Before moving on then to the multitude of present-day permutations of Ukrainian traditional music—the central concern of this site—it seems necessary to begin with an introduction of sorts to
this tradition itself.

Although I will not attempt to give here a fully comprehensive account of all the many facets involved in Ukrainian traditional music, I will try all the same to at least outline most of its primary features.

One must start, I think, with the human voice.

It cetainly does seem safe to say that Ukrainian traditional music—and this is the case with most forms of traditional music—is very much centered upon the human voice and its expressive capacities [ojn].

And it is indeed its traditions of vocal performance that have from time immemorial been the true heart and soul of Ukrainian musical life, the common foundation for a preponderance of its other modes of expression, and I believe it can be said that it is from such vocal practices that still to this day Ukrainian music finds its essential rootedness and overall sense of direction.

And this is most of all so, it seems to me, with reference to Ukraine's vocal ensemble or choral traditions—the human voice operating in communion with others.

Although one would definitely not want to diminish the very important role played by Ukraine's traditions of solo singing, both a capella and as self-accompanied on instruments such as the Kobza, Bandura, Torban and Lira—and I will duly deal with these aspects below—it can still be asserted I think that the small-scale, horizontally-oriented vocal ensemble really stands as the veritable crux of traditional Ukrainian musical life.

It might even be claimed, along these same lines, that such horizontally-oriented vocal ensemble practices—the act of coming together in purposeful congregation so as to engage in expressive culture—establish themselves as a sort of ideal model in miniature of the possibilities inherent in Ukrainian society overall, of the manner in which the individual is at one and the same time afforded the capacity of engaging with social forms in fruitful affiliation with others, as well as at least optimally granted the capacity to creatively assert oneself within that context.

And although Ukraine is often tagged, rightly or wrongly, as a male-dominated society, it is worth pointing out that in so far as its traditional music culture goes, it is undeniably the case that no small part of this traditional musical culture has long been concretely embodied and proactively kept alive through the specific agency of the female voice, and most particularly, again, of the female voice in congregation—by informal, small-scale groups of women singing.

One would of course not want to assert this either in overly dogmatic terms—Ukraine's musical traditions involving the male voice are just as significant, and nearly as impressive, as I will likewise give evidence to below. Nonetheless, my impression is that it is the “vernacular” formation of small-scale female vocal groups that have served to perpetuate a not inconsiderable portion of Ukrainian traditional music, especially with reference to Ukraine's magnificient song culture—and Ukrainian music-making without question tends to be a song-based mode of expression.

That said, all things considered it is undoubtedly the case that this mode of small choral ensemble reaches its ultimate pinnacle when men and women's voices are conjoined together, each supporting the other, interlocked in a consummate whole. Even in such instances, however, there is the sense I think that the female segment could much more readily exist apart from the whole—and the female voices indeed almost always outnumber the male voices in such groups, sometimes by a two- or three- to -one ratio—and that the male voices are thus on hand to bestow an exquisitely harmonious, though not absolutely necessary deep-voiced bedrock to this manner of congregation.

The first two videos embedded below—“companion” videos that feature much the same people, and that both occurred I think roughly at the same time and place—furnishes decent examples of all this:



[Drevo/Maisternia Pisni] Древо/
Майстерня пісні “Ой там за морями”

Much of what I find most exceptional and valuable in Ukrainian traditional music-making—and in many respects, in Ukrainian music-making as a whole—is in one way or another present in this first video:

What we have here, that is to say, is a small group of people—there are four male voices, including one rather young boy, and eight female voices—who have assembled to engage in a simple act of music making, altogether glorious albeit thoroughly unpretentious and even downright earthy, and utilizing the most basic means possible—the human voice—and have moreover done so, one supposes, in accordance to the most basic motivation of all: the sheer love of making music. The look of utter gratification and pleasure on the faces of those participating should itself I think conclusively attest to this fact.

And for what it's worth, it would certainly seem to represent music-making that is enacted wholly on a horizontal, “vernacular” level—to all appearances, it is music-making on the part of “ordinary people”, in other words. This particular group of people certainly do not give the impression of being academically-trained artistes, conducting themselves in strict accordance to such training—at least they do not seem at this moment to be operating in such a manner—nor do they strike one as professionals beholden to or in any way galvanized by commercial considerations.

And again, to touch back on what I just suggested, it occurs to me in watching this video that this sort of assembly goes a fair way in encapsulating what amounts to a functional ideal of the Ukrainian civic community: It sets forth in part at least a quintessential model for the civic community as a whole.

Hence: The whole conceptual basis at work underlying this mode of horizontally-oriented social interrelation can be characterized, I think, as one in which everyone contributes something to the whole. Everyone gives what they have to give, and whatever one does have to contribute, however small it might be, as long as it is given to serve productive purposes, is not only accepted into the whole, but is explicitly valued, and moreover plays its part in helping to construct the whole—in this case, what is in fact an interlaced latticework of wondrous sound.

Yet, in order to bring about such a beneficent structure, it is important to remain aware that each part must be properly attuned to the whole—if what one has to contribute is not properly attuned, if it happens instead to be destructive or corrosive to the maintenance and furtherance of the whole, then it cannot be accepted into the fold, and one would have done better therefore not to offer anything at all [s].

It doesn't seem to me without relevance to note that this was pretty much the same conceptual basis, the same governing approach and attitudinal sensibility that informed Ukraine's Maidan Revolution, and I think it can furthermore be agreed that it was largely due to this conceptual basis that Maidan succeeded in the way that it did.

Whatever the case, it is indisputable in my opinion that the enormous sound generated by this small group of music makers is tremendous in every respect—in its essential spirit, in its aesthetic worth, and in every other way as well.

However, it must be conceded that further knowledge of the situation at hand rather complicates the understanding just expressed. Indeed, what a certain degree of research into who these people are, and what they are doing there, actually reveals is that this is no “simple” group after all; the matter is instead much more complex.

It can be stated, in fact, that there are at least two different “factions” or types of people present: First of all, we have the three elderly music-makers from the rural community where this performance takes place—two women and a man—whom one can take as the true living inheritors of the great vernacular tradition of music-making that is re-enacted here. These are truly “ordinary people”, that is—as opposed to commercial professionals, or academically-trained artistes—who acquired their music-making abilities through the age-old agency of oral instruction.

The second “faction”, on the other hand—the younger adults—are generally speaking academically-trained people, urban-based scholars slash performance artists whose main area of focus happens to be traditional music-making in Ukraine. These are thus people who have either been directly schooled within the field of ethnomusicology, or in any event are participating in a mode of endeavor that has been largely constructed and defined by the standards and characteristic practices of that field (there is obviously a third “faction” too, made up of what I am guessing are the children of the second “faction”, but I am counting this crowd as basically an adjunct to the latter).

This second “faction” comprises a theatre and vocal performance organization called “Maisternia Pisni” [trans.: “Workshop Song”], that concerns itself primarily with Ukrainian song traditions—they describe themselves as an “art laboratory” operating “at the intersection of theater and traditional music” [l]—and are at work here under the auspices of an Ukrainian ethnographic folkloric institution that goes by the name “Drevo”.

Although I will take note shortly of who the individual members of Maisternia Pisni are, I want to wait until near the end of this first section to consider the work they have done separately from Drevo (although this is to be sure, quite excellent). For in accordance to the principle of first things first, a prior discussion of what Drevo is seems inescapble here.

I would say that the most discerning manner in which to convey what the hallowed institution that is Drevo signifies for Ukrainian culture is that it is this ensemble that essentially stands as the principal entity responsible for initiating in the first place the sort of undertaking we see transpiring in both of these first two videos.

