Ukrainian folk music

In the 20th century numerous ethnographic and folkloric musical ensembles were established in Ukraine and gained popularity.

Among the most popular exponents of traditional Ukrainian folk singing in the modern era are Nina Matviyenko and Raisa Kyrychenko.

Ensemble singing in three and occasionally four-part harmony was one of the features of traditional village music in Ukraine.

It was supported in the Soviet period in opposition to church music, as village song was viewed by the authorities as being more proletarian.

In the 20th century, popular operatic singers like Modest Mencinsky and Solomea Krushelnycki included Ukrainian folk songs in their concert performances.

Notable choral conductors include Olexander Koshetz, Wolodymyr Kolesnyk, Nestor Horodovenko, Dmytro Kotko.

In the 20th century the vocal-instrumental tradition has grown into a movement where ensembles and whole choirs sing to their own accompaniment on these instruments.

The bulk of the ethnic Ukrainian population lived in a village setting and did not share the urban culture of the city-based elite that controlled the country.

Publications in the new science of organology were undertaken by Hnat Khotkevych with his 1930 monograph "Musical instruments of the Ukrainian people".

Significant contributions to the study of Ukrainian organology and performance have been done by both Russian and Polish ethnomusicologists such as Alexander Famintsyn and Stanislaw Mzrekowski.

Through the interaction with the Eastern European Jewish community, Ukrainian folk songs such as "Oi ne khody Hrytsiu" composed by singer Marusia Churai have been introduced into North American culture as "Yes my darling daughter" (sung by Dinah Shore).

In time the genre of folk-inspired pop music became significant, particularly inspired by the popularity of the Belarusian group known as Pesniary.

These lines were from a Ukrainian and Cossack folk song referenced in a novel by Mikhail Sholokhov, And Quiet Flows the Don.

While it is primarily a spiritual in the style of the African American folk music of late nineteenth century,[2][3] the Ukrainian-Canadian composer and singer Alexis Kochan has suggested that some part of Gershwin's inspiration may have come from having heard the Ukrainian lullaby, Oi Khodyt Son Kolo Vikon (A Dream Passes By The Windows) at a New York City performance by Oleksander Koshetz's Ukrainian National Chorus in 1929 (or 1926).