Women of Bandura Project Proposal

Abstract

The bandura, a large, lute-like instrument, is Ukraine’s national instrument and a symbol of resistance. The bandura developed from the kobza, a smaller lute-like instrument over the centuries. After the massacre of the kobzars – nomadic​,​ often blind​,​ musicians and storytellers who played the bandura or its predecessor – by the Soviets in the 1930s, the instrument was brought to the United States​​. Since then, ensembles have formed across the country, and bandura communities continue to this day. This project aims to explore modern Ukrainian American musical identity by digitizing musical programs from the Women’s Bandura Ensemble of North America (WBENA) from their founding in 2015 to today in an archive. This archive, powered by the Wax framework, will include recordings where available as well as tags for composers, country of origin, themes, tempo, genre, presence of religion, and language. The team will be working closely with a member of the ensemble for acquisition, publication, and context of the programs and will proceed in publication of this archive only with tacit approval from the Ensemble Board. This website will also include a section on the history of women playing the instrument, meditating on the intersection of gender, diaspora, and Ukrainian identity in a time in which that identity is under threat. 

 List of Participants 

  • Project Lead / Backend Developer / Assistant Researcher – Anastasia Hutnick 
  • Frontend Developer / (Internal) Dev-Ed Lead – Alex Millatmal 
  • Researcher / Assistant Content Editor / Development Shadow – Lini Radhakrishnan 
  • Researcher 2 / Content Editor / Social Media Specialist – Melissa McDonald   
  • WBENA Liaison – Teryn Kuzma

Enhancing the Humanities 

Brief History of the Bandura 

The bandura is a large wooden stringed instrument, played similarly to a harp or a lute, that is native to Ukraine. The instrument has typically fifty-five to sixty-five strings, though it may have as few as twenty in the Classical style (“About the Bandura”). It derives from its instrumental ancestor the kobza, a smaller, more lute-like instrument. The kobza has been prominent in Ukrainian culture since at least the 15th century, with mentions of a lute-like instrument as early as the 6th century (“The Bandura”). Through the kobza and bandura, musicians (typically blind men) would carry on Ukraine’s independent identity through songs of its folklore, history, Chumaks (merchant, typically of salt), Cossacks, and legends. Due to these instruments’ pivotal role in perpetuating Ukrainian culture, any group that would conquer Ukraine would attempt to suppress or restrict kobzars / bandurists (Berezutskaya, 498 – 502). 

In this vein, the Soviet Union targeted bandurists in the late 1920s to 1930s. In 1929, the Bolsheviks began the “purges”: shooting, imprisoning, and exiling several bandurists to Siberia for their “counterrevolutionary” efforts in performing traditionally Ukrainian historical and folk songs. In 1930 – 1932, many bandurists died along with millions of other Ukrainians during the artificial famine, the Holodomor, enacted by the Soviets (Berezutska 55). Throughout the 1930s, Soviet persecution of bandurists continued, including the famous 1935 kobzari conference in Kharkiv, in which the Soviets executed the attendees (“The Bandura”). As a result, some bandurists fled to Western Europe and then the United States. In Detroit, Michigan, the first North American kapelia (ensemble) began from these Ukrainian emigrants. From here, the North American history of the bandura officially began (Ostashewski 126). 

Ostashewki argues that although the bandura is a “traditional” instrument, it has been retranslated, even physically reconstructed, and is now played in new contexts, with new repertoires, and by women. She goes on to say, “its nationalist image essentially portrays what it means to be Ukrainian” (Ostashewski 128). In order to justify his invasion of Ukraine, Vladimir Putin said “it should be noted that Ukraine actually never had stable traditions of real statehood” (Hayda).   

The Women’s Bandura Ensemble of North America 

​​​​​This project will publish the programs of the Women’s Bandura Ensemble of North America (WBENA) from its founding in 2015 to the present on its own dedicated website. The ensemble is comprised of twenty-one women from seven different cities across the United States and Canada. The WBENA was chosen to examine the song choices of a North American bandura ensemble as well as the song choices of an all-female bandura ensemble, as the bandura is largely considered a male-coded instrument due to the kobzars traditionally being male (Ostashewski 143).  

