An explosion on April 26, 1986 at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine, which was then a part of the Soviet Union, resulted in the worst nuclear disaster in history. Massive amounts of radioactive material spewed into the atmosphere. At least 30 people were killed. A Chernobyl Exclusion Zone was established and today remains largely uninhabited with lingering radioactive contamination.
To mark the 40th anniversary of the disaster, a free concert is being held tomorrow night at Portland State University. The concert is being organized by Inna Kovtun, a Ukrainian singer, folklorist and ethnomusicologist who settled in Portland four years ago with her daughter after the Russian invasion of Ukraine. “Chornobyl: A Song Never Silenced” showcases the folklore and music traditions of Polissia, the region in northern Ukraine which is home to Chernobyl, or Chornobyl, as it’s known in Ukraine.
The concert features performances by Kovtun and her friends, Nadia Tarnowsky, a Ukrainian American Fulbright researcher in Ukrainian folk songs who lives in Cleveland; and Hanna Tishchenko, a Ukrainian folk singer who lives in Chicago. Kovtun and Tarnowsky join us for a discussion and a studio performance with Tishchenko.
Note: The following transcript was transcribed digitally and validated for accuracy, readability and formatting by an OPB volunteer.
Dave Miller: From the Gert Boyle Studio at OPB, this is Think Out Loud. I’m Dave Miller. It’s been almost 40 years since an explosion at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine, which was then a part of the Soviet Union. It led to the worst nuclear disaster in human history. To mark the 40th anniversary of that disaster, a free concert is being held tomorrow night at Portland State University. It was organized by Inna Kovtun, a Ukrainian singer, folklorist, and ethnomusicologist who settled in Portland four years ago after the full scale Russian invasion of Ukraine. We’re going to get a preview of the concert today. Inna Kovtun is here along with Nadia Tarnowsky. She is a Fulbright researcher in Ukrainian folk songs who lives in Cleveland. Hanna Tishchenko will be singing as well. She is a Ukrainian folk singer in Chicago. It’s great to have you on Think Out Loud.
Nadia Tarnowsky: Thank you so much for having us.
Hannah Tishchenko: Thank you.
Inna Kovtun: Hello.
Miller: Inna, I’d love to start with a song. What are you going to be singing for us first?
Kovtun: We will sing now spring song, because traditionally in Ukraine springtime for when we are calling spring, and we will call now not only spring, we will call goodness, love and happiness.
Miller: So Nadia, for those of us who don’t speak Ukrainian, can you give us a sense for what the lyrics are, what you’ll actually be saying?
Tarnowsky: Absolutely. So the song starts with, “Lord, let spring begin.” And I just quickly want to say in Cleveland when we had three weeks of subzero temperatures, women who knew this song came to me and said, we’re going outside and singing it because we’re done.
Miller: So you did that?
Tarnowsky: So we did, we sang this, we sang this exact song.
Miller: Did it work?
Tarnowsky: About a week later it went from 19 to 32. So…
Miller: OK, that’s not nothing.
Tarnowsky: In our own eyes that worked. So we want spring begins so that we can see another spring. But then interestingly enough, in this particular song, it says, “May those who love me and support me have good fortune. May those who fight against me….” the Ukrainians like to curse in sickness and so may they fall ill.
Miller: Wow. So it’s not just spring, please come, it’s also may my foes suffer.
Tarnowsky: Well, it’s less about foes suffering and more about may those who love me prosper. We’ll look at it from the positive way.
Miller: Fair enough. Let’s hear a song for spring.
[Singing]
Miller: That is almost literally an overwhelming sound. We’ve had a lot of bands and singers in this room since we’ve been, since this new studio opened, I don’t know, five, six years ago. I don’t think we’ve ever had singing of that physical power before. I could feel it in my chest. Is that an integral part of Ukrainian folk singing, like that sort of visceral power of the voice?
Tarnowsky: It really truly depends on the genre of song. For this particular one, spring is far away from you. She’s sleeping, like far away in another place. And so what people in Polisia will go, it’s not very mountainous, but they’ll go up on a hill or climb a tree or sometimes they’ll go on the roof of their houses and they’ll sing so that their song is closer to where spring is. But it still needs to be very loud, and it still needs to have what we call that hooping end, that “hoo” that you hear at the end because that sound is the one that pierces through the veil and reaches to where spring is. So some songs are louder than others, these are probably among the loudest.
Miller: Because spring needs to hear it and she’s not close.
Tarnowsky: Cause she needs to wake up.
Kovtun: Yeah, it’s really cold in Ukraine in this time, yes, and we need to call spring, and usually it was like girls’ tradition, it’s girls sang this song and powerful, sharp and call in spring, to call sun, to call warm, and to call like they wanted to go to party when it’s warm, yes.
Miller: Inna, can you, you mentioned Polisia, this state or province, this region that Chernobyl, which I’ve come to understand is the Ukrainian pronunciation for that city that it’s in. Can you describe Polisia?