The best designation by which to describe Drevo—the word means “tree” in Ukrainian, by the way, taken from a Ukrainian folk song entitled “Ой, у полі древо”)—would in fact be “avtentyka ensemble” [“avtentyka” = “authentic” in Ukrainian], and as it was for all intents and purposes the first such ensemble in Ukraine, Drevo must therefore be seen as the model for the entire wildly profilerating swarm of traditional music ensembles that have sprung up in Ukraine in recent years, the trailblazing pioneers whose activities set into motion the crucially important cultural phenomenon known as the “Avtentyka Revival Movement” [p].

The rise of the “Avtentyka Revival Movement” in point of fact represents what I have come to view as in many ways the decisive event in the Ukrainian music-making world in the last few decades [g], and I will thus discuss this movement in a more extensive manner presently. At this juncture, I want merely to provide a brief account of the movement's beginnings vis-a-vis the emergence of Drevo.

There does seem to be some discrepancy as to when Drevo began, however. Most sites that I consulted specify 1979 as its inaugural year. The official Drevo site, though, notes that the group's inception dates way back to 1958, when the “famous composer and folklorist”, Volodymyr Matviyenko, first started traveling to the village of Kryachkivka in the Poltava region of Ukraine to listen to the distinctive polyphonic vocal traditions this village was famous for.

Even more confusingly, the Drevo site then mentions 2010 as their 50th anniversary year, which would in fact posit 1960 as the group's starting date.

My guess is that what is being marked off by these dates are different stages of the group's formation. Sometime thereabouts 1958 or 1960 is apparently when a cadre of students, scholars and enthusiasts began gathering around Volodymyr Matviyenko to study and try to learn the manner of musical practice they all experienced in making their own pilgrimages to Kryachkivka.

1979, on the other hand, seems to be the year that Yevgen Yefremov, who apparently was a student of Matviyenko at the Kyiv Conservatory, took over leadership of the group with Matviyenko's blessing, and formed a new performing ensemble that perhaps then became particularly active in the public sphere, and much better known at that point [y].

Here, in fact, is a link to a superb performance, more than likely from the later 90's or early aughts, that if I'm not mistaken includes most of this “1979 group” (I have not been able to locate recordings of Drevo from any earlier point): Yevhen Yefremov is the somewhat older man in a suit, second from left; Dmytro Polyachok is next to him on the far left; the woman in the center, on the other side of Yefremov, is I believe Hanna Koropnichenko, while the two holding down the right end (whom I am assuming are husband and wife) are Hanna and Serhiy Okhrimchuk.

Mr. Okhrimchuk, it should be said, in addition to being a fine choral singer, is not only a first-rate violinist, but also one of the most important, and certainly one of the most ubiquitous figures in the Ukrainian music-making world for more than a generation now. There will be much further mention of this particular musician as we proceed.

Here and here, for what it's worth, are two fairly recent performances of this same “1979 group” (with some minor variation in personnel).

To return to the two Drevo/Maisternia Pisni videos, though:

The conception which really animates my grasp of not only what is on display in both of these first two embedded videos, but of the entire structural basis and dynamic upon which Drevo as an insititution is founded, is that even though these two videos happen to be from 2006—many years subsequent, in other words, to Drevo's pioneering early days—what we are seeing in both of these videos pretty well exemplifies the “modus operandi” that was established by Drevo from the start:

That is to say, the pattern manifested here is one in which a group of ethnomusicology-trained or -influenced individuals, either directly stemming from Academia or at least bearing some manner of specialized academic training, make their pilgrimmage to a particular Ukrainian village celebrated for its traditional music culture—and the rural village in which both of these first two embedded videos occurs is indeed the same Kryachkivka first visited by Volodymyr Matviyenko in 1958—but do so not only to study, record, and thereafter analyze the “vernacular” music-making they found there, but also so as to purposefully situate themselves on the ground level of this rural community and its music-making residents, and proceed to join in with that music making.

Thus, whatever exact year it was that Drevo actually came together, the critical point is that it did so expressly to perform the music that one imagines so engrossed this initial cadre of urban-based scholars/enthusiasts, forming with this end in mind a sort of compound or amalgamated confederation with those rural “elders of the community” who were in possession of the requisite knowledge of how to perform this music properly.

It is this specific structural basis and dynamic, then—this “amalgated confederation” between the academically-trained, ethnomusicology-grounded cadre and the “experienced elders”, the rustic Magi of the precious tradition—that really defines I think the essential character of Drevo, and in this way, legitimately positions it as the absolute fountainhead of everything that came after it in the realm of Ukrainian traditional music-making [h].

One can actually see this dynamic directly at work, I believe, in the second Drevo/Maisternia Pisni video:



[Drevo/Maisternia Pisni] Древо/
Майстерня Пісня “Корабель”

What we see unfolding in this second video, then, is pretty much the actual workshop—or at least a few splendid moments of it—that is indicated in the “Maisternia Pisni” moniker.

This small group of people—most of whom were also present in the first video—is apparently attempting to work through various points having to do with the melodic line, perhaps, and/or verbiage, in regards to a traditional song named “Korabel”. Due to my extremely limited language skills, it is not quite clear to me what exactly the matter is that the group is deliberating over, yet it is only near the very end of the video that the two elderly woman finally start to take up singing with the full group.

By way of introduction, anyhow, the two elderly woman present are Nadiya Rozdabary—this is the woman on the right, who in fact led the proceedings in the first video (the elderly man who stood across from her in that first video was her husband Fedir). The woman sitting next to her in this second video, who was not present in the first video, is I believe Halyna Popko, who as it turns out celebrated her 80th birthday in 2010, and then unfortunately passed away the following year. Both of these two revered caretakers of the ancient traditions were, as I understand it, among those Kryachkivka residents who were recruited into the Drevo project from its earliest days.

The younger people representing Maisternia Pisni here include the three women (all three are present in the first video as well) who at this point in time were the core performers of the group—Ulyana Horbachevska, Olena Kostyuk and Natalka Polovynka—as well as the sole male in the second video, Sergiy Kovalevych, who founded Maisternia Pisni along with Ms. Polovynka, and who also served as what an online bio depicts as its “methodologist and director”.

Natalka Polovynka, who is listed by the official Maisternia Pisni site as the organization's “musical director”, is the rather tall woman on the right hand side of the screen whose beautifully wavering voice leads the singing in this video. Ms. Horbachevska is the dark-haired woman sitting directly to the right of Nadiya Rozdabary, and Ms. Kostyuk is the blonde woman sitting next to her (I haven't been able to identify the woman in between Kostyuk and Polovynka).

At any rate, what I believe can be asserted with reference to the two “factions” comprising the singing workshop we find in media res here—the two elderly women, caretakers of the tradition, and this particular cadre of scholar/performers—is that in some sense we are seeing at least some portion of the actual process in which these two “factions” are transformed into a single coherent, functioning entity, collectively engaged in the vital work of carrying forward the precious tradition.

What we are seeing, that is to say, is the explicit formation of precisely the specific structural pattern—the “amalgated confederation”—I just delineated. And in this way, it might be said that what is taking place is thus a re-creation or recapitulation of the very dynamic that has undergirded and informed Drevo from its inception.

