Saturday, Dec 8, 7:30 PM & Sunday, Dec 9, 2:00 PM
Hutsul Koliada and Music from the Carpathians
Winter songs, troista music with Koliadnyky from Kryvorivnia
Special guests: Julian Kytasty, Valera Zhmud and Eva Salina Primaca
Ivano-Frankivsk Museum, Ivano-Frankivsk

Yara Arts Group will present a theatre piece featuring the Koliadnyky, an ensemble of winter song singers from Kryvorivnia (a Ukrainian village in the Hutsul region of the Carpathian Mountains) and the explosive Lemon Bucket Orkestra the Ukrainian-klezmer-gypsy-rag-tag-punk super band from Canada.

Koliada is a winter ritual that now coincides with Christmas, but is much older in origin and symbolism. The oldest songs are preserved in villages high in the Carpathian Mountains, where the Koliada is considered to be the most important event of the year. Some people believe that Spring and the harvest will not come to the village unless the songs are sung in every household. The songs are incantations that assume the magical power of words: “what is said, will be so.”