The examples of music folklore on this album represent an anthology of genres and styles of traditional Ukrainian music. In the 1980's, when this material was being prepared for release, Ukrainian folk music still preserved the whole diversity of music dialects and representative completeness of its genre structure, although the ban on religious subjects that existed at the time excluded a rich spectrum of traditional Christian genres. The material recorded in the 1980's and earlier did not see the light of day in those years but has been assumed as a basis of this album.
The Ukrainian ethnic territory unites the areas of early settlement dating back to formation of Slavic tribes and lands that were finally populated much later, after devastating raids of the nomads where the so called Wild Fields were located during the late 16th – early 17th centuries. Thus, the authochtonic Ukrainian territories are Ukrainian Polesye spread along the northern borders of Ukraine on both banks of the Dnieper; Volhynia in the northwest; Podolie, a vast territory between the Dnieper's right tributaries and the Dniester; the area of the Carpathian Mountains with such ethnographic groups residing on their lands as Guzuls, Boikos, Lemkos, trans-Carpathian Verkhovinians and Dolinians; and Bukovina on the southern flanks of the Carpathians. The territory that was populated later in Left-bank Ukraine by several waves of migration includes the east and southeast parts of Ukraine – Slobozhania, Steppen Ukraine, Prichernomorie, Priazovie, and Tauria.
The regional specificity was a determining factor for style differentiation of Ukrainian folklore. The oldest song genres and forms have preserved in the calendar and wedding cycles of Polesye. These are Trinity Day shrub and berry songs, and songs for rain (tracks 4, 6, 7). Intonation attributes of the Polesye tunes are a narrow scale and a free melodic pitch with neutral intervals – a characteristic display of modal ecmelics, dull and sharp sounds ending the stanza in eastern Polesye songs, and episodic heterophonia often taken to a low bourdon. The 'wizardry' exclamations in a comic song from Kiev Polesye (track 10) are seen as a relict of heathen invocatory magic.
The distinctive features of ritual songs are special intonation techniques that clearly differ in various parts of Ukraine. A yelling sound on the top limit of tessitura in the songs from Kiev Polesye (track 10) and an intense and concentrated manner in Poltavian singing (track 5); a melodic pattern with lavish micro-ornamental modulations from Volhynian Polesye (track 4), and a distinctively sharp and sonically attacking signing manner of North Bessarabia – all these can be heard in all the richness of intonation nuances.
The ritual folklore of the central Ukraine (middle Podneprovie) and adjacent lands of the left-bank Ukraine bears the stamp of later formation and, correspondingly, it is more developed melodically. Migration to new territories meant a loss of the links with a native land inherited from the pre-Christian era and, hence, the ancient rituals. That is why the ritual cycle lacks any relict samples of early springtime calling songs, songs of mermaid's ritual (addressed to mermaids), Trinity Day songs, and harvest ritual songs. The loss of the ancient rituals was made up for with a sphere of richly developed lyricism. In the ritual tunes which are extant in the form of carols, springtime lyricism, Midsummer Day and St. Peter's Day songs, the canonical formulas transformed under the influence of a lyrical, and in Poltava Region, lyrical epic tradition (tracks 5, 12).
A full-fledged wedding tradition in Ukraine was in place until the last decades of the 20th century. A dramatic concept of a Ukrainian wedding was based on three leading spheres – ritual (accompaniment of acts), playing, and dramatic. The Ukrainian wedding knows no ritual lamentation, however weeping intonations can be found in parting and orphan songs (tracks 12, 14). Funeral lamentation in modern Ukraine is very uncommon, so there is an archival recording on the album (track 15).
The period of the late 15th to the 16th century saw the formation of dumas (ballads). Dumas are large-scale pieces of a lyrical epic nature made of asymmetric periods (по народному – «уступов»), sung and self-accompanied by a blind kobza or lyre player. The subjects of the oldest dumas were dramatic events of the people's history from the time of the Tartar Invasion. One of such topics about three brothers killed in a battle field is developed in his duma by one of the last authentic kobza players Yegor Movchan (track 16). Songs performed by lyre players and psalms of a moral and didactic, often pious nature are also part of the epic genre of folk arts (track 18).
Song lyricism of supporting voice characteristic for central and eastern Ukraine is a nationally specific form of the Ukrainian folklore. The attributes of drawling in such songs are inseparable from a declamatory nature of melos, and a developed horizontal is balanced with a functional harmonic vertical. The album includes different style manners of supporting voice. The dedication to linearity – free voice 'steering' – is showcased by the old-timers of a village near Kirovograd (track 23). In western areas of Poltava Region (the village of Kryachkivka), a three-voice texture on a linear harmonic basis dominates. In various examples of lyricism from this village (tracks 24, 25, 26), two kinds of supporting voice stand out, or more often, unite – a chest (middle) voice and a soprano (high) voice.
The culture of the Carpathians is a concentration of folklore antiquity, particularly, signal and ritual tunes, and deliberate chanting in ritual singing (track 13). In the western regions of Ukraine, instrumental music has become a prevailing sphere of folklore tradition. The Carpathians are a homeland of family performance schools, instrumental ensembles (capellas) well-known in the region, and talented virtuoso soloists. Mikhail Gritsik, a Carpatho-Ukrainian sopilka (or locally called pishchavka – a kind of flute) player, is one of them. His composition 'for listening' dates back to the ancient traditions of pastoral art (track 9). An ensemble of drimba players, predominantly women, is a specifically Carpathian phenomenon. Adopting voices of popular songs and dances, the performers unite them into a freely built 'bundle' (track 22).
Elena Murzina
Candidate of Art History, Head of a Chair of Music Folklore Study of the P.I. Tchaikovsky National Music Academy of Ukraine
