^M00:00:14
>> Julian Kytasty: The south and east of Ukraine, where a lot of the current fighting is going on is Steppe country, a wide open plains. In places, the flat horizon is broken by earthen mounds raised by various prehistoric cultures. Originally burial mounds, they became landmarks, observation posts, and just, generally, places around which things happened. In the photo, I'm sitting on such a mound. And I remember that one of the songs I sang there to myself and the wind and the grass was this one, a song going back who knows how many hundreds of years or generations of singers, about a fallen warrior. 
^M00:01:13
^M00:01:16
[ Music ] 
^M00:01:34
[ Singing In Foreign Language ]
^M00:02:23
[ Music ]
^M00:02:30
In the field on a grave mound, there a warrior lies on the [inaudible] --
^M00:02:41
[ Music ]
^M00:02:46
-- with his head on a [inaudible] of earth and the soft step of grass covering his eyes a piece of red silk cloth clutched tightly in his hands. 
^M00:03:07
[ Singing In Foreign Language ]
^M00:04:06
[ Music ]
^M00:04:31
Some called the bandura Ukraine's national instrument. For me, it's certainly my family instrument. I'm a third generation player. And my father, grandfather, and great uncle were professional bandurists when they came to the United States in 1949. That's them in the picture, which was taken shortly before they came, in a displaced persons camp in Germany. In the 1960s, my father started a youth ensemble in a church basement at 29th Street and Michigan Avenue in Detroit. And that's where I first heard and started to learn the two traditional instrumental tunes I'm going to play next. I've gone on to play them a lot. And maybe, someday, I'll really learn them. 
^M00:05:31
^M00:05:36
[ Music ]
^F00:08:16
^M00:08:21
In the 20th century, two types of bandura developed out of that early old time instrument. One was the Kyiv bandura, which is what you saw me play in the medley. And that's the instrument depicted in yellow in the graphic. The other instrument, the one depicted in red was developed in a very short window of time in the 1920s in the Kharkiv, when all kinds of incredible creative work was being done there and elsewhere in Ukraine. 
^M00:08:58
And this renaissance, unfortunately, was cut short, literally, stopped dead by the Stalinist terror. So there was this instrument. And I've spent the last 20 years letting it tell me what it could play. Seems like every time I pick it up, it shows me something new. And a few years ago, it showed me this piece, travel music.
^M00:09:25
^M00:09:30
[ Music ]
^F00:11:20
^M00:11:24
Kazakhstan, 1848, the shore of the Aral Sea, then and now, a desolate place. That is where the Russian empire in its wisdom decide that the greatest Ukrainian poet of his time, Taras Shevchenko, should spend 10 years of his life with a note added to his sentence in the [inaudible] own hand, saying forbidden to write or paint. In 1848, the first year of his exile, Shevchenko did find a way to make a few landscapes and poems, including the one you're about to hear. The music was done for a theater piece by New York's Yara Arts group, the English translation is by [inaudible] and Wanda Phipps. 
^M00:12:29
^M00:12:31
[ Music ]
^M00:13:05
[ Foreign Language ]
^M00:13:38
[ Music ]
^M00:13:41
[ Foreign Language ]
^M00:13:54
[ Music ]
^F00:13:58
^M00:14:03
[ Foreign Language ]
^M00:14:24
[ Music ]
^M00:14:43
[ Foreign Language ]
^M00:14:47
[ Music ]
^M00:14:55
[ Foreign Language ]
^M00:14:59
[ Music ]
^F00:15:48
^M00:15:52
In folk art, Taras Shevchenko is frequently depicted holding a bandura, even though he didn't really play it. He was, however, deeply influenced by the songs of the blind epic singers, the kobzari. And he identified with them so completely that he titled the body of his collective poetry Kobzar. Like Shevchenko, the kobzari were not popular with Russian imperial governments. It was because of the songs they sang. Here's one from the late 1600s, a time when -- when Moscow was first going into Ukraine in a big way. It starts, there is no more truth in the world, for now falsehood, the lie, has taken the place of truth. 
^M00:16:57
^M00:17:02
[ Singing In Foreign Language ]
^M00:17:45
[ Music ]
^M00:17:48
And now truth is trampled underfoot and falsehood, wined and dined. And now truth is thrown into the deepest dungeons and falsehood sits in the councils of the powerful.
^M00:18:09
[ Music ]
^M00:18:12
[ Singing In Foreign Language ]
^M00:18:31
[ Music ]
^M00:18:35
[ Singing In Foreign Language ]
^M00:18:53
[ Music ]
^M00:19:07
The end of the age must be upon us, for now, even one's own brother can't be trusted anymore. 
^M00:19:14
^M00:19:18
For maybe now, truth is dead and falsehood has gobbled up the whole world. 
^M00:19:30
[ Music ]
^M00:19:33
[ Singing In Foreign Language ]
^M00:20:23
[ Music ]
^M00:20:28
But those who follow the path of truth shall receive great blessings, for God is truth and shall crush falsehood, vanquish pride, raise high at the temple.
^M00:20:55
[ Singing In Foreign Language ]
^M00:21:21
[ Music ]
^F00:21:49
^M00:21:57
[ Music ]
^F00:24:59
^M00:25:07
Unfortunately, the devastation that we've been watching for the past few months on our TV screens is nothing new in Ukrainian history. There have been many wars, many times when large parts of the country were depopulated, when cities were ruined and looted, the villages burned. And yet, each time, Ukrainians rebuilt their towns better, replanted, regrew their culture stronger. The ancestors talk to us about this in some of those old songs, like this love song from a couple of hundred years ago. A young man comes home from the war, doesn't matter which one. He rides out to where an orphan girl is working the field all by herself. He says, "You're the one. Let's make something new here together."
^M00:26:23
^M00:26:26
[ Music ]
^M00:26:33
[ Singing In Foreign Language ]
^M00:29:20
[ Music ]
^F00:31:19
^M00:31:24
I'll conclude with a song I learned from my father, another one of these historical songs from the 17th, 18th century. This one is about crowd funding an army. And it just speaks, word for word, to the spirit and the motivation of the volunteers all around the world who are now self-organizing to support the Ukrainian war effort. And it's dedicated to all of them and to my friends from RAZOM for Ukraine. That's R-A-Z-O-M, RAZOM, an organization which has done a truly amazing job, not just of raising money, but of making sure that it buys the right things and the right things get to the right recipient in the right place at the right time. Thank you.
^M00:32:32
^M00:32:36
[ Music ]
^M00:32:40
[ Singing In Foreign Language ]
^M00:33:18
[ Music ]
^M00:33:40
[ Singing In Foreign Language ]
^M00:35:05
[ Music ]
^M00:35:25
[ Singing In Foreign Language ]
^M00:35:47
[ Music ] 
^M00:36:08
[ Singing In Foreign Language ]
^M00:37:05
[ Music ]
^E00:37:59