Trio to Perform Rare Ukrainian Folk Songs From the Chornobyl Region
A PSU concert this weekend commemorates the 40th anniversary of the nuclear disaster.
Nearly 40 years ago, much of the Polissia region in Eastern Europe was evacuated. Whole villages were abandoned and centuries of cultural tradition dissolved overnight.
The region—heavily forested and swampy lowlands in northern Ukraine, southern Belarus and parts of Poland—is often associated with the ancient village of Chornobyl (or, to use the Russian spelling more common in the U.S., “Chernobyl”), which in 1986 became the scene of a globe-altering nuclear disaster.
Today, much of Polissia remains devoid of human life and, of course, human culture as it remains contaminated with dangerous levels of radiation. But this weekend, powerful and persistent songs from this singular place will fill PSU’s Lincoln Recital Hall in a special night of Ukrainian folk music, Chornobyl: A Song Never Silenced.
The free concert will mark the Chornobyl disaster’s 40th anniversary with folk songs written prior to the rise and fall of the Soviet Union (1922–1991). Some even predate the emergence and dissolution of the Russian Empire (1721–1917). In fact, some of the melodies recovered by Portland singer and musicologist Inna Kovtun are five centuries old and have rarely been heard outside Europe.
The music of Polissia resembles other Slavic folk traditions in its unique use of polyphonic harmonies and themes of love, death, family and the changing of the seasons. But it has an eerie, discordant, bone-chilling quality all its own.