhansk region of Ukraine, presented here within a greater ritualistic wedding ceremony that is itself directly enacted by the student-performers. Hence, what is taking place is very much along the same lines as the attempt to present the full ritualistic context underlying Ukrainian music traditions that IRYNA KLYMENKO was engaged in right around this same time [Research any possible influence here, whether working one way or the other, or both. Did the “Kyiv Wedding” take place before or after this event at KNUCA? Any influence working one way or another here?].

In the first video, in addition to TSYBULSKA (seen sitting down in the chair near the beginning of the video), KOVALENKO (dancing immediately to the left of TSYBULSKA at the same point), one also sees NINA HARENETSKA present and accounted for here as well (fixing the “bride's” hair about 3 minutes in). All three continue to take part in the goings-on in the second video as well.

Moreover, one can also observe in both of these two videos a large number of their fellow classmates who, as noted above, would likewise go onto become figures of significance in the Ukrainian music making world. This was again, without question a very fertile moment to be a student in the Folklore Department at KNUCA:

Thus, seen here likewise participating in this ritual enactment are five members of the BOZHYCHI ensemble from its early days—ILYA FETISOV, SUSANNA KARPENKO, MARICHKA MARCZYK, VALERII HLADUNETS and ANNA ARKHIPCHUK—as well as the fore-mentioned OLENA ROMANENKO and OLEH BUT. The degree of young “talent-in-the-making” all performing together in these two videos is actually quite breathtaking.

Moving on then, this next video here would seem to supply a good sense of what DAKHABRAKHA likely sounded like in its very earliest days, as this video would certainly appear to stem from that time (Note how much younger everyone looks. Note, furthermore, the presence of Oleksandra Harbuzova, the only DAKHABRAKHA video I could find in which she is still at hand).

According to an Ukrainian Vogue feature article on the group, one of the first things that VLAD TROITSKY did while trying to piece together the group's sound from the outset, essentially so as to engender a more dramatic, experimental and unorthodox feel, was to have the four traditional music-trained female vocalists “shift the accents” in their typical vocal enunciation—away from what was standard in the traditional approach, one would assume, towards something more dynamic and unusual in its impact. This video does in fact seem to present a definite indication of just what this amounted to (the song itself is “Ivan Kupala”, based around what I believe is a traditional Ukrainian melodic line that TARUTA also made use of in one of their early songs).

And from this video of a performance at the ArtPole summer festival of 2011—still relatively early in DAKHABRAHKA's career—one can probably derive a decent conception vis-a-vis the highly dramatic manner in which KOVALENKO and TSYBULSKA both express themselves in their vocal performance (not at all the sort of thing one would expect to hear in any traditional music context), of some of the more intensely dramatic aspects the band presumably acquired through their experimental theatre explorations undertaken with VLAD TROITSKY at DAKH.

Yet what needs to be at the same time acknowledged here, in any account of DAKHABRAKHA's basic sound character, is that it is not only traditional ethnic music—or rather, an especially dynamic and dramatic interpretation of traditional ethnic music—that is thrown into the “chaotic” mix that makes up the band's sound: Also superadded to this mix, as it were, are all manner of elements drawn from the popular music world.

Hence, alongside aspects of traditional Ukrainian music, as well as Middle Eastern- and West African traditional music, are interspersed considerable portions drawn from World Beat, African-American R&B, as well as elements from experimental Rock—what might be called Avant Rock.

All of these elements, furthermore, are interwoven into the overall mix in an explicitly avant gardist manner. Indeed, the very way in which DAKHABRAKHA's music moves, the way in which it develops in time, accords very much with compositional techniques devised by the Minimalist movement—an influence the band has explicitly acknowledged.

Thus, despite the “chaos” label they have bestowed upon themselves, the manner of music making the band most typically engages in is by no means congruent with the open-ended, entirely improvisational approach that one finds in Free Jazz, for instance. This latter approach is one in which virtually all structural forms are stripped away from the music making process, and therefore the shapes and forms that the music takes, the manifest ways in which it develops, must be wholly worked out in “real time”, by way of the concrete musical interactions of the musicians as they proceed together in their music making.

The way in which DAKHABRAKHA characteristically makes music, on the other hand, in the manner in which they utilize traditional music materials especially, likewise strips away much of the underlying structural form that encases this music—which is to say, the traditional song forms—yet rather than simply leaving things in a state of open-ended improvisational “chaos” (one should note that when handled superbly well—the Ultramarine project that ULYANA HORBACHEVSKA was involved in, centered around her utilization of Ukrainian traditional music materials within a Free Jazz context, is one definite example—this approach to music making can be quite glorious), the developmental approach that the band adopts is an essentially Minimalist one.