Although what this must involve, as I just indicated, is a procedure by which the urban scholar/performers act to situate themselves horizontally, on the same “vernacular” level as the village elders, it does seem all the same true that this academically-trained cadre must inevitably be introducing something disparate into the proceedings—what would have to be seen as a “higher level” aspect. And this academically-derived “higher level” aspect—what might thus be called a vertical element—would indeed have to be understood as representing a departure in some degree from the essential horizontality that typically defines the “Vernacular” domain of music-making.

On the other hand, while some such “higher-level” aspect must I think be assumed in play here to a certain extent—and in this sense, to reference the tripartite structure I delineated in my Introductory Essay, it might be thought that some aspect of the “Art” domain, however small, is thereby imparted into the proceedings—it seems to me notwithstanding that in order for anything to be achieved in this manner of “amalgamated” gathering, in order for the overriding objective of the gathering to be in any way pushed forward—that overriding objective being the reconstitution of the precious tradition—then it is necessary that these two “factions” find a way to work on the same level, and thus at least provisionally merge into one.

Thus, while the urban-based, academically-trained individuals present here, in so far as they are academically-trained, are not exactly “ordinary people” in the same manner in which the village elders are, merely so as to engage effectively in the mode of endeavor they have embarked upon, it is necessary for this scholarly cadre to as it were assimilate to the functional role of “ordinary people”.

In this way, these academically-trained individuals, having accepted a “horizontal orientation” as the prevailing operational mode, could be thought thereby to be predominantly conducting themselves within the “Vernacular” domain. And in doing so, rather than merely observing and analyzing the rural music makers in an analytically detached and disconnected manner—as an academic approach would normally entail—these urban scholar/performers instead fuse together with the rural music makers to compose a new whole that is greater than the sum of its parts.

All of this, however, just goes to point up what is really the underlying determining factor here, that the state of affairs which must be seen as necessitating in the first place the coming together of these two “factions”—and what I am considering here is again, not merely what we see Maisternia Pisni immediately engaged in, but what I am assuming can be taken in their efforts as an exemplification of the whole structural pattern that characterizes the work of Drevo overall—is one in which this “precious tradition” is threatened with deterioration and disrepair, if not out and out obsolescence.

While I don't wish to rehearse within this framework all the reasons for this state of affairs—such matters are obvious enough in broad terms for anyone even passingly familiar with the history of the developed world in general in the 20th century—it seems sufficient to assert that certain gaps have materialized in the course of the last hundred years or so, such that any sort of straightforward, artless transmission of the age-old cultural traditions had not only grown precarious, but were faced with serious hindrance and disruption, advancing in this way perhaps even towards complete breakdown [q].

Therefore, in order to keep these cultural traditions alive and active in one form or another, to preserve in some capacity at least these traditional music practices that gave integral expression to an ancient way of life, intervention on the part of a cadre of dedicated, passionately engaged emissaries from the ethnomusicological field thus became positively imperative.

In other words, in order to fill in those gaps that had opened up in the once straightforward transmission of the age-old cultural forms, what was in fact needed was for representatives from Academia, or academic-influenced modes of endeavor, to dispatch themselves to those backwater places in which traditional music practices still thrived to some extent, and working in tandem with the rustic practitioners of the precious tradition, undertake to shepherd such practices into the new era.

One might well presume, indeed, that it was only in this way, with the combined efforts of both “factions”—the academically-trained scholar/performers and the “experienced elders”—uniting together in a single common effort, that this tradition could in fact have been reconstituted with any degree of relative authenticity, and thus be effectively perpetuated thereby.

Of course, what is now perpetuated is in a sense something different, something new, something that has had to have been recalibrated—regenerated really—for a new era, so as to enable these ancient practices to find new reasons for being, and new articulations, within the context of this new era. By way of the working relationship that was forged with the elders of the rural community, then, a tenacious bridge was constructed which allowed for the tradition to be carried across into the realm of the present-day.

This is the structural dynamic that it seems to me Drevo introduced and in effect institutionalized for the Ukrainian traditional culture sphere as a whole, and it is this dynamic, furthermore, that I think we see in both of these first two embedded videos that the Maisternia Pisni group, in aligning itself with Drevo, essentially adopt as their own approach.

It is interesting, moreover, to consider that although the original Drevo group was comprised of the small cadre, or “faction”, of ethnomusicological-trained students and academics who gathered around Volodymyr Matviyenko, at the point in which these two embedded videos were made in 2006, a half century or so subsequent to the original formation of the group, “Drevo” now is primarily represented here by the small group of music making elders from Kryachkivka.

That is, it can be said that in so far as this original Drevo group from the city did indeed merge with the rural practitioners to form a single amalgamated entity, it now happens to be the case that it is the latter who are left to be “Drevo”, as it were, and this new group of academically-trained enthusiasts—the Maisternia Pisni people—who have taken it on themselves to make the pilgrammage to Kryachkivka to engage with the music making tradition there, are in fact now assuming the functional role of the “original Drevo” group—which is to say, the original cadre of academically-trained enthusiasts.

It might be said, then, that Drevo, in continuously issuing forth out of the same steadfast “structural pattern” that has always underlaid this hallowed cultural institution, by such means proves capable of reproducing itself.

Indeed, although it was not at all the case that the Maisternia Pisni group would completely merge themselves into Drevo, in the manner that the original “faction” surrounding Volodymyr Matviyenko did—although Natalka Polovynka in particular would seem to have maintained a close relationship with Drevo, an honorary member in all but name—other figures have arisen to assume the same role who have pretty much become a functioning part of the group.

I am thinking here especially of Juriy Fedynskyi, a Ukrainian-American who has settled down in post-Independence Ukraine and become one of the leading proponents of the art and craft of such traditional instruments as I mentioned near the start of this section—the Kobza, Bandura, Torban and Lira. He has furthermore just recently joined up as a full-flegded member of Drevo.


TO BE CONTINUED...

::::::::::::::::

In my estimation, there are roughly five distinct approaches that have coalesced in the last century or so by which to not only substantially engage with, but to attempt to perpetuate traditional music within the context of the present day. These various approaches can thus be presented in terms of distinct categories that together comprise a sort of typology by which to best understand this process [gf].

Three of these approaches concern “The Tradition”, in that all three essentially present themselves as at the very least a proper version, if not the proper version of traditional music.

The first of these three “traditionalist-focused” approaches is precisely what I have been considering thus far—what I refer to as the “Preservationist” approach. This is clearly the approach, in other words, that undergirds Ukraine's “Avtentyka Revival Movement”, that in point of fact confers upon this movement its foundational license and essential sense of purpose.

At first glance, the “Preservationist” approach I think seems to us today as the most obvious, common-sense and straightforward approach—the one that I think strikes us as what is “only natural”.

The “Preservationist” approach could be defined as an attempt at directly transferring or carrying over into the present day as much as is possible the true, “authentic” (“avtentyka” in Ukrainian) mode of performance practice that obtains for this traditional music in its “raw” or “native state”. There are of course all manner of issues that surround such notions as “truly authentic”; nonetheless, what to my ears amounts to the enormous expressive vitality that has stemmed from this “Avtentyka Revival Movement” in the last few decades in Ukraine itself lends validity to this approach, I believe.

The second approach—the “Restorationist” approach—is in fact closely related to the “Preservationist” approach: These two approaches pretty much share the same basic objectives—carrying over into the present day as much as is possible the true, “authentic” mode of performance practice in regards to a particular sector of traditional music. The only real distinction between the “Preservationist” mode and the “Restorationist” mode, is that the latter is concerned with a mode of music that is not merely dying out, but that has in effect already died off, or in any event decidedly belongs to a different, very much by-gone era.

