He was a chairman of the Kyiv Kobzar Guild (Kobzarskyi Tsekh), bandura,[1][2][3] known as a master player of folk musical instruments, and as an artist and poet.

The Kobzar guild he co-created revived traditional performance practices such as street-performance (busking) (Ukrainian: кобзарювання).

Much of the repertoire, such as the para-religious psalms and kants, which were previously suppressed in Soviet times as well as the epic form known as dumy were also reintroduced.

(Hey, at the black sea), by Art-Veles In 1980 Budnyk began to learn to play the bandura and the traditional kobza legacy with Heorhy Tkachenko with a small group of contemporaries: Volodymyr Kushpet, Victor Mishalow, Mykola Tovkaylo and others.

Budnyk had many students of the bandura and hurdy-gurdy, including the well-known film producer Oles Sanin, Oleksandr Kit as well as performers Taras Kompanichenko, Taras Sylenko, Ruslan Kozlenko, Pavlo Zubchenko, and Ivan Kushnir.