Rather than moving through time in accordance to traditional song form, therefore, or in accordance to the open-ended, wholly improvisational form of Free Jazz, DAKHABRAKHA's music tends to move instead by way of small incremental alterations in its ongoing repetitive sound flow, at times perhaps barely even discernible, that gradually accumulate until all of a sudden bursting in a highly dramatic, upsurging release, a veritable gushing forth of intense musical expressiveness.

What the band exhibits in this way, then, is at its best a well-nigh obsessively focused and utterly riveting mode of music making, in which as simple a matter as a basic chord change can take on the character of an ontological revelation.

And perhaps the best way to summarily define the total sound character the band puts forward, therefore, would be by way of the term “Avant Populist”. What is meant by this term is again—as laid out above in the section dealing with MARYANA SADOVSKA—a mode of music making in which aspects of popular music are blended in with traditional music elements, yet the whole approach is thoroughly interfused with an “experimentalist” or “avant gardist” sensibility.

Much DISCUSSION throughout this whole section, on all the matters touched upon, with all of the “players” involved.

There is incidentally another ensemble that has arisen more recently within the Ukrainian music making world—stemming in fact from the exact same DAKH Theatre origins as DAKHABRAKHA, and likewise sharing VLAD TROITSKY as their creative director—who although they do upon certain occasions make use of Ukrainian traditional music elements, mostly put forward a version of this “Avant Populist” approach that is not so much grounded on these traditional music foundations.

This is DAKH DAUGHTERS, in many ways a “sister” band to DAKHABRAKHA: In addition to their shared DAKH Theatre origins, the two ensembles also have one mutual member, NINA HARENETSKA, and a close familial connection too, in that MARCO HALANEVYCH is married to one of the DAKH DAUGHTERS, NATALIA HALANEVYCH (née Beda).

DISCUSSION here from all pertinent individuals, as well as MUSICAL ILLUSTRATION drawn from the following sources: here, here and here.

What the DAUGHTERS do is in fact even more theatre-based than DAKHABRAKHA, involving a wholesale, thoroughly articulated theatrical production, enacted through song and music, as well as through movement, costume, and a peculiar mode of stage acting and performance art that is all their own (although very strongly influenced by a more than century-old tradition of “avant garde Cabaret”, harking back to late 19th century Paris and Weimar-era Berlin).

It is an approach that is nothing if not unwaveringly and indefatigably avant gardist, yet is nonetheless intensely entangled with the “vernacular” expressive modalities of the present moment (and of the most recent past), in a way that incorporates in a wildly ribald manner virtually the entire swath of popular music forms, albeit in a rather pointillistic manner: a smattering of 60s Pop here, a dab of Hip Hop there, a few fragmented globules of alternative 70s or 80s Rock over there, with large dollops of demented Cabaret smeared all about the place—that really makes sense only within an overall context that they themselves frenetically construct.

And the role that Ukrainian traditional music plays in all this—although it is again, a relatively minor component, it all the same tends to bear strongly significant weight—is quite interesting too. Hence, these traditional sounds, when they are juxtaposed up against some other sound character that is at extreme variance to them, serve a purpose of manifesting something like an alternative reality, in a way that is not so different from how ALLA ZAGAYKEVYCH makes use of Ukrainian traditional music in her Electronics-based compositions.

These two bands, then, both alike arising out of the same creative cauldron that is VLAD TROITSKY's DAKH Theatre, and both to varying degrees manifesting defining aspects drawn from the Avtentyka Revival Movement, can be thus seen as carving out a sort of apotheosis of the creative possibilities discoverable in this Movement, along one certain pathway at least.

That is to say, in both alike reaching out from the ground basis of this Movement—this is again, only partially so vis-a-vis DAKH DAUGHTERS, and much more comprehensively so for DAKHABRAKHA—so as to scale some of the highest imaginative heights anyone has as of yet even attempted, what has been proven in the process is precisely the considerable creative power that can be found inherent in Ukrainian traditional music, and in the “collaborative model” first forged between VOLODYMYR MATVIYENKO and the music makers of Kryachkivka so long ago, if only such matters are approached in the right way.