Meanwhile in Ukraine, the Soviets institutionalized the instrument by only allowing bandura to be played in the conservatory. In so doing, the bandura would not perpetuate Ukrainian cultural sovereignty, but instead would be used to perform Neo-Classical music. Women became the main performers of this style, as men playing the bandura at this time would have risked persecution. After Ukraine became independent in 1991, Ukrainian folklore and tradition became a cornerstone for its reclaimed national identity. This focus on tradition can intertwine strongly with gender expectations, especially with the bandura. At this time, while women were playing the bandura, many people expected women to follow certain themes, such as courtship, seasons, nature, and work in the fields, and not play dumy – or epic poetry. Opportunities for women to play bandura beyond the conservatories or coeducational camps were scarce (Ostashewski). 

Today, the bandura endures and is played across the world by people of all genders in multiple styles. Yet, the tradition of bandura speaks to the enduring strength of Ukraine’s identity and sovereignty. The instrument survived countless invasions and spread throughout the globe. The bandura connects people of Ukrainian descent to their heritage, and continues to pass down Ukraine’s unique history to this day.   

Overview of Project 

For this project, PDFs for each program will be uploaded to the site and more information provided on each document and song performed via Wax, a Jekyll based website framework. The website will contain collections for both the Programs and Songs generated by a csv file with relevant information obtained by the project’s Researchers. Wax was selected because it is free to use, can be deployed for free through GitHub Pages, and is lightweight given the project’s relatively small file footprint.  

This framework fits the four questions of minimal computing posed by Roopika Risam and Alex Gil. Minimal computing refers to the Digital Humanities concept that a project’s software should reflect only what the project requires. Given that the team has three months to finish phase one of this project, we would do well to work within a set of clear boundaries without excess features to slow down our progress. For context, the four questions of minimal computing are “What do we need?”, “What do we have?”, “What do we need to prioritize?”, and “What are we willing to give up?” For this project, the team needs to be able to relatively quickly assemble two small static databases and generate pages for each item on both databases. The team has a Project Lead who is familiar with the Wax framework as well as sixteen PDF documents of concert programs. The team must prioritize both efficiency in their timelines and clear and open communication with the WBENA. Given Wax’s quick ability to generate pages and deploy via GitHub Pages, sharing the results of the site will not be difficult. Finally, the project does not require an expensive, dynamic database given that the ensemble performs a few times per year, so we are willing to give up that functionality. 

For each program, the website will provide a PDF that the user can flip through as well as the date(s), location(s), performers, and if applicable collaborators. Each program will also list the songs performed (roughly 10 – 15 per performance), each of which will have their own page detailing where applicable the composer, the year / period published, the country of origin, language, genre(s), tempo, lyrics, and themes.  

Though the information tags are considered guidelines for the site’s database, the team will not be beholden to standardization in song identification where necessary. A song may not have one origin, may have nuances in its themes that cannot be replicated, etcetera. While the Wax framework requires some efficiency, the project requires the team to avoid reductiveness and respect the nonscalable aspects of songs harkening from a centuries-old oral tradition (Rawson and Muñoz). As such, the team will craft the csv structure at the end of the Research Phase, constructing the table to reflect the team’s findings.  

The first phase will focus on deploying the website with two programs and respective song pages populated as a minimum viable product. Throughout the process, the team will meet with the WBENA and present wireframes of the webpages for their approval. The team will draft an agreement that assures WBENA of transparency at every stage of the project to avoid any inaccuracies/ misrepresentations in the content and will include decision making processes as well as conflict resolution strategies to ensure the project stays on track. As Christen and Anderson advocate in “Toward Slow Archives,” the team will focus on their relationship with the community of origin (the WBENA), ensuring that the ensemble has the right to refusal concerning what is published about their repertoire, their history, and their performances (107). The team aims to collaborate with the ensemble rather than to speak for them.  