The “Restorationist” approach thus pertains primarily to Medieval and Renaissance music, or rather, the attempt to in effect reconstruct this music in the present day, based on whatever knowledge exists of its character and performance practice. The “Restorationist” approach thus quite frequently involves a good deal of academic research, which then serves as the primary legitimizing structure upon which this approach is built.

As it happens, the earliest mode devised so as to try to perpetuate traditional music within the context of the present day [z], I believe, is what I refer to as the “Renovationist” approach: This approach also involves a dedicated attempt at engaging with, and transmitting traditional music into the contemporary scene [xs], yet it does so in accordance to a presumption that such music in its “raw” form requires some degree of “dressing up”—that is to say, some manner of reconfiguration or reconstruction, of renovation in short, is needed in order to render this music acceptable to contemporary ears.

Although I would readily admit that my grasp on such matters, while relatively informed, is still somewhat inchoate—I have a decent general familiarity with the cultural history of the region in question, yet there is much on the level of finer detail that I am still in the process of exploring—it does seems to me that the origins of this approach can most likely be pegged to the sort of Late Romantic [e], late 19th century sensibility that served as the prevailing mindset for a figure like Mykola Lysenko in his engagement with traditional culture.

This was a mindset that, while possessed of great enthusiasm and admiration for traditional or “folk” culture as a true expression of the “spirit of the people” [o], nonetheless saw the necessity of rendering such culture “presentable”, such that it could find a place within the boundaries of official “high” culture [k]. Despite a Romanticist orientation that was very strongly predisposed towards the celebration of folk culture, that is to say, to simply put forward such music as is, “in the raw” [j], would very probably not have even occurred to a Late Romantic like Lysenko as being at all a possibility.

Such an approach in fact only emerged gradually, I think, in the years leading up to the mid-20th century—most likely as the result of the rise of music recording technology, or more specifically, of the field recordings made by ethnomusicologists such as the Hungarians Zoltán Kodály and Bela Bartók in and around Hungary, as well as, somewhat later, the Lomaxes in the U.S. And what this nascent approach expressly entailed, it seems to me, was what amounted to a wholesale paradigm shift in how traditional culture was viewed [t].

In any case, it seems clear enough that this “Renovationist” approach was then adopted by the Bolsheviks [za] in regards to the manner in which they decided to deal with traditional or “folk” culture, albeit they did so in accordance to much different purposes and objectives.

Thus, consonant with their ostensibly “scientific” principles that demanded a “progressive reformist” [f] mold be imposed upon human society (most of all, rural society), so as to overcome its inveterate “backwardness” [g], yet at the same time, confronted with a situation in which it was deemed imperative that their regime attain acceptance amongst the vast diversity of peoples under its rule, it might be said that the Bolsheviks undertook to champion folk culture through their own version of a “Renovationist” approach, more or less as a (more than a little bit cynical) “compromise solution” [x].

In other words, the Soviet state engaged with traditional culture pretty much as a gambit to win over the various diverse segments of its populace [c], yet still did so in line with “progressivist” measures that sought to “improve” traditional cultures [r]. And the upshot of all this, the concrete output of this “compromise solution”, was the elevation of the so-called “Folk Ensemble” or “Folk Orchestra” as the state-sanctioned “proper” form of traditional music culture [w].

The Soviet-era “Folk Orchestra” or “Folk Ensemble” thus stood as another, as it were alternative “Renovationist” version of traditional culture, no more reflective of actual native performance practices than the Late Romanticist version was, but as with Late Romanticist endeavors along these lines, one that managed to incorporate at least some attributes of traditional music culture.

Moreover, it is important to note that the “Folk Orchestra” or “Folk Ensembles” did in fact exist prior to the Soviet state, some of them dating back to the end of the 19th century [b]—no doubt operating during this early period in terms of the Late Romantic version of a “Renovationist” approach [v]. And, as it is the case that the institution of the “Folk Orchestras” or “Folk Ensembles” were not wholly the creation of the Soviet state, then, it should also be recognized that definite elements of this earlier “Late Romantic approach” managed to persist even into the Soviet era.

And following from this, furthermore, I would argue that one should not indiscriminately write off the entirety of the expressive culture exhibited by such “Folk Orchestras” or “Folk Ensembles” as representing nothing more than the cynical manipulation of traditional culture [s]. Although certain aspects of these institutional formations did undoubtedly fall into line with this sort of thing, I don't believe it would be fair to say that this was so in every respect. And while it is of course true that the “Folk Orchestras” did not really put forth an “authentic” presentation of traditional music, this doesn't mean that what they did put forth was for that reason absolutely valueless.

Indeed, as the folk culture-influenced music that Mykola Lysenko and other Late Romantics composed gives testament to, a “Renovationist” approach generally speaking can result in worthwhile musical expression—a fact that should be acceded to in general, I would assert, as long the “Renovationist” approach is construed in the right manner.

Hence: If a “Renovationist” approach interprets its own operations such that it insists its chosen mode of expression should entirely replace native performance practices—of the manner that “Preservationists” are concerned with preserving—such a construal would obviously have to be regarded as an unequivocal hazard and threat to cultural practice overall.

Yet, if a “Renovationist” approach explicitly recognizes that it is merely one valid approach among others, and that whatever “renovations” it happens to administer to native performance practices should not be regarded as an improvement over such native practices—which when they at their best at least, can be considered as perfect enough in their own right—but rather as a means by which to supplement such practices, a fairly advantageous state of affairs can in fact be seen to be established here: For one thereby finds oneself in a position to take sustenance from both the “raw”, earthy “avtentyka” version of traditional music, as well as a supplemental version of “the Tradition”, which even if not fully “authentic”, nonetheless represents—when it is at its best—something new thrown into the mix, something perhaps more complex and sophisticated, and at times more lovely even, then is typically engendered in an “avtentyka” approach.

Indeed, it's worth noting that a piece of music such as Pikkardiyska Tertsiia's unearthily sublime “Kacha” would have to most definitely be seen as the product of a “Renovationist” approach—this manner of complex interaction between voices is after all the end consequence of sustained study and planning, and of a manner of abstracted concentration, not at all characteristic of the ingrained immediacies of an “oral based” traditional culture [m].

Furthermore, the exquisite version of “Ой, ходить сон коло вікон” (Oh, Khodit Son Kolo Vikon), sung by the Polissya folk choir “Lionok”, that I linked to near the beginning of this essay in my attempt to demonstrate the preeminence of the sadly beautiful music of Ukraine, is another unmistakable example of a “Renovationist” approach.

There are drawbacks to a “Renovationist” approach, to be sure—a certain loss in immediacy, as well as a definite distancing from the raw, earthy qualities that can make the best “avtentyka” music so vitalizing and bracing. Yet the “Renovationist” approach is capable of great beauty too, as the two pieces just mentioned unquestionably affirm.

At any rate, these two approaches together—the Preservationist and the Renovationist—both present themselves as at the very least a proper version, if not the proper version of traditional music.

:::::::::::::::::::

This section, “The Tradition”, will continue on next with a consideration of the other “main line”—in addition to the small-scale Choral ensembles—of “avtentyka” Ukrainian traditional music in the Preservationist mode: what can be summarily referred to as “the Kobzar tradition”, the essentially aristocratic, rarified art of the self-accompanied minstrel whose ever-shifting, yet still thriving role as a Ukrainian musical-cultural institution can be traced in a direct line back to Medieval times. This will then segue into a consideration of efforts in a “Restorationist” mode regarding Ukrainian music from a by-gone era on the part of such figures as Taras Kompanichenko and Kostyantyn Chechenya.

