Folk Culture

The bandura is a traditional plucked-string musical instrument from Ukraine. Its timbre resembles a harpsichord’s. Although similar-sounding names appear in numerous European and Asian languages (Examples: Spanish bandurria, pandura of Savetian and central Asian societies, Indic tambura, and English bandore), the Ukrainian bandura evolved from a line of lute-like instruments in Ukraine. An 11-th century fresco in Kiev city’s Saint Sofia Cathedral shows a possible anscestor. The main distingushing characteristics are 1) the absence of frets, which means that each string can sound only one note, as in a harp, and 2) the presence of treble strings stretched over the soundboard, off center from the bass strings which run along the neck. The result is an asymmetric body. As a homemade folk instrument, there are variations in the pattern.

From 15th to 18th centuries, bandura was played by kobzars (wandering minstrels, usually blind and sometimes led by a child), and kozaks (cossacks, or free warriors). In the villages and towns, kobzars sang epic songs (dumy) about the people’s exploits and relations with Turks and Tatars, and later of their troubles with the Polish regime. Because the kobzars were a nationalistic force, the Soviet Union government liquidated them in the 1930s.

In the 20th century,bandurists began forming ensembles. The ensembles best known to Americans are in Kiev, Ukraine, and in Detroit and New York City.

The Ukrainian government recognizes the importance of folk arts, and bandura can be studied formally at all levels. Students learn “academic” technique in elementary school level, in music vocational school (uchilyshe, a five-year program), and in the conservatories in Kiev and Lviv cities (This last would be equivalent to prestigious American schools of music institutionalizing and teaching banjo.). New York City has a school of bandura.

Simultaneous with trained bandurists and their ensembles are individuals, often self-taught, who take up the bandura as an outward expression of their deepest aspirations and stirrings, those parts of our being for which words alone are insufficient. Among such loners, singing the epics and folk songs and newly composed songs, we may find the kobzars’ tradition. At public gatherings, the artistic truth presented by a folk bandurist is typically just as respected as that presented by a formal musical ensemble. Bandura is said to be a spititual instrument, because of its emotional expressiveness. This idea is consistent with Ukraine’s practice a few years ago when it achieved independence from Russian-dominated Soviet Union. It replaced statues of Russian revolutionary leader Vladimir Lenin with statues not of a political or military leader, but of the people’s great poet, Taras Shevchenko.

One 20th century kobzar, Zinoviy Shtokalko (who died in 1968), argued that the bandura is the result of an evolution to specificity. This means that the bandura is best suited for musically expressing the ethos and character of its host society (Ukraine), and that other instruments (such as those with European tempered scales) don’t work as well. (Similarly, Japanese music sounds better on a koto than on a piano.)

Today, factory-made banduras are chromatic: The “prima,” or “student,” bandura, with 55 strings tuned at half-tone intervals, and the “concert,” with an adjustable tuning mechanism and 65 strings covering the same range as the prima. Factories are in Chernihiv and Lviv cities. With these more versatile bandudras, virtuosos and ensemble include in their repertoires European composed music of Baroque and Classical periods (Scarlatti, Vivaldi, Mozart, and others). Youg virtuosos in Ukraine and Canada perform their own compositions with distinctly 20th century, jazzy sounds.