для України

The Bandura, National Instrument of Ukraine

Maybe you’ve never heard of a bandura. There’s a reason for that, and I’ll get into it shortly.

I was first introduced to the bandura by Yarko Antonevych (pictured), the son of a Ukrainian émigré, at the Florida Folk Festival. I’d been playing the hammer dulcimer for a couple of years and was really getting into learning more about musical instruments that were less “mainstream.”

Yarko taught as he performed, explaining that the bandura of today had “evolved” from a lute-like instrument played in Ukraine during medieval times. Although the strings are plucked, rather than hammered, I noted a definite similarity of its sound to a hammer dulcimer, and was fascinated to see another instrument that had so many strings – and was probably similarly difficult to keep in tune.

Beautiful as the music was, my main takeaway from Yarko’s performance was the tale he told about the persecution of Ukraine’s Kobzars – a unique class of itinerant musicians who earned their living singing and playing traditional Ukrainian music. In the late 1800s, Imperial Russia banned stage performances by Kobzars and bandurists; the intent was to prevent any musical performances in the Ukrainian language because the repertoire typically included aspects of Ukrainian history and culture. Kobzars, who had once enjoyed status in society, turned to street performance but in some cities were arrested and their instruments destroyed. They were relentlessly persecuted and all but wiped out.

A few of them survived, however, and a rekindling of interest in them and in the bandura sparked a rise in Ukrainian self-awareness.  There was even a brief period during which the Russian government showed tolerance to Ukrainian language and culture.

Then, the Communist Party launched a fight against nationalist tendencies. Kobzars, and even the manufacture of banduras, were once again restricted, all in an effort to quell a movement for the liberation of Ukraine. Bandurists were harassed, arrested, exiled, tortured, and even executed.

In 1932 (or 1933; accounts vary), on the orders of Joseph Stalin, Soviet authorities invited all Ukrainian Kobzars to attend a congress in Kharkiv. All who attended were taken outside the city and put to death. According to Yarko, the only reason that anyone knows about the bandura today is because of a bandurist who figuratively “missed the train to Kharkiv.”

No documents exist – or at least none have been found – to substantiate the story about the mass execution of Kobzars and other traditional Ukrainian performers. But there’s plenty of evidence that SOMETHING happened, that bandurists died or disappeared in significant numbers around that time, and with all that we now know about Stalin, the story is more than plausible.

And isn’t that the way to subjugate a culture? Over and over throughout history … Irish, living in Ireland, yet forbidden to speak their own Irish language. Native American children sent off to boarding schools, in order to “Kill the Indian in him, and save the man.” The playing of bagpipes banned in Scotland by the Act of Proscription of 1746. Obliterate any semblance of cultural identity.

Historically, Imperial Russia, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Poland, and Lithuania all have claimed jurisdiction over Ukraine. I don’t pretend to understand all of the complexities that have led to Russia’s current attempt to once again annex Ukraine. But my sympathies lie firmly with Ukraine as they fight, yet again, to maintain their identity as a culture and as a sovereign state.