From there, I will then discuss the contradistinctive relationship between institutional realm of what I term the “The Grand Song and Dance Choirs”—i.e., the so-called “State Folk Choirs” such as Veryovka—and the “Avtentyka Revival Movement”. The involvement that one of Ukraine's indisputably greatest musical figures—Nina Matviyenko—had with both “realms”, in that she began her career as a soloist with Veryovka, and then later “went back to school”, as it were, with Drevo, will serve as a basis for both discussing Matviyenko's important role in a sense mediating between these two “institutional realms” (my interpretation is that in this way she carved out her own unique creative space essentially independent of, even if at the same time deeply informed by both), as well as a means to segue back to a fuller discussion of the “Avtentyka Revival Movement” itself.

Having already introduced this movement by way of its historical beginnings with the emergence of Drevo, then, I will thus delve into the broader movement itself as it now stands in Ukraine, dealing as best I can with the wildly diverse array of such ensembles that have sprouted up like mid-Summer mushrooms in recent years. I will in fact make mention of a great many of these groups, as there are in fact so many, and so many of them to my mind very excellent indeed. Bozhychi, Hurtopravtsi, Kralitsya and HulyayHorod are the four ensembles I will especially focus on, however. Moreover, a discussion of Bozhychi will lead also into a consideration of the solo work of one of this group's leaders, Susanna Karpenko, the uniform excellence of which I think in some ways positions her as a sort of potential successor-in-the-making to Nina Matviyenko.

I will then discuss the work of what I would likewise consider one of the most superlative performing ensembles currently in Ukraine, Burdon, but do so by arguing that although they share many of the same elements as a preservationist-oriented “avtentyka ensemble”, what they are doing is actually something much more similar to what a popular music group such as TaRuta has done (when they have been at their best at least), in effectively employing “avtentyka” elements in a contemporary music context—except that Burdon interestingly does this with all-acoustic “avtentyka” instrumentation.

Finally, I will end up by circling back to a consideration of one of the two groups I started out with—Maisternia Pisni. Just as with Burdon, it is an interesting question to consider whether or not Maisternai Pisni can in any way be considered an “avtentyka ensemble”.

It seems to me quite clearly that they are not—although like Burdon they do have a deep engagement with the “Avtentyka Revival Movement”, as their work in conjunction with Drevo so obviously manifested.

What Maisternai Pisni is, or at least was doing (it's not entirely clear to me whether or not this group is even operational any longer; Ulyana Horbachevska is for one no longer a member I believe) is something wholly different, however, as its self-description as an “art laboratory” operating “at the intersection of theater and traditional music” would certainly seem to indicate.

Indeed, a number of their performances captured on video that I will focus on here well illustrate just this “intersection”: A very fascinating piece called “On Sunday Morning”, featuring the three core members at the time—Horbachevska, Olena Kostyuk and Natalka Polovynka—in what seems to me to be an attempt to pare down (in a manner rather reminiscent of what philosophers refer to as a “phenomenological reduction”) the traditional ritual activity of movement and song to its absolute “de-mythologized” original core state, as it were.

And even more interesting piece in some ways is a charming extended outdoor theatre performance called “The Message of Summer”, held I believe back in 2012 in a square somewhere in Portugal—there is a companion piece to this performance too called “Rasa Lisbon”—that comprises an extraordinary mixture of traditional music performance, street theatre, and a sort of arcane Symbolist drama.

In short, what Maisternai Pisni is, or was doing on their own part, despite their close and important engagement with the “Avtentyka Revival Movement” vis-a-vis their Drevo, is manifestly experimental avant-garde performance art—and a consideration of this work thus makes also for the perfect segue into my next section, “The Avant Populists”.

(Incidentally, I find the very extensive work that Natalka Polovynka has done independently from Maisternai Pisni to be outstanding also—everything from an incandescent performance of Ukrainian Greek Catholic religious music in L'viv a few years back, to quite edgy High Art music done with the one Ukrainian Classical composer I happen to be most impressed by, Victoria Poleva—so I feel compelled to discuss this to some degree here also. Ulyana Horbachevska has likewise done very interesting work since leaving Maisternai Pisni, so I will spend some time discussing this as well.

The only real drawback for me in researching the world of Ukrainian music making, by the way, is that the depth and breadth of talent here is so great, one sometimes despairs of ever finding an end to it, or even really a temporary resting point: One astonishing artist leads to another until one finds that whole days have gone by absorbed in following a thread that one had just stumbled upon while researching something else entirely.)

Anyhow, this is the unholy maze of work I have thus set upon myself to complete in the months to come. I am actually hoping that with this endeavor on my part, it might somehow turn out with a bit of luck to be mysteriously implicated in a manner of inscrutable Slavic Folk Tale, such that the very act of my accomplishing this task at some point later this year will magically bring about the ejection by impeachment of the disorderly band of drunken rhesus monkeys now loudly occupying the High Executive Tower in the Great Western Land Between the Two Oceans.


—Pavlo




FOOTNOTES

Although I loathe doing footnotes, and have therefore put off this henious task until last, I will be gradually adding these pesky, impertinent addendum one by one with the best semblance of alacrity I can muster. Since it is easier on me not to follow any particular order in proceeding forward with this onerous imposition, I am going for the moment to be using alphabetical characters, rather than sequential numbers. The latter will be substituted for the former at which point I have completed the oppressive labor at hand.

[ojn] “The voice is the most natural, artistic, and spontaneous way of makng music by means of the human body. Consequently, singing is the commonest and the most universal characteristic of all the music languages of the world's people. There is no society in the world that does not have vocal music.” Roots of Black Music: The Vocal, Instrumental, and Dance Heritage of Africa and Black America/Ashenafi Kebede, p. 3.

[l] I have no idea, I should say, whether any of the individuals who comprise Maisternia Pisni actually received training specifically in the field of ethnomusicology or not; quite possibly none of them did. The point I am trying to make, though, is that the whole approach of the group—an “art laboratory” operating “at the intersection of theater and traditional music”—is a direct by-product of, and not really conceivable apart from the standards and characteristic practices established by the ethnomusicological field.

[s] It might of course be countered that such a dynamic could quite easily become oppressive: In so far as what is deemed acceptable is only that which is “in tune with the whole”, if “the whole” itself is rigid and exclusivist in its makeup, this demand for “attunement with the whole” could indeed not be otherwise than oppressive.

Considering that what I am doing here is attempting to formulate an ideal, however, suffice it to say that it should be explicitly asserted as an intrinsic aspect of this ideal the stipulation that “the whole” would need to be expansive enough to allow for an optitimum diversity.

And if it is the case that Maidan, as a mode of social organization, is being put forth here as representing a true instantiation of that ideal, then it is worth pointing out that this “allowance for an optimum diversity” was for certain in effect in Maidan's formation—and was moreover necessarily so.

That is to say, it seems clear that Maidan as a protest movement would not have succeeded at all, would not have in fact even gotten off the ground if it was not able to accept a considerable amount of diversity in its makeup.

See Oksana Forostyna, “Poaching, Simmering, and Boiling: The Declining Relevance of Identity Discourse in Ukraine” from What Does Ukraine Think?

[p] I am borrowing this and related terms—“avtentyka movement”, “avtentyka ensemble”—from the liner notes to a 2011 production, performed in New York by Ensemble Hilka, called Chornobyl Songs Project: Living Culture from a Lost World. I am assuming the person primarily responsible for the liner notes is Maria Sonevytsky, a Ukrainian-American scholar/musician, who apparently was the primary creative initiator of the production itself. Much of the approach at work in these liner notes is expanded upon in Ms. Sonevytsky's dissertation “Wild Music: Ideologies of Exoticism in Two Ukrainian Borderlands”, which I also use to some extent as a source in this text—although to be sure, I have only read portions of this 323-page tome as of yet.