Environmental Scan 

Currently, we have not found a digital archive of a series of programs with background information on each song performed, regardless of whether these programs were for a bandura ensemble. The existing site for the WBENA presents the history of the bandura, information on its founding, introduction to its members, and a brief log of their past and upcoming performances. The closest archive to Bandurapedia at this moment appears to be the website for the CD recording of the bandura concert “Songs of Truth” by Julian Kytasty. For this website, The Word & Image Studio in partnership with The Centre for Cape Breton Studies at Cape Breton University published a brief history of the bandura, program notes and lyrics in Ukrainian and English for each of the songs on the CD, a brief biography for Julian Kytasty, videos of his performances, educational materials for bandurists, and a blog for the site’s ongoing development. Bandurapedia, like “Songs of Truth”, seeks to provide more context to songs played on the bandura by a particular artist / group.  

Unlike Songs of Truth, Bandurapedia has a larger scope and seeks to encourage more interactivity between the songs covered. Bandurapedia ultimately seeks to record the songs and program information for each of the WBENA’s performances. With this larger performance timeframe, Bandurapedia’s song page structure would focus more on providing points of categorical comparison – such as themes, genre, origin, etc. – than Songs of Truth’s brief history integrated with personal reflection in a singular editorial paragraph. However, Songs of Truth’s more familiar tone and content reminds the team to avoid being too clinical in its song summaries and to leave room for each song’s complex history.  

Besides Songs of Truth, the three types of websites most similar in concept to Bandurapedia fall under the categories of Bandura History, Program Archives, and Music Archives. Bandura ensembles – such as the Ukrainian Bandurist Chorus of North America, the Hryhory Kytasty Cleveland School or Bandura, and the WBENA – typically include brief histories of the instrument and its players, from its cultural importance to Ukraine, development, arrival in North America, and current classifications. Given that the WBENA already provides a brief history of the bandura on its website, the team will seek permission to include links to the WBENA site for information on the history to avoid duplication. Any additional context required will be either provided on the song pages or a more general About page. 

Most Program Archives, such as the ones belonging to the London Symphony Orchestra or university music programs such as the University of Alabama’s School of Music, contain a digitized version of the program arranged by date and musical genre. Unlike Bandurapedia, they do not contain any song information that is not already provided by the program, although the London Symphony Orchestra includes an article pertaining to each song in its program. However, given the size of the organizations’ collections and number of resources that such creating an archive would entail, these archives’ simplicity is by design. The University of Alabama’s archive in particular is well designed for ease of access and provides the user with programs from twenty different genres and ensembles. Bandurapedia, on the other hand, is designed to provide more context to the existing programs, dedicating its resources only to this goal. For this reason, Bandurapedia exists as a separate website rather than as a tab on an existing site. 

Similarly, most music archives, such as those found in the Library of Congress or Internet Archive, exist to provide context and/or audio recordings for specific songs or albums. Unless the album is itself archived on the website, such as Ola Herasymenko Oliynyk – Ukrainian Bandura in Concert in the Internet Archive, each song is typically isolated. Context provided can vary from only providing topics to the Library of Congress’s more robust classification system, providing information such as title, performers, genres, topics, notes, location, language, etc. However, the tags provided to the songs can be vague, such as its collection which contains over one thousand items or topics such as “Ukrainian Americans,” which contains various media and topics not strictly related to the piece itself. Again, given the scope and resources of these archives, the broad categorization is part of its design.  Bandurapedia, like the Library of Congress, seeks to provide clear background information about each song, but also will provide more connections between the songs and performances. 

Work Plan 

Overview 

The first phase of the project serves to deploy a minimum viable product version of the site. Over the Spring semester (roughly mid-February to early-May 2025), the team will launch the website on GitHub Pages containing two program pages and pages for each song within those programs. An About section will also be provided with a brief overview of the project, any necessary historical or cultural context, names of the contributors, and links to the WBENA site for any relevant information such as the instrument’s history (subject to approval from the ensemble). 

The second phase of the project involves adding the rest of the programs and their songs into the already existing framework. The Project Lead will add the rest of the Program PDFs and songs to the framework, not including the context. This phase is intended to be completed by the end of May 2025.  

The final phase of the project will include adding the rest of the context to the Song Pages. Only the Project Lead will be working on this phase of the project with 14 additional programs containing songs to research; however, the Ensemble does often keep most of the same repertoire from performance to performance. Given these factors, this phase will likely conclude by 2026.  

The Project Lead will stay on to aid the Ensemble in running the site after these phases end. The Ensemble will also have full access to the site’s GitHub repository. 

