Vasyl Lytvyn

Vasyl Lytvyn was a bandurist, Honored Artist of Ukraine, founder of the Kobzar Union of Ukraine, and co-founder of the Stritivka School of the Art of the Kobzar. He was born on June 4, 1941 in the Kirovohrad region. He and his brother Mykola studied at the Krolevets Vocational College, where they took up the bandura. Mykhailo Biloshapko, the leader of an amateur artistic group at the weaving factory in Krolevets, was their teacher.

Thanks to his bandura playing, he was accepted at the Glière Music College in Kyiv, where he studied for three years and sang in the Skylark student choir. With his a cappella group, he toured the “Shevchenko places” (places associated with the life of Ukrainian bard Taras Shevchenko), performed in dormitories, and frequently interacted with the creative intelligentsia.

When his brother Mykola transferred to the Ternopil Music College, Vasyl remained alone in Kyiv. He abandoned his studies for lack of funding and moved to Chernihiv to work in the philharmonic orchestra; a year later he moved to Ternopil.

The Lytvyn brothers were fired for their “nationalist” views and repertoires and surveilled by the KGB for many years. They were arrested, sent to the army as punishment, and banned from their profession. It was only after Alla Horska and Vasyl Stus intervened that the Lytvyns were given work in a village house of culture in the Kyiv region.

In 1969, after Lytvyn performed in an enormously successful kobzar concert at the Opera Theater, he and Mykola began to perform more concerts. They traveled as a duet not only within Ukraine, but also abroad. The brothers’ repertoire was well received by listeners, but not the KGB, and they were both fired for the overly national character of their compositions. They returned to the village and again began working at the house of culture in the village of Hrebeni along the Dnipro south of Kyiv.

Everything changed when the Soviet Union collapsed. The Lytvyns began performing, writing, and singing their own songs. In 1989, Vasyl and his wife Antonina Lytvyn founded the Stritivka School of the Art of the Kobzar.