[g] I am aware that this “event” was not exclusive to Ukraine—that there was in other words a larger “avtentyka movement” inclusive of other regions of the Soviet Union during the same period as well, although it is only the Ukrainian “avtentyka movement” that I have thus far engaged with in any way.

This larger “avtentyka movement” is discussed in the same Chornobyl Songs Project liner notes referenced above in footnote#[p], in terms of a consideration of the movement's relationship to Soviet Era cultural politics in general: “Across the USSR, the avtentyka movement, like many cross-cultural music revivals grew out of an impulse to restore and salvage vestiges of culture believed to be archaic, pre-Soviet, and therefore more authentic.”

It does seem to be quite possibly the case, in any event, that it was in Ukraine that this this larger “avtentyka movement” in the Soviet world did indeed get its start: See footnote #[y] below.

[y] It is perhaps of some significance in regards to all of this that the Chornobyl Songs Project liner notes referenced above in footnotes # [p] and [g] also state that the founding of Drevo “was inspired by the Dmitri Pokrovsky Ensemble founded several years earlier in Moscow”.

Wikipedia, for what it's worth, specifies 1973 as the year that the Pokrovsky Ensemble was founded, while in line with virtually all of the other online materials I was able to consult, with the one exception of the official Drevo website itself, the Chornobyl Songs Project liner notes specify 1979 as Drevo's inagural year.

As I detail in the text of this essay, the official Drevo website targets 1958, rather than 1979, as Drevo's founding year, marking the moment that Volodymyr Matviyenko first established the relationship with the village of Kryachkivka that has been central to pretty much everything that Drevo has done ever since. I am just taking a guess here, but it may be that these two bits of information are not unrelated.

Thus, Drevo may have existed throughout this early period in rather informal terms, with not much of a public profile, quite likely due to a lack of official encouragement, or perhaps even active discouragement, from the Soviet state.

The founding of the Pokrovsky Ensemble in Moscow in 1973 may have then signaled the moment in which the Soviet authorities' approach to such matters began to change, and the “formal founding” (as the Chornobyl Songs Project notes put it) of Drevo in 1979 by Yevhen Yefremov may have then represented the attempt of this cadre of Kyivan “avtentyka” music enthusiasts, who came together originally under the leadership of Volodymyr Matviyenko, to try to take advantage of this change as best they could.

And if this is the case, then the emphasis that one finds on the Drevo website that the ensemble's roots do in fact extend back to 1958 might well be a way of highlighting the fact that the Kyivans who made up the informal Drevo group for about two decades prior to its “formal founding” were not only “in the game” of “avtentyka” cultural preservation, as it were, but were the true pioneers of this approach in the Soviet world (even if only on an informal level) long before the Pokrovsky group in Moscow came together in a more formal capacity in 1973.

This is all just guesswork on my part, however—a fact that itself definitely bolsters my general argument that someone needs to write a detailed history of not only Drevo, but of the whole “avtentyka movement” in Ukraine, such that would clarify all these matters once and for all.

It may well be the case that some such history exists already in the Ukrainian (or Russian) language; if this is so, then at least a summary version of this in the English language should be requisite. The fact that no such English language narrative along these lines does exist indicates rather conclusively to me that the state of Ukrainian cultural studies is not all that it should be at this particular juncture.

[h] I realize, by the way, that the cadre of ethnomusicology-minded enthusiasts who made up the original core of Drevo were not by any means the first such enthusiasts to make pilgrimages to the Ukrainian countryside so as to study the traditional forms of music-making found there—such practice goes back at least to the 1860's or 1870's with the activity of figures like Mykola Lysenko.

In the first half of the 20th century, this type of activity was then expanded further by Filaret Kolessa, Klyment Kvitka and others.

It seems to me that what distinguishes the modality that Drevo pioneered in Ukraine in the second half of the 20th century from pretty much the entirety of this earlier activity, was indeed what I identify as the “amalgamated confederation” that the Drevo cadre formed with the rural “elders of the community”, precisely in order to perform this traditional music in the “raw” manner that characterizes its native state.

What this represented then was the emergence in Ukraine of what I call the “Preservationist” approach of engaging with and perpetuating traditional music making. And what in my view was associated with all of the earlier attempts to engage with Ukrainian traditional music making, from Lysenko on, was a much different manner of approach that can be termed “Renovationist”.

A “Renovationist” approach thus derives from a presumption that any presentation of this sort of music making to the wider world, outside of the rural environment from whence it stems, necessitates some degree of “dressing up”—which is to say, some manner of reconfiguration or reconstruction, of renovation in short, so as to render this music acceptable to more sophisticated ears.

It is of course not the case that Drevo was the first group of people anywhere whatsoever to engage in this manner of “Preservationist” approach, whereby the aboriginal “raw” manner of expression is privileged over and above any possible attempts to renovate or improve upon it—as I explain below in the text, it likely has its origins many decades previous in the work of such ethnomusicologist-field workers as Zoltán Kodály and Bela Bartók in and around Hungary, as well as the Lomaxes in the U.S. Yet, it does definitely seem evident to me that it was Drevo who pioneered this approach in Ukraine (and quite possibly in the Soviet world overall—see footnote# [y] above), a fact which does thereby render the group the “absolute fountainhead of everything that came after it in the realm of Ukrainian traditional music-making”.

[q] A quote from Illya Fetisov—the founder and along with his wife Susanna Karpenko, one of the leaders of the “avtentyka ensemble” Bozhychi, a group which not only performs traditional Ukrainian music, but in fact also conducts ethnomusicological expeditions to collect such music—speaks directly to what I am discussing here:

“Unfortunately...we have found that folk music traditions are dying out right before our eyes. Continuity has been broken. Those who have maintained the traditions will soon be gone, and there’s no one left to keep them going. In so many villages we’ve been to there was nothing that we could record and save.”

Fetisov is of course referring to his experiences in the present day, yet the sociocultural processes he references were instigated historically as a by-product of Industrialism—operative in certain areas of Ukraine since the latter 19th century, and of course further implemented in Ukraine in a particularly brutal manner by the Soviets in the 20th century. Suffice it to say, in any event, that such processes were already in full effect at the point in which Drevo began forming their relationship with the residents of Kryachkivka in the post-War era.

[gf] Just to clarify here: In the manner in which I present this “typology” of the “five approaches” on the table of contents one finds on the home page of this site, these five categories are actually presented in summary fashion as three core categories, the first category—“the Tradition”—having then “nested” within it three sub-categories: “the Preservationist”, “the Restorationist”, and “the Renovationist”.

[z] And by this, I mean apart from the the traditional processes of transmission that pertain to a traditional oral-based culture—processes which as detailed in above in the text, had itself reached a stage in the last century or so, such that outside intervention has become pretty much necessary for its perpetuation.

[xs] Although it should be said that, as I detail right below in the text, the Bolsheviks came up with their own version of a “Renovationist” approach that in contradistinction to the original version, had little concern in my reading for the fate of such traditional culture in itself, and was really only interested in such matters in so far as they might be exploited for political purposes. In line with the original version of a “Renovationist” approach, though, the Bolshevik version did see the need for “dressing up” traditional culture, but did so here too, I believe, primarily in terms of its political objectives.

