A bandura is a Ukrainian plucked-string folk-instrument. It combines elements of the zither and lute and, up until the 1940s, was also often called a kobza. Early instruments had 5 to 12 strings and resembled lutes. In the 20th century, the number of strings increased initially to 31 strings (1926), then to 56 strings – 68 strings on modern "concert" instruments (1954).
Mykola Vitaliiovych Lysenko was a Ukrainian composer, pianist, conductor and ethnomusicologist of the late Romantic period. In his time he was the central figure of Ukrainian music, with an oeuvre that includes operas, art songs, choral works, orchestral and chamber pieces, and a wide variety of solo piano music. He is often credited with founding a national music tradition during the Ukrainian national revival, in the vein of contemporaries such as Grieg in Norway, The Five in Russia as well as Smetana and Dvořák in what is now the Czech Republic.
The kobza, also called bandura is a Ukrainian folk music instrument of the lute family, a relative of the Central European mandora. The term kobza however, has also been applied to a number of other Eastern European instruments distinct from the Ukrainian kobza.
Mykola Dmytrovych Leontovych was a Ukrainian composer, conductor, ethnomusicologist, and teacher. His music was inspired by the Ukrainian composer Mykola Lysenko and the Ukrainian National Music School. Leontovych specialised in a cappella choral music, ranging from original compositions to church music to elaborate arrangements of folk music.
A kobzar was an itinerant Ukrainian bard who sang to his own accompaniment, played on a multistringed kobza or bandura.
Levko Mykolaiovych Revutsky was a Soviet and Ukrainian composer, pedagogue, and public figure.
Dumka is a musical term introduced from the Ukrainian language, with cognates in other Slavic languages. The word dumka literally means "thought". Originally, it was the diminutive form of the Ukrainian term duma, pl. dumy, "a Slavic epic ballad … generally thoughtful or melancholic in character". Classical composers drew on the harmonic patterns in the folk music to inform their more formal classical compositions.
Julian Kytasty is an American composer, singer, kobzar, bandurist, flautist, and conductor of Ukrainian descent. He was born January 23, 1958, in Detroit, Michigan, in a family of refugees.
Kobzarskyi Tsekh, literally "Kobzar guild", is an organization of kobzars, which have existed since the 17th century in Ukraine.
The Ukrainian Bandurist Chorus is a semi-professional male choir which accompanies itself with the multi-stringed Ukrainian ethnic instrument known as the bandura. It traces its roots to Ukraine in 1918 and has been based in the USA since 1949.
Kobzars and bandurists were a unique class of musicians in Ukraine, who travelled between towns and sang dumas, a meditative poem-song. Kobzars were usually blind, and required the completion of a three-year apprenticeship in specialized Kobzar guilds, in order to be officially recognized as such. In 1932, on the order of Stalin, the Soviet authorities called on all Ukrainian Kobzars to attend a congress in Kharkiv. Those that arrived were taken outside the city and were all put to death.
Victor Mishalow is an Australian-born Canadian bandurist, educator, composer, conductor, and musicologist.
Hryhoriy Trokhymovych Kytasty was a Ukrainian émigré composer and conductor. In 2008, he was honored with the Hero of Ukraine state decoration.
Peter Deriashnyj is a Ukrainian Australian bandurist, composer of secular and sacred music, and choral conductor. He specializes in the Kharkiv style of bandura playing, but also plays folk and rock guitar.
A Kuban bandurists is a person who plays the Ukrainian plucked string instrument known as the bandura, who is from Kuban, a geographic region of southern Russia surrounding the Kuban River.
Ukrainian folk music includes a number of varieties of traditional, folkloric, folk-inspired popular music, and folk-inspired European classical music traditions.
Yuriy Fedynsky — Ukrainian-American composer, torbanist, bandurist and singer-songwriter, producer, bandleader, luthier, cultural activist and pedagogue.
Mykola Petrovych Budnyk was a luthier and traditional performer in the Kobzar tradition. He was active in authentic construction and recreation of historic folk instruments, and involved in the movement for authentic performаnce practice on Ukrainian folk instruments. Budnyk was also known as a painter and poet. He was born in 1954 in Skolobiv, near Khoroshiv, Zhytomyr region, and died January 16, 2001, in Irpin', Kyiv region.
The Mykola Lysenko House-Museum is one of the museums of outstanding figures of Ukrainian culture in Kyiv. It is located in the house of the teacher Mykola Gvozdik, where the Ukrainian composer Mykola Lysenko rented the 2nd floor from August 1894 to November 1912.
Kobza is a vocal and instrumental ensemble of Ukraine from the 1970s and 1980s. VIA "Kobza" was the first of the bands of the former Soviet Union to go on a commercial tour on the American continent (1982). The original band leader was Oleksandr Zuev. One of the songwriters and current bandleader is Yevhen Kovalenko.