Below are the steps to Phase 1 of the project: 

February to March 2025 – Song Research and Development Education Design 

The first month of the project is dedicated to compiling notes for the two programs and approximately 20 songs, split amongst the two researchers. For programs, the researchers will record the name of the concert, its location(s), the date(s), any collaborators if applicable, the performers’ names, the song titles, any other notes, and the PDF file path. For songs, the researchers will record where available the title, composer, original year or period, language, location of origin, genre, themes, tempo, description, YouTube link, lyrics, and soloists. The researchers will also be free to record any other relevant or interesting information that they find for the song. Given that the team will unlikely be able to read in Ukrainian, interviews with the WBENA will be essential for this research. The WBENA has generously offered to share their records available on google drive with the team which will be an invaluable source for research. The wireframes will be created, the group agreement will be shared and the team will seek approval from WBENA within this period.   

Late March to Early April 2025 – Backend Development  

Towards the end of the Research step, the Backend Developer will begin assembling the csv structure that will power the site. Towards the end of the Backend Development period, the Backend Developer will work with the Frontend Developer to confirm the information provided and needed for the user interface. The Developers will also generate and briefly deploy sample pages at this time to ensure that the csv is connected properly. 

Mid-March to April 2025 – Frontend Development 

As a part of research and development, in coordination with the WBENA, the Frontend Developer and Project Lead will produce wireframes for the WBENA liaison review. On receipt of the wireframe approvals, some tasks of the Frontend development will be initiated and run parallel to the Backend development, with use of placeholder data. 

Towards the end of the Backend development step, the Frontend Developer will add higher-fidelity to the site UI/UX, with the Researchers aiding in finding images and other material for site content. The Frontend Developer will also collaborate with the Backend Developer to ensure that all the information required for this design is available to them. The Frontend Developer will then collaborate with the Content Editor to incorporate the content for the site. The Frontend Developer will work under a model of deploying often to production, to ensure that the site behaves as expected. 

April 2025 – Women’s Bandura History Research 

At this time, the team will turn their attention to researching the history of Women playing Bandura to publish on its own page at the request of the WBENA. This time has been chosen since the WBENA will have finished their March concert series, and the team will have assembled the back-end for the song pages. This research will be inserted into its own static page featured in the About tab. 

May 2025 – Revisions, Testing, and Deployment 

After the completion of Frontend Development, the team will take the WBENA through the MVP of the site and resolve any edits provided. Once the WBENA is comfortable that the outcome has stayed true to the approved wireframes and okayed any minor deviations, the team will test all pages and links locally before deploying the site and testing all pages and links publicly for bugs or errors.   

Phase 1 Note 

Throughout the development process, we will have weekly check-ins with our liaison Teryn, and we aim to meet with the Ensemble Board at least once per phase / month. We will defer to the Ensemble Board’s schedule as they are preparing for a show in April. We will also have a standing agreement with the WBENA outlining expectations for both sides. In addition, the Ensemble will have full visibility into each phase of development as well as all our documents.   

Staff / Partners 

Project Lead / Backend Developer / Assistant Researcher – Anastasia Hutnick 

The Project Lead will keep track of the team’s progress and assist to ensure that they stay on schedule and will act as point of contact for the WBENA. The Backend Developer will create a basic csv-based infrastructure for the site from the Researchers’ findings and provide the internal database from which the Frontend Developer will create the site design. She has previous experience with the Wax framework as well as HTML, CSS, and GitHub Pages deployment. She will mentor the Researchers in creating the tables in Wax, will assist the Researchers where possible, and also seeks to learn Search Engine Optimization to benefit the website. 

Frontend Developer / (Internal) Dev-Ed Lead – Alex Millatmal 

The Frontend Developer will be responsible for the aesthetic design of the website and will program the graphical user interface (GUI) using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. She will coordinate with the Backend Developer to ensure that the infrastructure is optimized for the GUI. 

Alex will also take on designing low-lift learning opportunities for the team members who want to shadow development, in a way that builds upon and incorporates existing workstreams. Examples include: sequencing work to include well-defined, beginner- friendly implementation tickets; pair/group code reviews; pairing sessions; and further resource/reading curation. 

