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worldclassmusic.live presents:
MARYNA KRUT
from Ukraine,
Live in Evanston for the first time!
doors 7pm / showtime 7:30pm
Maryna plays the bandura, aunique Ukrainian national plucked-string folk instrument that combines the acoustic principles of both the lute and the harp. Steeped in her country’s traditional music, Maryna now incorporates some non-traditional elements into her playing, using it both as a solo instrument and to accompany her powerful singing.
The Russian invasion of Ukraine transformed Maryna from working as a performer, modernizing a beautiful tradition of music, to testifying to the world about the devastating war in her homeland.
These days, the 30-year-old musician leads a double life. From her temporary home in the west of Ukraine, she travels to the front lines of the war to perform for soldiers. And she also travels abroad to perform, relating what she has seen—and thanking audiences for their support of the Ukrainian people.
Maryna’s instrument, the bandura, has a long and singular history in Ukraine. When Maryna first heard the instrument’s sweet plucked strings, she had no idea of the bandura’s role in social justice and the persecution of its early players.
The bandura’s predecessor – the kobza, was long associated with itinerant blind musicians called Kobzars. The tradition of singing with the kobza developed in parallel as the Kozaks – freedom fighters for liberating Ukrainian lands from the Ottomans, Russians, and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. The Kobzars’ songs praised national heroes, and taught morals based on the Eastern Orthodox Church.
With origins as far back as the 1500s, Kobzars in the 1800s were predominantly blind men unable to do farm work who were taught music through apprenticeships. Under Tsarist and Soviet rule, bandura players—along with others promoting Ukrainian culture or calling attention to social injustice—were often oppressed, arrested, sent to die in the gulags, or murdered. Even today, in the Russia-occupied regions of Ukraine, bandurists hide their instruments for fear that Russian soldiers would target them.
Recognizing the power of her instrument, Maryna uses it to counter the Russian colonial narrative and uplift the spirits of the modern “Kozaks,” as many call Ukrainian soldiers today.