Tarnowsky: I’ll just start. So Polisia is fascinating because it’s, first of all, the soil is very sandy, but there’s a lot of swamps. There’s a lot of forests. People spend a lot of time in the forest collecting mushrooms, berries. I mean, the forest is really part of their livelihood and their life, which also explains partly why the sound that you sing in Polisia has that really forward nasal kind of quality, because if you’re lost in the forest, you need to be able to make a sound that others will hear and then they can help come find you.
Very much folk music is so dependent on the land that it comes from, and different regions of Ukraine have very different kinds of sounds, and Polisia is one of the most forward, most strident, nasal, however, however you want to call it. And so, there’s so much magic in Polisia as well. There’s lots of stories about wood nymphs and forest spirits and beings, and this kind of leads into the next song that we have for you, various kinds of beings that live in water and trees and fields and it’s truly magical. And difficult to get to because of the sandiness of the soil, because it’s hard for big vehicles to drive in there and have any kind of mobility.
Miller: Inna, what was the reason? What was the idea behind the concert this weekend? Why did you want to create a concert in honor of Chernobyl?
Kovtun: I’m living in Portland four years, and to be honest, I organized a lot of concerts. It was dedicated like Christmas tradition and like summer tradition a lot, and I really wanted to do a concert with my colleague, with friends, because when I’m singing a lot, this is solo. It’s OK, but when you can hear polyphony and I called to Nadia, and [said] Nadia, what can we do? What is your schedule for springtime and, oh my goodness, this is Chernobyl in 40 years. Let’s do something unique. But for me, every Ukrainian song is unique, as you told before, you never hear in this studio this sound. It’s really unique sound for every region. And it’s like Nadia, OK, let’s do Chernobyl song and we are here and so happy Hannah and Nadia came to Portland and we will show tomorrow in concert and also tomorrow this polyphony.
Miller: My understanding is that you spent a lot of your life traveling all around Ukraine, listening to, preserving, recording Ukrainian folk songs, including going close to Chernobyl itself. What was your trip there like some number of years ago?
Kovtun: It was so nice dream, my trip to record the folklore song, to talk to old people who knows this song, to remember this song. I remember my last time when we went there, it was a woman who refused to leave this area, Chernobyl, and she left there, and she sang for us a lot of mermaid songs. And she was like, OK, we will sleep now and we spent night at her home. And she was like, OK, if you would love to go for outside, remember this is Rusalka on the tree, but if you would love to survive, you can sing this special song, and she sang us a rusalka song, and we will sing this song now for you.
Miller: Please.
Kovtun: It was my trip, yeah.
Miller: Well, so Nadia, what is rusalka?
Tarnowsky: What is rusalka? Great question. Rusalka is a deceased spirit of our ancestors. It’s someone who’s passed. And they become rusalka if they’re born in what is called Rusalka Week, which is the week after Pentecost by the church calendar. They’re someone who may have died before they were baptized, someone who has drowned, basically somebody who was gone before their time, usually depicted as female with unbraided hair and wearing just like a white shirt, so they’re not fully clothed.
There are so many layers in folk costumes that if you’re just with, and she just wears like the most underneath, like a shift is really what it looks like, like a white shift. And you can find them in fields and trees, and in rivers and streams and lakes, which is one of the reasons I try to avoid the use of the word mermaid because it brings up a very specific kind of image, where rusalki have legs. I mean, they’re basically human. And they’re humans who are related to us. And so in this the week of the rusalka is where it becomes our responsibility to take care of them and look after them.
Miller: And Inna, the song that you all are about to sing, this was sung to you by an older woman at Chernobyl when you went there, right?
Kovtun: Yes, yes, yeah.
[Singing]
Miller: We heard Inna Kovtun, Nadia Tarnowsky, and Hanna Tishchenko. They’re among the singers who are performing tomorrow night at Portland State University for a concert called “Chornobyl, A Song Never Silenced.”
Inna, I mentioned that you came to the U.S. about four years ago with your daughter to escape the war. I also mentioned that you were an ethnomusicologist and a folklorist, a collector of these songs. But some folklorists and ethnomusicologists, they’re not musicians themselves. They collect this, a hugely important sort of culture keeper role, but you’re also a singer, and I’m curious what it means to you to sing a song like you just sang in this new country thousands of miles away from your home?
Kovtun: I have been singing since I was 6 years old, and I think I fell in love to Ukrainian folklore songs with my first lullaby, my grand grandmother. And like my soul, my heart [is] dedicated to Ukrainian folklore, and all of my life I am on stage, like I love to sing. And just when I grew up I decided to be professional folklorist. And I went to college and after to national university and it was like music folklore where we sung, where we dance, and we learn not only about we learn history, we learn tradition, we learn songs, dance, everything. It’s not specific, I can only record or I can to sing. I can dance. Next time I will.
Miller: Next time.
