Many things in culture happen as though contrary to the established status. The twentieth anniversary of the Drevo (Tree) ensemble, marked earlier this month in the Small Hall of the Kyiv Conservatory, was one such paradox of our art. And it was not even bureaucratic, rather general lack of attention to any truly interesting national manifestation; the packed audience and the diversity of people in it looked like a joyous challenge to such an unfavorable context.
And the context, among other things, is that any authentic folk singing is automatically considered here cheap ethnographic hype, and that the youth jumping to rock on Independence Square nearby considers everything Ukrainian an exotic type of virtual reality rather than their own identification. Still, the twentieth anniversary soiree of the Tree saw enough young faces on stage and in the audience. Which perhaps means that everyone chooses his own rhythm and music.
Yevhen Yefremov, the Tree’s founding father, made his choice twenty years ago and turned his child not only into a kind of practical supplement to a textbook for folklorists, but also a full-fledged musical organism popular far beyond our borders. The Tree’s numerous successful tours of Europe and America is graphic evidence of this. Modern well-educated people, once given to a strange occupation, collecting, reconstructing and singing half-forgotten or totally forgotten folk songs, convey their love in impassioned and masterful renditions. That Sunday evening at the Conservatory (interestingly, the Tree’s first performance in 1980 also took place in the Small Hall) the Tree performed songs seldom heard even in the countryside. They were different songs, lyrical, soldier’s, Cossack, wedding, and jocular. The program was based on the Poltava oblast folk heritage, a very talented region whose people remembers its past quite well. There were also traditional songs from Polissia, Cherkasy, and Kyiv oblasts. Vocal renditions were supplemented by the reconstructed Shyr wedding dance and Kostrubonka Easter game. The general atmosphere was that of a true folk fest, almost like a meeting of old friends (most people in the audience knew each other) and it lasted practically to the end as a real family celebration. And the family atmosphere was complemented by the daughters’ Volodar and Bozhychi ensembles, a nameless student cappella founded by those who had once gone through the Tree’s school.
The art of memory is a pastime shared by few. Yet memories perpetuated in songs and music can become an orchard — i.e., a place open to one and all. The Tree has grown such an orchard around itself over the past twenty years worthy of the golden age.