[e] “The implication was that folk music might be extremely valuable, but its value would be unseen unless a composer could 'polish the gem' and reveal the true beauty hidden under the rough exterior of the folk song. This view reflected the Romantic myth of the artist as a craftsman who, through his inspiration, provides a channel for higher wisdom (in this case, the wisdom of the people, who themselves provide a channel for national culture)”; Laura Olson, Soviet Aproaches to Folk Music Performance: Revival or Appropriation?, pp. ???; https://www.ucis.pitt.edu/nceeer/2000_814-09g_Olson-a.pdf.

[o] “One such composer was Ukraine's Mykola Lysenko. Like Dvorák and Grieg, he was born in the early 1840s; like his other European contemporaries, he embraced Johann Gottfried von Herder's ideas about nationality and the Volksgeist; and, like them, he purposefully set out to manifest the spirit of his people in his own music.” https://web.archive.org/web/20110208072533/http://mykolalysenko.com/lysenko/life.cfm.

[k] I am basing this presumption in part also on what I hear in Lysenko's music. This “Ukrainian Folk Song”, for example—apparently one of Lysenko's compositions—sung here in a performance in Sacramento, California by Oksana Sitnitska, is clearly little concerned with the “native” performance practices one finds in traditional music. Although the piece is presumably based on traditional Ukrainian music, the vocal is “dressed up” in an operatic mode of expression that is by no means characteristic of Ukraininan traditional music “in the raw”.

Again, despite the keen interest and enthusiasm that Romanticist sensibility had for “folk culture”, one does not find anywhere in 19th century musical culture, I don't believe, an inclination to simply present folk or traditional cultural expression as is, “in the raw”.

[j] The philosophical question whether or not one can ever really present anything “as is”, “in the raw”, is an interesting one, although I am not particularly concerned in this capacity to engage much with it. Suffice it to say that, while I would agree that something is altered merely by way of the act of presenting it, I believe some manner of substantive connection can all the same still be maintained in such circumstances with the “native state” that one first encountered. There are also questions of course about the notion of a “native state”, but I will have to set those aside also for subsequent consideration.

[t] The emerging sensibility as it took root in the U.S. can perhaps be seen in the following excerpt from John Lomax's (father of Alan) Wikipedia bio:

“Around [the year 1909], Lomax and Professor Leonidas Payne of the University of Texas at Austin co-founded the Texas Folklore Society, following Kittredge's suggestion that Lomax establish a Texas branch of the American Folklore Society.

“[from footnote #53] “The 1910 promotional pamphlet for the society, prepared mostly by Leonidas Payne (and largely based on Henry M. Belden 1906's pamphlet for the Missouri Folklore Society), explained the society's purpose and suggested the following guidelines to workers: For the collector of Folk-Lore, the most important virtue is accuracy; and the value of any contribution is destroyed if it is not given just as it was told or sung or described, with no changes whatever, even when such change seems necessary to make sense.”

It probably should be added here that another figure who likely influenced this whole approach, especially vis-a-vis its emergence in the U.S., was the British scholar Cecil Sharp, recognized as “the founding father of the folk-song revival in England in the early 20th century”. However, Sharp in many ways has to be seen as a transistional figure, I think, in that he at the same time retained at least some portion of a “Renovationist” approach in his work, particularly with relation to the piano accompaniments he imposed on some British folk songs.

Sharp began his own career as a pioneering song collector in Britain in 1903, although it's important to note, in relation to the role of recording technology in all this, that Sharp only “occasionally...used a phonograph”. Zoltán Kodály apparently began collecting songs in Hungary using phonographic recording in 1905, and recruited his friend Bela Bartók in this work sometime about 1908. Another person who I believe is now likewise recognized as among the first to take up this line of work in the U.S. was Olive D. Campbell, who began her work around 1909. The Lomaxes did not begin their very influential work in phonographic field recording until 1933, although the ideational foundations of their practice went back, as just noted, to at least the first decade of the century.

As far as I can tell, this “Preservationist” mindset, and the whole “paradigm shift” it represented, did not begin to have much effect in Ukraine, and presumably the rest of the Soviet Union, until the later 1950s. It is worth pointing out, though, that when this approach finally did reach Ukraine in particular, the results—which is to say, the whole “Avtentyka Revival Movement” and everything that over the course of the last six or seven decades, and especially the last quarter century, has flowed from that—were quite glorious indeed.

[za] “...the Soviet approach to folklore followed the pattern set by the national school of music in the nineteenth century, which appropriated folk melodies in order to display national culture on stage and promulgated the view that Western classical music was the finest form in which to situate the Russian folk idiom. Additionally, the Soviet style of folklore presentation took much from the late nineteenth-century revivalist choruses and orchestras, which incorporated some of the principles of classical music into the practice of folk music and established the standards for presenting folk music to urban audiences”; Laura Olson, Soviet Aproaches to Folk Music Performance: Revival or Appropriation?, pp. ??; https://www.ucis.pitt.edu/nceeer/2000_814-09g_Olson-a.pdf.

[f] It's by no means my intention here to associate all practices of “progressivist reform” with the Bolshevik version, which, adapted from Marx and other thinkers, presumed a sort of legitimizing “scientific” basis for both its objectives and its means. This resulted in a mindset that at its best, could be depicted as rabidly mistaken in its presumptions, and at its worst as a “scientific-based” justification for brutal totalitarian rule. And it was of course this worst case scenario that became an everyday reality for all those caught living under the totalitarian Soviet regime.

[g] “Bolshevik campaigns against rural 'backwardness' sought to elevate traditional culture to the level of 'progressive' culture...”; Maria Sonevytsky, Wild Music: Ideologies of Exoticism in Two Ukrainian Borderlands, p. ???.

[x] What I mostly have in mind here—see footnote#[c], however, for complications regarding all this—is the so-called “korenization” or nativization policy adopted by Lenin early on in the Soviet era, during a period of great uncertainty regarding the future of Bolshevik rule.

“Faced with the massive non-Russian opposition to his regime, Lenin in late 1919 convinced his associates their government had to stop the cultural administrative and linguistic policies it was following in the non-Russian republics”; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korenizatsiya.

Specifically in Ukraine, for what it's worth, this approach was also associated with the term “Ukrainization”:

“The term [“Ukrainization”] is used, most prominently, for the Soviet indigenization policy of the 1920s (korenizatsiya, literally ‘putting down roots’), aimed at strengthening Soviet power in the territory of Soviet Ukraine and southern regions of the Russian SFSR”; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukrainization.

[c] In attempting to apply the dynamic specified here, expressed in very generalized terms, to a fairly extensive and diverse historical era—that of the entirety of the Soviet regime, a period characterized by very substantial shifts in emphasis and approach throughout its development, as a result of changes in leadership as well as many other factors—I am perhaps “telescoping” different historical junctures in a somewhat dubious manner.

What I am generally alluding to, in both this and the preceeding paragraph in the text, is the so-called “korenization” or nativization policy of the 1920s that I reference in footnote#[x], one of the goals of which was to “harmoniz[e] the relationship between the nations of the Soviet Union by carrying the national and ethnic policies that would appeal to the wide masses of the local people in the ethnically non-Russian areas”; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korenizatsiya.

However, although some engagement with traditional culture was supported by the Bolsheviks throughout the Leninist era in the 20s, it was nonetheless not really until the 1930s, during the era of Stalin, that the Soviet state really began to substantially “champion folk culture”, and it did this, moreover, pretty much in line with its simultaneous program of “Russification”:

“It was not until 1934 that...folklore [, specifically Russian,] began to interest the regime...