Researcher / Assistant Content Editor / Development Shadow – Lini Radhakrishnan 

The researcher will refer to the shared WBENA google drive contents and any other research sources to compile notes on the programs and songs. Lini will also assist the Content Editor/ Social Media Specialist in copyediting the site content and content creation for outreach. In order to understand the application of the Wax framework and the user interface, Lini will shadow the developers and develop allocated portions of the code.   

Researcher 2 / Content Editor/Social Media Specialist – Melissa McDonald  

The second researcher will also refer to the shared WBENA Google drive contents and any other research sources and compile notes on the programs, songs, and women in bandura. They will also write social media posts and any outreach correspondence with assistance from Lini. They will shadow the backend and frontend developers. 

WBENA Liaison – Teryn Kuzma 

Teryn Kuzma is a current member and Concertmaster of the Women’s Bandura Ensemble of North America. She will serve as liaison between the Ensemble Board and the Project Team. The Team will ensure consistent communication with the Ensemble Board and will not publicize any material without their approval. 

Final Project and Dissemination 

The final project will be deployed as its own GitHub Pages site and will be shared on the WBENA website. The Project Lead will coordinate publicization on social media with WBENA and will also reach out to organizations such as the Ukrainian Museum in Manhattan and the Ukrainian History Education and Cultural Center of New Jersey for them to share on their sites and social media.  

Within the CUNY network, the Project Lead will also reach out to the Ethnomusicology department at the Graduate Center and the Russian, Eastern European, and Eurasian Studies scholars at CUNY to share the site through their internal communications and social media as well.  

 

Works Cited 

“15 December Programme.” London Symphony Orchestra, 2024, https://www.lso.co.uk/15-december-programme/ 

“About the Bandura.” The Hryhory Kytasty Cleveland School of Bandura. 2021, https://www.hkbanduraschool.org/about-the-bandura 11 December 2024 

Berezutska, Maryna, “The Development of Bandura Music Art Between the 1920s and 1940s.” Journal of Ethnology and Folkloristics, 2020, vol. 14, no. 2, pp. 44 – 66, https://doi.org/10.2478/jef-2020-0015. 11 December 2024 

Berezutskaya, Marina. “The History of Bandura Art or How Bandura Became the Musical Symbol of the Ukrainian Nation.” National Identities, vol. 23, no. 5, 2021, pp. 491–509, https://doi.org/10.1080/14608944.2020.1779207. 

Christen, K. and J. Anderson. “Toward slow archives.” Arch Sci vol. 19, pp. 87–116 2019. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10502-019-09307-x  

Hayda, Julian. “War isn’t dampening artists’ determination to revive Indigenous Ukrainian music.” NPR. 2022, https://www.npr.org/2022/04/17/1093264993/war-isnt-dampening- artists-determination-to-revive-indigenous-ukrainian-music13 . February 2025 

Herasymenko-Oliynyk, Ola. “Ukrainian Bandura in Concert.” Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/ola-herasymenko-oliynyk-ukrainian-bandura-in- concert_202411. 11 December 2024  

Kytasty, Julian and Marcia Ostashewski. “Songs.” Songs of Truth: Music and Song from the Kobzar Tradition. 2015, http://soundcommunities.org/archives/songs-of-truth/index.html.  

11 December 2024. 

Ostashewski, Marcia. “Women Playing the Bandura: Challenging Discourses of Nationhood.” Ethnologies, vol. 23, no. 1, July 2001, pp. 123–45. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.comlogin.aspxdirect=true&db=hus&AN=510040971&site=ehost-live.  

“Program Archive – School of Music.” University of Alabama School of Music. 2024. https://music.ua.edu/program-archive-2/. 11 December 2024 

Rawson, Katie and Trevor Muñoz, “Against Cleaning” Debates in the Digital Humanities 2019, ed. Matthew K. Gold and Lauren F. Klein. 2019 

Risam, Roopika and Alex Gil. “Introduction: The Questions of Minimal Computing.” Digital Humanities Quarterly Vol 16.2, 2022 

“The Bandura.” Ukrainian Bandurist Chorus of North America. 2021, https://www.bandura.org/ bandura-history11 December 2024 

​​“Women’s Bandura Ensemble of North America.” 2023,  https://www.banduristka.org/. 11 December 2024.​​​