Gone are the days when a traditional Ukrainian instrument, bandura, was associated with blind minstrels. In the hands of 25-year-old Georgiy Matviyiv this bulky string lute can sound like a double bass, a guitar, a harp, a percussion instrument and even a vinyl disk played by a deejay.
He’s one of the few musicians in Ukraine on a mission to break from bandura’s epic history, which was preempted by kobza, a favorite instrument of Ukrainian Cossacks and blind musicians, or kobzari. Lyrical and heroic, their songs painted great historical moments and hard life of peasantry, similar to the poems by Ukraine’s greatest bard Taras Shevchenko, who is now also known as Great Kobzar.
Shevchenko’s barely noticeable portrait at the bottom of Matviyiv’s instrument is perhaps the only link between bandura’s rich legacy and its jazzy present. Dressed in plain jeans and a T-shirt instead of traditional vyshyvanka during his concerts, Matviyiv does have some folk songs in his repertoire but even they sound differently, sometimes like Spanish flamenco.
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