“...This was [in fact] a watershed time for Russian nationality: now, rather than being a neutral background to set off the other nationalities, Russian nationality...stepped forward as the dominant nationality—more 'equal' than all the rest.” Laura Olson, Soviet Aproaches to Folk Music Performance: Revival or Appropriation?, pp. 1-2; https://www.ucis.pitt.edu/nceeer/2000_814-09g_Olson-a.pdf.

Nonetheless, during the post-Stalin era, from the period of Khrushchev onward, all of these tendencies—“korenizatsia-like intiatives” that attempted to win over the various diverse segments of its populace by “champion[ing] folk culture”, inclusive now not merely of the “Great Russian” ethnos however, but of the wider diversity of ethnic groups in the Soviet Union—did in a sense come together in one historical juncture, as it were. It was indeed in this period, moreover, that the “Folk Orchestra”—in Ukraine and presumably throughout the Soviet Union—was I believe most promoted:

“After Stalin’s death, during the period of Khrushchevian thaw, korenizatsia-like intiatives flourished again, and the folk orchestra became a prominent site for the codification of 'national' music as well as an authoritative emblem of national culture”; Maria Sonevytsky, Wild Music: Ideologies of Exoticism in Two Ukrainian Borderlands, p. ???.

[r] “Such 'progressive' practices included the standardization of instruments, the professionalization of musicians, and the institutionalization of ensembles that eventually came to be known as 'Folk Orchestras' or 'Folk Ensembles' ”; Maria Sonevytsky, Wild Music: Ideologies of Exoticism in Two Ukrainian Borderlands, p. ???.

[w] Although Sonevytsky in her Wild Music dissertation states that the “Folk Ensemble” or “Folk Orchestra” were “characterized by inherent paradox” in that they tried to “[f]orc[e] together Western European art music practice with the ritual cultures of indigenous peoples under the banner of ideological utopia”, it is I think my interpretation that the promotion of these ensembles on the part of the Soviet regime was actually the result of an attempt at resolving conflicting demands, the manifestations of which nonetheless remained present in their makeup.

[b] The Wikipedia entry on “Ukrainian folk music” states that “[t]he first such [folkloric] ensemble in Ukraine was the Okhmatynsky Village Folk Choir organized by Dr Mykola Demutsky in 1889.”

In Olson's paper, Soviet Aproaches to Folk Music Performance: Revival or Appropriation?, I find the following text:

“The phenomenon of the folk orchestra itself was based upon Western models. It was invented in the 1880s by Vassilii Andreev, who standardized folk lutes (balalaikas) and constructed them so that they could play in all the registers commonly included in a Western classical orchestra—from 'piccolo' to 'bass'. Andreev arranged Russian folk songs and Russian and Western classical repertoire for the orchestra. The arrangements of folk songs were constructed so as to make up for the lack of singing and words, by varying the melody and by introducing contrasts in registers, volume, and other aspects” [pp. ???].

For what it's worth, I don't believe Sonevytsky in her Wild Music dissertation makes any mention, or for that matter gives any indication that she is aware of the existence of the “Folk Orchestras” prior to the establishment of the Soviet state (I believe I have read all of the portions of her dissertation dealing with this topic, but it is not impossible that I am mistaken in the above claim. I will double-check on this anon).

Olson on the other hand makes no mention of Ukraine whatsoever in her paper. Thus, whether or not it was Vassilii Andreev in Russia who first established the modern “Folk Orchestra”, and was then copied in this by Mykola Demutsky in Ukraine through the establishment of his Okhmatynsky Village Folk Choir, or if the course of influence might possibly have run the other way around (I am presuming it was one or the other, although there may be other options as well), is not known to me at this time. It is an interesting question in the area of Eastern European cultural history all the same, which I therefore hope to obtain an answer for at some point.

[v] In other words, I am assuming that such early “Folk Ensembles” represented an attempt on the part of individuals trained in the standard modalities of Western musical practice, to put forward a version of traditional music that, while motivated by an enthusiastic regard and admiration for such music, nevertheless saw a need to “dress up” or renovate it, so as to make it conform to standard Western music practice.

[s] Sonevytsky in her Wild Music dissertation gives an interesting account of an “indigenous Ukrainian critique” that utilizes as a “term of slander” the phrase sharovarshchyna (derived from the term “sharovary”, the “billowy silken pants” worn by Cossack warriors). The critique underlying the use of this phrase essentially amounts to a negative response to the sort of “cynical manipulation of traditional culture” on the part of the Soviet state that was manifested in probably its densest form, I would think, in the official institutional formations of the “Folk Orchestra” or “Folk Ensembles”.

This is especially so in the manner which these institutions tended to mindlessly over-emphasize such readily understood “ethnic signifiers” as sharovary, as adopted by “daredevil male danc[ers] in folk dance troupes”, as a cheap and crass manner in which to officially celebrate ethnic folk cultures (the all-too-facile metonymic associational procedure being of course sharovary = Cossacks = “Ukrainian-ness”).

“Through Soviet cultural policy practices that standardized 'ethno-national costumes', these pants became emblematic of a kind of 'Ukrainian-ness'; instead of representing the freedom fighters of the Ukrainian steppe, the crimson pants became symbolic of daredevil male dancing in folk dance troupes such as the renowned Virsky Ballet.”

The phrase sharovarshchyna is now primarily utilized, it should be noted, as a means by which to criticize certain aspects of contemporary culture that are in effect “slandered” by being associated with this sort of crass and mindless official Soviet era cultural practice.

“At the broadest level, the concept of sharovarshchyna is an indigenous Ukrainian critique of world music hybridities and postmodern banality through specific reference to the Soviet institutionalized culture regime that dominated Ukrainian popular and folk music for most of the 20th century.”

In any event, my point is that although such “Folk Orchestra” or “Folk Ensembles” were no doubt pervaded by sharovarshchyna to a significant extent, there were some aspects of the expressive culture of such institutions that were all the same of some value, especially in so far as they did manage to transmit, however imperfectly, some of the more worthwhile attributes that originally stemmed from traditional culture. The most obvious example of this would be the glorious heritage of Ukrainian song culture that such “Folk Orchestra” or “Folk Ensembles” were able to perpetuate—again, however imperfectly—even in the midst of the Soviet imposition.

Setting aside whatever sharovarshchyna qualities might have contaminated it, then, it would probably be fair to say that the manner in which the “Folk Orchestra” or “Folk Ensembles” interpreted traditional song culture was for the most part in line with the earlier, Late Romantic “Renovationist” approach that official Soviet culture inherited from the era that preceeded it.

The broader point I am aiming at is that, however favorable I tend to be in general towards the music-making that is attached to the “Preservationist” approach, I believe there is still some worth to be found in a “Renovationist” approach, such that might have been in operation even in the midst of the “cynical manipulation of traditional culture” that informed Soviet cultural policy.

The smartest overall approach, then, would be in my opinion to take sustanence from whatever is of value that one can find, even if it is found in the Soviet-era “Folk Orchestra” or “Folk Ensembles”. Otherwise, one puts oneself at risk of throwing out the baby, so to speak, along with the smelly sharovarshchyna bathwater.

[m] I don't mean to suggest there is no “planning” or “forethought” or “thinking-through” at work in an oral-based art form such as the Ukrainian choral tradition. Indeed, the thoughtfulness regarding the practice of their art manifested on the part of the Kryachkivka women in the very fine film on the seminal “avtentyka ensemble” Drevo that can be seen here should dispell any such misconception.