UKRAINE: Great Transformations is an archival platform of oral histories and recordings that capture the dramatic changes in the structure of Ukrainian peasant culture of the 1920s and 1930s, instrumental music, and the traditional practices of kobzars and lyre players. Recordings and research were conducted by the Kyiv NGO Center for the Study of Oral History and Culture in the 1990s under the stewardship and with the involvement of ethnomusicologist William Noll (USA).
Oral history
Interviews with older people about the transformations of peasant society that took place under the pressure of collectivization and the Holodomor of 1932-1933.
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Instrumental and vocal music
Interviews, expeditions, recordings of instrumental music, ritual chants from various ethnographic regions of Ukraine.
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Kobzari and lirnyky
Audio and video recordings of minstrelsy from the 1990s and interviews with them. Conversations and recordings of a new generation of musicians, fascinated by kobzarstvo and lyre-making, the idea of its preservation.
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The online platform UAgreattransformations.org is open to other private archives documenting artistic and socio-cultural practices of the 20th century in Ukraine.
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