Julian Kytasty – Songs Of Truth: Music And Song From The Kobzar Tradition Of Ukraine (Smithsonian Folkways, 2025)
Smithsonian Folkways released Songs Of Truth: Music And Song From The Kobzar Tradition Of Ukraine, the latest album by Ukrainian American musician Julian Kytasty. The record appears in the label’s Sound Communities series.
The album centers on the kobzar tradition, in which blind bards traveled the Ukrainian countryside until the early twentieth century, carrying news and history. These performers told stories through song accompanied on the bandura, a plucked lute instrument closely identified with Ukraine. Kytasty presents historical epics alongside philosophical songs, satire, and dance pieces.
Kytasty, born to a Ukrainian family that settled in Detroit as refugees in 1949, learned bandura from his father, grandfather, and great-uncle. He later studied the repertoire and accompaniment in Ukraine with Heorhiy Tkachenko, a leading mid-century bandurist linked directly to the blind kobzari.
Julian Kytasty’s career spans performance, composition, and ensemble leadership. He serves as musical director of the New York Bandura Ensemble and founded Bandura Downtown, a decade-long East Village series for exploratory projects. He has recorded and toured as a soloist, with the Canadian group Paris To Kyiv, and with his Experimental Bandura Trio, collaborating with artists including John Zorn, Derek Bailey, Wu Man, Michael Alpert, Battuvshin, and Asim Kuzuluk.
The title track, the emotive and intimate “Про Правду (Song Of Truth),” traces to the late seventeenth century. Kytasty’s arrangement draws on a nineteenth-century transcription by Ostap Veresai, who was arrested after performing the song publicly following an appearance for the zar’s family in St. Petersburg. “It can sometimes be hard to tell the difference between truth and falsehood,” Kytasty notes, “and sometimes, those with power try to convince us that a lie is actually the truth.”
The recording also reflects the kobzar repertoire’s breadth, from “The Noblewoman” and “Savradym” to the epic “Captive’s Lament.” Kobzari maintained rural practices into the 1930s. However, many did not survive that decade, amid Stalinist repression and a state-imposed famine. The tradition continued in diaspora communities after World War II, with active bandura circles in Detroit, New York, Toronto, and other cities, a lineage that informs Kytasty’s work today.
Kytasty is scheduled to perform on Friday, September 26, at 7:30 p.m. at Joseph Strug Concert Hall, Fountain School of Performing Arts, Dalhousie University, in Halifax.
Songs Of Truth is the second release in Sound Communities, a collaboration between the Centre for Sound Communities at Cape Breton University and Smithsonian Folkways. The series spotlights artists whose work engages with the lands, waters, and peoples some North American indigenous groups call Turtle Island, with a focus on the territories known as Canada.
Buy Songs Of Truth: Music And Song From The Kobzar Tradition Of Ukraine.
Author: Tyler Bennet
