Roman Hrynkiv hopes to give the bandura international stature
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by Irene Jarosewich
PARSIPPANY, N.J. - One of Ukraine's most gifted bandurists, Roman Hrynkiv, was in New York recently to complete a musical collaboration and recording of a joint CD with renowned jazz guitarist Al Di Meola. With this unique artistic collaboration, a remarkable blending of bandura and guitar, Mr. Hrynkiv, 33, who has performed in more than 10 countries, hopes to build on his dream: to see the bandura become accepted as a string instrument of international stature.
The bandura, noted Mr. Hrynkiv, is a beautiful musical instrument that should be cultivated and uplifted to an international level; there is no reason why composers worldwide shouldn't compose for the bandura, or why orchestras should not include the instrument, or why the playing of the bandura should not be broadly expanded to include instruction in dozens of countries. The bandura will always be known as Ukraine's national instrument, he added, but it is now time to share this treasure.
A rather unremarkable event several years ago sparked a chain of events that brought together these two talented string musicians. While preparing a documentary film in Ukraine, proceeds from the viewing of which would go to a fund to aid victims of Chornobyl, a French film crew requested that someone play Ukraine's national instrument, the bandura, for a scene in the film. The crew was directed to Kyiv's music conservatory to find that particular someone. The crew arrived, hoping to set up an appointment, but the director of the conservatory suggested the crew wait.
A young graduate student was literally pulled out of the corridor and asked on the spot to play. As he played delicate tunes, the delighted crew filmed. When he finished playing, everyone said thank you and good-bye and promptly forgot about the impromptu performance.
While later viewing the film in Paris, violinist Yehudi Mehunin was deeply moved by the sound of the bandura. The request went out: find the player and invite him to perform in Brussels at the Yehudi Mehunin Association's concert "All the World's Violins."
"I remember a slight degree of panic at the conservatory," noted Mr. Hrynkiv. "A message arrived by fax from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs with an order to immediately find the student who played the bandura in the French film. Of course, nobody really remembered which film or which student."
Mr. Hrynkiv was found and within days, in an unusually brief period of time, the ministry had a visa and passport, a ticket and a translator ready for him to travel to Brussels. Performing before a sophisticated audience and among internationally famous string musicians, Mr. Hrynkiv's performance received immediate acclaim. One of the festival's producers was so taken with Mr. Hrynkiv's performance that he asked Mr. Hrynkiv to return the following evening to meet with Al Di Meola.
"I was brought on stage after Al's show and introduced," recalled Mr. Hrynkiv. "The stage was being taken down, the audience was leaving the hall. The producer asked Al to listen to me. I set up, the microphones were still on, and I began to play. The sound of the bandura began to resonate powerfully in the almost empty and silent auditorium. Al stopped and then sat down with his guitar and began to play with me - an impromptu jam - my bandura, his jazz guitar.
"Several people began to slowly filter back into the hall," he continued, "and by the time we were done, the small crowd was yelling and shouting its approval, stomping the floor and clapping their hands. On the spot, Al asked me to perform with him the following week at his concert in Luxembourg."
"We can't recreate the traditional kobzar who traveled around Ukraine with his bandura, the instrument of a national message, one that blended history and music with legend and song," noted Mr. Hrynkiv, but it is possible for the bandura to become an international messenger, to travel around the world carrying the message of original compositions for the bandura by such noted Ukrainian composers as by Mykola Lysenko and the adaptation of traditional bandura compositions into classical pieces by Serhiy Bahstan. "It is necessary to break the stereotype that the bandura is a limited instrument with little musical or compositional potential," said Mr. Hrynkiv.
Mr. Hrynkiv noted that the phenomenon of the concert bandura is relatively new, only about 50 years old and, oddly enough, was promoted by the communists. In Ukraine under the communists the traditional bandura of Ukrainian folk culture became a tool in the attempt to Sovietize all aspects of culture. The bandura was kept, but not the history of the kobzari and the traditional dumas, the Ukrainian national elements attached to the bandura. It was redesigned to function as a group concert instrument, instead of an individual folk instrument; the dumy were rewritten to reflect Soviet themes and new Soviet music was composed. Nonetheless, nobody thought the bandura ever could be an international concert instrument that would represent Ukraine. The goal was simply ideological: to separate the bandura from its national culture.
However, there were people at the time who tried to strengthen creative processes in connection with the bandura, and now their efforts at trying to sustain the bandura's creative integrity are being understood. Compositions for the bandura were tied into various non-traditional genres, such as ballet, song, dance, and this actually gave some support to the instrument and kept it out of obscurity.
Mr. Hrynkiv has only praise for the efforts of the diaspora to preserve the traditional pre-war style of playing and the heritage of the instrument and its music. "[The diaspora's efforts] preserved an ancient method of playing that really was lost in Ukraine," he noted, "and it's remarkable that it is found throughout the diaspora, in the United States, in Canada, even in Australia. I've met wonderful people whose entire life was dedicated to preserving the heritage of the bandura."
He conceded that in Ukraine there is now tension between two schools of thought on the bandura: There are those who believe that the bandura should be promoted in its classic traditional role, that the changes of the past 50 years should be mostly rejected and that the rapid growth of a new tradition - the bandura as an international instrument - should not be encouraged. They believe that the bandura, and its tradition, will otherwise be lost to Ukraine. Others firmly believe that the bandura should be promoted as an instrument of international interest that has a unique Ukrainian history.
Most Ukrainians, however, do not value the instrument at all, he states; they believe it is not a sophisticated instrument and associate it with the Soviet-era attempts to downgrade Ukrainian folk culture. They unwittingly accept the negative Soviet stereotype of the kobzar as a ne'er-do-well, barefoot, dirty, samohonka-guzzling itinerant, lugging around a primitive instrument. The fact that the kobzars carried news from village to village, passed along a Ukrainian oral tradition through music and song, spread the use of the Ukrainian language, and, in general, were carriers of the national consciousness is better understood in the diaspora than it is in Ukraine, he explained.
Mr. Hrynkiv has established a foundation, the Golden Chord Fund, primarily to develop and popularize the bandura art form, but also in part to convince Ukrainians that their national instrument is a unique instrument, worthy of international recognition and stature.
He is convinced that Ukrainian culture, which posesses a highly spiritual essence, can and must find its niche in world culture. It is, he noted, a natural, spiritual, light and open tradition that uplifts, and added that an entire spectrum of musical tradition already exists that exemplifies this essence.
"There is the work of more than one generation behind us," he said, "on which we must build."
For additional information about Mr. Hrynkiv or the Golden Chord Fund, its activities and planned projects, visit the fund's website at
www.bandura.kiev.ua. Donations to the Golden Chord Fund can be sent to: Self Reliance (New York) Federal Credit Union; 108 Second Ave., New York, NY, 10003-8392; account no. 25749-000. Information about the release of Mr. Hrynkiv's new CD with Mr. Di Meola will be available later this summer. His earlier recordings are available from Yevshan by calling 1-800-265-9858.
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