On July 7-9 the capital’s Spivoche Pohle (Singing Field) was the venue of the third ethnic festival Country of Dreams, initiated by Oleh Skrypka. This event is evolving with every passing year. It is gaining in popularity and becoming increasingly organic, awakening the Ukrainian spirit in a growing number of Ukrainians. Before long, it may become one of the largest and most prestigious folk fests in Eastern Europe. Since this event is widely promoted by the media, this time journalists came from various oblasts of Ukraine and other countries.
Country of Dreams was an historical and modern Ukraine in miniature. On each stage (eight in all, including an interactive children’s playground) the specifics of daily life in a certain region and a certain century seemed to come to life.
For example, the folk group Serpanok performed 18th and 19th century songs from the Sumy region (raions in Sivershchyna-Naddnesnianske Polissia and Poseimia. The drama group Holos (Chernivtsi) performed rituals that were practiced 100 years ago in the Bukovyna region on St. John the Baptist’s Day. The fiery Fanfare Orchestra played compositions based on Balkan tunes (this territory is also inhabited by Balkan ethnic groups).
On the “live” street leading from the Ivan Honchar Museum to Singing Field you could meet Polissian, Boiko, Hutsul, Galician, Slobozhany, Crimean Tatar, and Volynian vendors selling their wares. A short distance away pottery, woodcarving, and pysanka painting master classes were held.
This year, as promised, a number of foreign pop stars visited the festival, including Natasha Atlas (World Music star, Egypt and UK); Jonathan Shorland (UK), one of the initiators of the revival of the Welsh bagpipe music tradition; Ivo Papasov (Bulgaria), the living Balkan music classic; Edzyun Yechik (Japan), a Zen monk from the Rinzai school, who performs meditative music on his bamboo flute.
This year, during their second visit to the festival, the French group Red Cardell performed together with Hurtopravtsi.
Oleh Skrypka hopes that next year’s Country of Dreams 2007 will feature Robert Plant’s legendary Led Zeppelin and Ukrainian groups from the Diaspora. Work has started with the noted Toronto-based music festival, the Golden Maple, which is organized by Ukrainian Canadians. Other new features include ethnic DJs with a specially equipped dance floor, and choirs. Military brass bands will also perform Cossack marches.