[I should say here that my grasp of DAKHABRAKHA's development has been further illuminated by my recent discovery of the following set of videos:

These videos—here, here, here, here and here—are of TSYBULSKA, KOVALENKO and Harbuzova (the first three videos feature all three women; the last two feature the vocals of TSYBULSKA alone), performing in an ensemble called Ukrayinski Muziky (“Ukrainian Music”), presumably from some point either just before they entered University, or possibly even concurrent to their time there. It might even be the case that their involvement with this ensemble was in some way in association with their program of study at KNUCA, although the year specified on the first video—1999—would suggest that this involvement occurred again, just prior to the attendance at KNUCA: Given that DAKHABRAKHA began in 2004, I am assuming that this signifies the young women graduated from KNUCA probably that same year.

In any event, the reason why I find this set of videos potentially illuminating in terms of not only what it possibly tells me about DAKHABRAKHA's story, but also in some ways in terms of the overall narrative I am concerned with here, is as follows:

What stands out the most for me regarding the Ukrayinski Muziky ensemble, is that it has a decidedly “show businessy character”. The manner of traditional music they perform, that is to say, is not really what could be called avtentyka—it does not really embody much of an “authentic” character, in other words. What it strikes me as being, instead, is a smaller-scaled version of (the most “show-businessy” aspects of) the “Folk Orchestras” or “State Orchestras”, which put forward a highly “renovated” version of traditional music, designed pretty much to be palatable for contemporary, mass audiences. In short, it represents a sort of “variety show” version of traditional music (look at the manner in which TSYBULSKA coyly perches behind the doublebass at the opening of the last video, for instance—a very “variety show” way in which to begin a performance).

And what this all indicates to me, then, is that it very probably, if not almost certainly would have been at KNUCA, working under IVAN SINELNIKOV, that the “DAKHABRAKHA women” fully absorbed the whole avtentyka approach to music making—an approach that is again, very much purposefully distinct from any “renovated” or “variety show” approach.

The experience that the “DAKHABRAKHA women” had performing in children's folk ensembles such as Yavorina would not likely have achieved this. These ensembles tend to be “show businessy” almost by definition—a large part of their appeal, after all, lies in the “cuteness factor” that arises from seeing and hearing young people performing for the occasion as if they were older people. Plus, such ensembles also no doubt tend to be strongly motivated by the obligation to make the endeavor turn out to be a fun time for the young people, rather than any felt need to immerse the kids at this early stage in their development in the minutiae of performance practice “authenticity”.

It was already my working assumption, of course, that it was by way of KRALYTSYA and the Folklore Department at KNUCA that the “DAKHABRAKHA women” primarily acquired their deep engagement with avtentyka Ukrainian music culture, but watching this set of videos really brought this point home, highlighting it all the more so.

And in so doing, it also made me reflect on how absolutely decisive this “KRALYTSYA experience” at KNUCA must have been for what would eventually become the “DAKHABRAKHA sound”. Indeed, it is my standpoint that this avtentyka element is altogether crucial to the best work that DAKHABRAKHA has done. All the other elements that they “chaotically” mix in with this avtentyka foundation make for an extremely dynamic and imaginative sound character, at least in the effacacious manner in which they blend them all together, but it is this “keystone” avtentyka foundation that gives this “chaotic mix” its true deep-seated power. Take away this one element, in other words, and you would end up with something possessed of much less aesthetic power and cogency.

Yet, this then provoked a further reflection, vis-a-vis how both consequential, and indicative it must have been—not just for DAKHABRAKHA's sound, but really for the whole ongoing development of the Avtentyka Revival Movement overall—that this avtentyka approach was incorporated into the course of study at KNUCA in the first place.

And one of the reasons that I began to consider things along these lines, ironically enough, has to do with my impression that KRALYTSYA itself has always incorporateed a decent amount of “show businessy” elements.

In other words, although there is no doubt that the music making that KRALYTSYA has put forward over the course of a great many years—unlike that of say, the Ukrayinski Muziky ensemble—is characterized by a strong avtentyka foundation, there are also aspects of what they do that definitely manifest a real “show businessy” side, as well.

This is not necessarily an entirely bad thing—indeed it likely speaks to the reasons why, as the “Luhansk Wedding Songs” videos referenced above give testament to, so many of the young people that came out of this KNUCA program then went on to have substantive careeers in so many different sectors of the music making world.

