Polissia| Poltavshchyna| Podillia| Donechchyna| Carpathians| Slobozhanshchyna| Bessarabia
‘It is God who still walks the earth, child, so we have no fears’
Olena Popovych from the village of Litvytsia
My first trip in search of songs was to Polissia.
In June 1993, I borrowed a tape recorder from Yaroslav Hrytsak and a camera from someone else and went to the village of Svarytsevychi, because I knew that the rite of driving the bush was held there on the Feast of the Trinity. The first stop was the village of Lisove, where I met one of my dearest teachers, Ulyana Kuzlo.
The oldest songs, beliefs and rituals have indeed been preserved in Polissia.
It is there that you can still meet mermaids and house spirits. It's where they sing about Spring and Summer. It is there that ‘frogs used to sing so beautifully,’ as Hanna Chudinovych's husband from the village of Zelen told me. Hanna herself could sing non-stop. When we were travelling by bus to a festival in Poland, granny Hanna sat next to the driver and sang everything she saw. She would look at a birch tree and say, ‘Oh, you birch tree,’ or cross a river and say, ‘Oh, you river,’ or drive past fields of wheat and say, ‘Oh, you fields...’ ‘I'm singing to you, child, because when I die, maybe someone will sing and remember me somewhere.’
Follow this link to listen online or download from Google Drive (in parts or separate folders).
PHOTOS
Follow this link to view or download all the photos from the region.
Polissia| Poltavshchyna| Podillia| Donechchyna| Carpathians| Slobozhanshchyna| Bessarabia