— Were there church services in your village?
Halyna Ivanivna: There was no church in our village. Our village belonged to Shevchenkovo, and I used to go there to confess when I was little; my father would send me.
— Do you remember the priest?
Halyna Ivanivna: He was respected. The people obeyed and feared him. He made them pray to God. We didn’t have a church, but we had a chapel in the cemetery, and my father was a starosta there. Once, during Zelenyi Sviatky (the Green Week, a spring season ritual), we were walking and cleaning there, and my brother Petro—he was sent to clean, too—found priest’s robes, put one on, took the censer, and began to “officiate” Baba Fanasia heard it and wondered what was going on. She peeked into the church, and there he is—my brother fooling around in the robe.
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—Did you go to the club for amateur performances?
Halyna Ivanivna: I did; I joined the club when I was little. I started performing when I was little (Holiana Kurochyna was young, and I was even younger when I was her maid of honor). My older sister came to see me perform. She was wondering how I was doing there. I played two roles—a peasant and a landlady—I was about to go on stage when my older sister Maria shouted out that we were robbed. They took everything that we had in the wedding chest.
—Were there performances and concerts in the club?
Halyna Ivanivna: Yes, concerts and plays. The plays were bigger at the time for some reason.
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—Did the blind men that sang in the club have their own ensemble?
Halyna Ivanivna: We had an ensemble of blind singers from the Ukrainian Association of the Blind in Zvenyhorodka. They worked there.
—Did the bandura players come to your village to play before collectivization?
Halyna Ivanivna: No, there was no such club at the time. During collectivization, the village council was being built; then we had a club, and later on it moved to the house of a family of dispossessed people. There was no club before the kolhosp.
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—When the kolhospy began, did the girls continue singing in the village neighborhoods (kutky)?
Halyna Ivanivna: Yes. On our way to work in the sugar beet fields, we would line up and sing. We also made dinner in one pot for all to eat.
