HOMIN

“HOMIN,” an ethnographic choir. Formed in Kyiv in 1969, it met unofficially in various locations and on the banks of the Dnipro River. It promoted folk songs, holidays, and customs: koliadky (Christmas carols), shchedrivky (New Year’s songs), vesnianky (spring songs), the holiday of Kupalo, and others. It was a milieu where the Ukrainian intelligentsia gathered. Patriotic sentiments were spread here, and samvydav (samizdat) was circulated. The choir sang at the Taras Shevchenko monument on May 22 , for which its members faced various forms of discrimination. The choir’s permanent director, Leopold Yashchenko, a Candidate of Arts, was expelled from the Union of Composers in 1971 for “ideological errors committed in the leadership of the choir,” and the choir itself was disbanded for being nationalistic. In 1984, former members of the choir began to gather again in the alleys of Hydropark, and from 1985, in the “Kyivmetrobud” House of Culture. In 1988, the choir reclaimed its name, “Homin.” It was the first in Kyiv to publicly perform the national anthem, “Shche ne vmerla Ukraina” (Ukraine Has Not Yet Perished). It participated in mass demonstrations and rallies for the affirmation of independence. The choir is a true living treasury of folk song creativity. L. Yashchenko was a 1993 laureate of the Taras Shevchenko National Prize.