Ukraine has a massive musical heritage. Songs that came down to us reflect different passages of the history of Ukraine, various moods of the people and tastes of specific eras.
Traditional ethnic Ukrainian music
Traditional ethnic Ukrainian music was written by native people that lived in different time periods and came from different social backgrounds. You can see that folk songs in Ukraine could have been divided into at least twenty categories. Among these categories there are carols, Chumatsji, rebel, lyric, ballades, Kupala, ritual, dancing, Cossack, historical, lullabies, patriotic, playful songs, etc.
Ukrainian folk music was accompanied by ethnic instruments, including original wind and stringed ones. Original wind instruments include trembita, sopilka, and surma, while the stringed ones are tsymbaly, kobza, and bandura.
Traditional Ukrainian wind instruments
One of the most astonishing wind instruments is trembita. It is a long wooden alpine horn used by people that lived in the Carpathian Mountains. These people were called Hutsuls, and they used trembita as a means of communication in order to inform people living around them on long distances about deaths or happy occasions like wedding.
Trembita is considered to be the longest wind instrument, as it can be as long as 13 feet.
Another interesting wind instrument of Ukraine is called sopilka. It belongs to the flute family. Sopilka is still very popular among people that play in folkloric assembles, as it is used there to imitate bird songs or other sounds from the nature.
Finally, you might wonder what surma is. Original wooden surma was used to play at funerals and weddings. It makes a piercing sound, which means that it can be used not only alone.
Folk Ukrainian stringed instruments
The first Ukrainian stringed instrument you should know about is called tsymbaly. Tsymbaly is close to the hammer dulcimer in the way it looks like and the way the musician plays it. Interesting is that strings are grouped together by 3, 4 or 5, and in order to sound good all the strings in each group have to be perfectly tuned in unison.
Tsymbaly were and still are used to play melodies together with sopilka, violin and basolia.
Kobza is another folk Ukrainian instrument that became most popular and known during the Cossack times in Ukraine. Back then people called kobzars played Cossack songs as well as rebel and pity songs on the streets. Kobza was also often played by blind people, according to the Ukrainian literature.
Bandura is a Ukrainian stringed folk instrument, the name of which in the 18th century was often used as a synonym of kobza. It had up to 60 strings and was played by kobzars as well. Later students of music academies were taught how to play banduras, unlike kobza that went in disuse.
Finally, as you see Ukrainians has a long history of folk music development on the territory of Kievan Rus and Ukraine later. Better understanding of the folk music background and the music instruments, you can get a better understanding of the world Ukrainians lived in.