Kovtun: Yeah.
Miller: Nadia, Inna mentioned that that song that you just sang for us together, that was from an old woman that she met in Chernobyl. How well known are these songs among young Ukrainians now? How much is this part of Ukrainian culture alive in Ukraine?
Tarnowsky: Hanna and I were having this conversation yesterday. Sadly, in the villages themselves, not very much anymore. It really is a dying tradition. In cities, it’s becoming reconstructed by folklorists. So a folklorist like Inna or any of the folklorists in the Ukraine right now, Inna Fet, so Alexi Zaides, all those others will have an event and say, we’re going to do Kupala, which is midsummer, or we’re going to do leading the rusalki, and then they’ll create the ritual within where they live. But the thing is that nobody in the villages anymore believes that if they don’t sing these songs, spring won’t come. If they don’t sing these songs, the rusalki won’t go with the other deceased ancestors. It’s just that belief isn’t there anymore.
Miller: Right, and that, so… But it’s interesting, you’re saying that that lack of belief leads to a lack of practice, as opposed to…
Tarnowsky: Well, if you don’t need it, yeah, right, why do it?
Miller: Well, because you care about it as culture itself, but you’re saying that that’s what’s maybe happening in the cities, but less so in rural areas.
Tarnowsky: Absolutely. And actually I believe in the cities now, there’s more of a cultural revival because of the full scale invasion and the war.
Miller: I was going to ask you about that. Do you think that if you see that your culture, your country, your people are being attacked, if there’s more interest in that culture?
Tarnowsky: Absolutely. And I think a lot of what’s happening now is all about preservation and proliferation. So one of the first things a colleague of mine at Indiana State University did was when the war started, she found an area, she found where people would give Ukrainian scholars bandwidth space to put their digital files in a building that’s not in Ukraine, because you can harbor all of your digital files on a hard drive in a building in Kiev. If that building gets bombed, all of your information is gone, but if you store that information on a hard drive in Indiana University, like it’ll be preserved. So there’s that preservation aspect of it and then the proliferation aspect.
So teaching workshops, like right now they do folk dancing in the metro in Ukraine on Wednesday nights, where people can folk dance in the metro and learn traditional folk dances and songs in the safety of being in the metro, and people come to them because there’s this thing now about, this is ours, this is important, and how do we remember our people? How do we remember our culture? We remember them by singing songs, by telling their stories, by dancing, by doing all those things that were dear to them.
Miller: What do you have for us next for a song?
Tarnowsky: This is a humorous song…
Kovtun: A humorous song, a fun song.
Miller: A humorous song, a fun song. OK.
Kovtun: About love.
Tarnowsky: It’s about a turtle dove who tells her fellow turtle dove to not let his eyes stray and look at other girls.
Miller: Just look at me.
Tarnowsky: Just look at me.
Miller: I’m enough.
Tarnowsky: Exactly. And this song actually goes with a dance, so we won’t do the dance, but there’s a dance that goes with it.
Miller: I’ll imagine it.
[Singing]
Miller: I loved that. Nadia, we just have about two minutes left. We heard a little bit of Inna’s story and doing this for her whole life. You grew up in Cleveland…
Tarnowsky: I did.
Miller:…as a daughter of a Ukrainian immigrant father. I imagine you were exposed to all kinds of music. What drew you to Ukrainian folk music? Why devote your life to this?
Tarnowsky: You would think Ukrainian diaspora children spend a lot of time in Ukrainian circles. We do Ukrainian folk dancing, church choir, Ukrainian Saturday school.
Miller: So you weren’t exposed to a lot of music?
Tarnowsky: I mean, what my siblings listened to, but yeah, not really. The thing that really did it for me was they have summer music camps, of course, Ukrainian music camps, and there was a woman from New Jersey. I initially thought I wanted to be an opera singer. There’s a woman from New Jersey who brought recordings of these women from the villages singing, and I just sat there and I couldn’t move. Like they took my breath away and I thought, I’ll forget opera. Like I want to sing like these ladies. There was just something about the way they sang. And so I just started, and this was while the Soviet Union was still in existence. So, like being able to find those things.
We got very lucky in the beginning of the ‘80s, there was this ability to have these recordings, ethnographic recordings from villages that were being put out on CD and disc and cassette at that time, which is very strange because before that, none of that existed. And so I was able to get access to those and just kept listening and listening and listening, which is how you learn these songs in the village anyway.
And that’s how I learned them. And when I actually got to meet the old women in person, I always say they’re singing rearranged all the molecules in my body and I felt like I couldn’t do anything else.
Miller: Nadia Tarnowsky, Inna Kovtun, and Hanna Tishchenko, thanks so much.
Tarnowsky: Thank you for having us. This has been a lot of fun.
Kovtun: Thank you very much.
Miller: You can see and hear “Chornobyl: Song Never Silenced” tomorrow night. Admission is free. It’s at Portland State University. There is more information on our website.
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