My guess would be, though, that the original character of KRALYTSYA, as SINELNIKOV originally set it up way back in the final days of the Soviet era, quite probably featured such “show businessy elements” to a preponderant degree. And this, moreover, would have likely been in line with how I would further guess KNUCA has generally speaking long conceived its own mission as an academic institution: That is, as an institution that offers up top-of-the-line professional training for the commercial music, TV and film worlds in Ukraine (something that a more traditionalist-minded, old-line institution like Kyiv Consevatory would probably not concern itself with, and might even look down upon).

Thus, vis-a-vis the overall Folklore program that SINELNIKOV initially established at KNUCA, although it might have been designed as “a training laboratory for future leaders of folk groups”, it perhaps was the case that the character of the “folk groups” that the program had in mind in its earliest days were more on the order of the Ukrayinski Muziky ensemble—i.e., involving a rather “show businessy” version of “folk music”.

This is all just guesswork on my part, I would admit, but it would seem to line up with the evidence at hand.

But if this is indeed the case, the fact that SINELNIKOV then presumably decided at some point (perhaps in the early years of independence, as a way in which to reflect, and help to further consolidate the spirit of Ukrainian independence) to ground the whole program with a strong avtentyka foundation—going so far as requiring his students to do “collaborative field research”, setting forth on “song collecting” expeditions out and about in the Ukrainian countryside—such that would temper any remaining “show businessy” elements with a true engagement with Ukrainian traditional music culture in its aboriginal, “authentic” form, indicates perhaps the growing significance that this avtentyka tendency, or really, the whole Avtentyka Revival Movement, must have attained by this juncture.

Hence, presuming that this line of thinking is at least roughly accurate, in broad overall terms even if some of the details are off, this I think really does serve to illuminate the whole dynamic that issued out of this Avtentyka Revival Movement, as it began to “come into its own” in the first decade or so of Ukrainian independence. And it also drives home, once more, how crucial, and even necessary, this whole avtentyka approach has been to the best music to come of Ukraine in the last decade and a half—not least of which is that of DAKHABRAKHA.

It's interesting to consider, though, how this “show businessy” background—which amounts essentially to a theatrical take on traditional music—on the part of the “DAKHABRAKHA women” then probably fed into the theatrical take on traditional music that they endeavored at DAKH Theatre, although now the theatrical character at hand was of an expressly experimental, “avant gardist”, rather than “variety show” kind. It thus might be said that, with the formation of DAKHABRAKHA, every aspect of the training that the “DAKHABRAKHA women” had received up to that point was then channelled into their music making,

It's worth noting too, incidentally, that the evidence certainly suggests it was TSYBULSKA, KOVALENKO and Harbuzova who were really the self-contained, compact “performing entity” for most of the period leading up to the four young women's arrival at the DAKH Theatre. HARENETSKA, in other words, must have gotten appended onto that “entity” at some point prior to that moment, but it would seem that she was not really a member of the core group early on at least, even though they apparently all knew one another going way back.]


Kralytsya II: Kamo Hrydeshi
and The Doox


...Coming Soon...


Lviv Once More I: Sadovska's More Recent Projects: The Kronos Quartet,
Christian Thomé and “Music for Four Voices and Four Basses”


...Coming Soon...


Lviv Once More II: Polovynka's
Sacred Music and Further Work
with Drevo Kryachkivka


...Coming Soon...


Lviv Once More III: Horbachevska's Expansions of “Avant Traditionalist” Approach: Ultramarine, Slipak Commemoration & Antonych at Home


...Coming Soon...


Lviv Once More IV: Burdon, Joryj Kłoc, Hyzh Orkestra, Kurbasy and Lyudy Dobre


...Coming Soon...


A Detour Excursion into the Carpathians


...Coming Soon...


Susanna Karpenko's Patterned Songs:
Expanding the Boundary Lines of
the “Preservationist” Core:


...Coming Soon...


Maidan, the Crimean Annexation
and the Donbas War


...Coming Soon...


Art Arsenal “Vesna” (“Spring”) Event 2015: The Apotheosis of the Avtentyka Revival Movement as a Creative Social
Force, or Rather its “Last Hurrah”?


...Coming Soon...


Danylo Pertsov's Bitter Star:
A Symphonic Summation of
the “Preservationist” Core


...Coming Soon...


The Return to Kryachkivka I: Yuriy Fedynsky and the “Kobza Tradition”


...Coming Soon...


The Return to Kryachkivka II:
Grand Concert & Symposium
on the Future of the “Authentic”
Music Revival Movement in Ukraine


...Coming Soon...



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