I wrote this for my own blog, but with some editing I share it here because I think there needs to be a counter-narrative about Ukrainian culture. After all, Fox News has a wide media reach and it is uncanny as to how their talking points mirror the positions of the Kremlin. Public awareness of the world’s hot spots will fade if we don’t find a way to hold them up, and it depressing when the only news shows suffering.
On January 3rd in Belfast Maine we begin rehearsals for the Maine Balkan Choir to perform a benefit concert for Ukraine in March, 2023. If you happen to live in Belfast Maine or the vicinity, the time is 6 to 9 PM and the location is in a former church basement at 17 Court Street. We will meet weekly for practice.
We are doing this to promote a positive vision of Ukraine and the culture of it's people. We don't want the American public to forget that Ukraine exists. The Maine Balkan Choir along with the Huddled Masses Orchestra have studied and performed Slavic music for decades. Though we most frequently perform Bulgarian or Balkan music, Ukraine is in the neighborhood.
I have been on a quest to find music from the Ukrainian folk- and pop - repertoire. We are welcoming all community singers of good will to join us. This is a good way to harness energy for something positive for the situation and overcome feelings of helplessness. Singing is always a positive step.
Two resources for beginner groups
You can do similar things in your own area. Slavic choral music often uses minor keys and plaintive melodies. Thea capella tradition includes many songs shared by working people in the course of daily agricultural tradition. Small groups of women would sing together every day. A specific system of harmony developed, and collective music was a powerful source of solidarity and sisterhood. There are many Slavic choral groups in the USA.
Language Challenges
How to find the tune is the first hurdle. If you don't read Cyrillic you don't even know what to do a search for because the tunes are catalogued in their home language and alphabet.
We are still choosing songs to include in this concert. I decided to find videos that help with Ukrainian children's songs and the folk dances to accompany them.
It's harder than you think to find sound recordings or videos, and also to use a system of transliteration of lyrics. The challenges include the practice of singing in the original language. As we embark on this project we know we need to guide new members of the choir in this area. I am spending this week developing resources.
I will now share what I found. Here they are:
YouTube List
I created a YouTube lists with six children's songs on it. I put these in a playlist for people to sing along to while holding the sheet music, or just to listen while driving in the car. Click here to find a YouTube playlist that shows Ukrainians performing these songs.
Original Ukrainian Source? the late Leopold Yaschenko!
It's not that these videos are rare. There is a Ukrainian-language website that is a treasure trove of more than 700 folk songs. The problem in accessing the material is exacerbated by the fact that it is written in Cyrillic. The lyrics cover a wide range of topics and styles. Within that website is one particular page devoted to a 1962 booklet written by the Ukrainian ethnomusicologist Leopold Yaschenko. The original was written in Cyrillic cursive in a fanciful way, but somebody over there has transcribed many of the sheet music and lyrics pages into a relatively modern format. (not all, yet.) The site is still in Ukrainian but you can click on a translation button on the page to put it into English.
We will be looking at these to see which will be included in our concert program, but I am sharing this with various listserves of people who might be looking for the same material, including dailyKOS. For example, schools in your area may be looking for sources of music for their music program to perform, or for a younger group they could teach a simple folk dance such as the ones listed above. There are thousands of amateur vocal groups and choirs in USA, along with more thousands of church choirs. Share this with any such persons.
If there were only two songs to be learned, one would need to be this one:
The tune is a lullaby, and expresses the universal goal of humanity that infants need to have a full belly, a warm place to sleep, and somebody who loves and protects them.