KUPALA 2010 (Summer Solstice)

Kupala is a Ukrainian celebration of summer solstice, which also couples with a midsummer's night dream, and has its origins in the original pagan festival (Kupalo was the god of Love and Harvest). Christianity appropriated it and combined it with the Nativity of St. John the Baptist. Somehow Summer Solstice is also appropriated as a significant part of the celebration as the longest day... the ultimate triumph of light over darkness awaiting the return of increasingly dark days as the earth swings into the next arc of the orbit when night regains its ascendancy.

At the Ukrainian Sports Center on Second Avenue in the East Village, Virlana Tkacz, Founding Director of the Yara Arts Group, created an evening of Kupala 2010, complete with entertainment, rituals, love potions, and a surprise guest. There were also two installation pieces: Infinity by Marybeth Ward, and Kupala, North Collins, NY by Andrea Wenglowskyj. It was an evening full of fun, and for me, a revelation of Ukrainian lore, which I have been investigating in preparation of creating new work.

All the women fashioned garlands that they wore for the celebration, which originally once meant the availability of the young girls for marriage. Everyone wrote a fortune that was fastened to a tree, and all were given candles.

The program began with a film Dora Was Dysfunctional by Andrea Odeznyska which was a beautiful, achingly funny account of the romantic life of a Ukrainian woman in L.A.
Cruel Love Songs were featured by Odarka Polanskyj-Stockert singing as she accompanied herself on an electric harp, supported by Redentor Jimenez on guitar. The delivery was soft and undulating, alluring and charming. "On the Night of St. John's Eve" was an evocative poem by Olena Jennings, enthusiastically received by the revelers of midsummer's night.

One of the highlights of the evening were the poems read by Bob Holman with the brilliant Bandura performer Julian Kytasty. Featured was a new poem about the Solstice, "Midsummer Night~My Heart is a Real Thing", performed by Bob Holman in association with Julian's intimate and mesmeric music. There was a casual presence in the execution that was attractive and sensitive to the moment.

A surprise celebrity was violinist Valeriy Zhmud who performed with the "technical support" of his iPod "ensemble," selections that were even more electrifying than his electrified fiddle. His work was dazzling and fearless, the music exploding from the strings with bravura and passion.

The Songs and Rituals were performed by a group, Girls, Girls, Girls, made up of Laryssa Czebiniak, Lycyna Kuncio, Olena Martynyuk, and Meredith Wright. Their singing created a sense of festivity during the candle lighting/floating ceremony and the distribution of Olesia Lew's love potion.

Closing out the program was The Debutant Hour, a girl's trio that was inventive, humorous, and lively. At the end they sang Happy Birthday to to Virlana, who is the spirit that drives and defines these wonderful events. As the audience dispersed, we each picked our fortune off of the tree. Mine was that "something interesting would happen to you under a bridge." I'm still waiting, but it clearly was more evocative than most fortune cookie messages.

As I reflect on the spirit of Kupala and my experience of cultural nuances that influence my work, I understand that the Ukrainian culture permeates the East Village, and the cultural energies of other groups intersect with the Ukrainian in forging an emerging identity that continually shifts and adjusts to the needs and vagrancies of time, place, and peoples. The Ukraine serves as the gateway to Russia from the West and the entrance to Europe from the East, assimilating the great traditions of the world into its own unique vision and art. Wandering around the Ukrainian Museum in the East Village, I began to see the Ukraine as a metaphor for humanity's struggle for freedom. I am told that the word Kozak (Cossack) came from an Arabic word that meant "free man".

The Ukrainian culture in the context of the East Village assimilates and distributes its energies into emerging identities that embrace the great traditions and cultures of the world. That may be the source of potency that makes the East Village so vibrant. It is East and West and South and North, pinpointed with an intensity that makes everyone a vital constituent in an an emerging cultural personality.

Sudden Fiction: The Ferry & Walt Whitman

He stood at the rear of the Staten Island Ferry, looking through the rain at the buildings of Manhattan. Hadn't Walt Whitman ridden the Ferry to Staten Island a hundred years earlier? What had Whitman seen? Somehow his words seemed to permeate the air around him --- each drop of rain measured itself to the irregular rhythms of his verse:  

What is then between us? What is the count of scores or hundreds of years between us? What ever it is, it avails not --- distance avails not, and place avails not, I too lived, Brooklyn of ample hills was mine, I too walk'd the streets of Manhattan Island and bathed in the waters around it, I too felt the curious abrupt questionings stir within me... Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged, Missing me one place search another, I stop somewhere waiting for you. 

 At last, he thought, I have found you. You ride these waters with me, as you always have. I was not silent before --- therefore I couldn't hear your songs in the air. When I looked at Manhattan, I strained to see myself, so I looked right through you. But you are here, Walt Whitman, your laughter and your tears comfort me. I feel you in the rain --- I hear you in the night. 

The ferry swung around Governor's Island. The Statue of Liberty could be seen through the rain, and the rain had provided him privacy on the deck. He roamed from side to side as if he was afraid he would miss something important that he should see. But there was little to see. The night and the rain were like huge curtains draped around him. 

The Statue of Liberty could be discerned as through a haze and looked more painted than real. He wondered how it could seem so beautiful from the front. When he had seen it from the New Jersey Turnpike, it looked as if you could wade out to it from the New Jersey Shore. He remembered also that you looked at it over the roofs of dirty old buildings and several junk yards. He thought this must demonstrate how all things beautiful have their ugly side, but he felt this reasoning was more a word game than the truth. 

Soon the Ferry was past the Statue and was suddenly suspended in time it seemed --- gliding on air --- for some unexplained reason the engines had been turned off and the ferry slid silently and smoothly through the darkness. To the side of the Ferry a barge floated with smoking garbage loaded on its surface. The rain had evidently extinguished the flames. 

The sound of a deep horn made him cast his glance on the other side of the Ferry. A large tanker moved by--- like a huge ghost ship --- ablaze with lights, the loading booms looked like ancient abandoned masts. 

The engines of the Ferry began to throb again abruptly, and the vibrations shook the frame of the ferry with a constant caress---as a mother gently shakes the cradle to coax her infant to sleep. He realized the engines must have been cut to permit the tanker to pass by the Ferry. 

As the Ferry cut an arc in the water in preparation to land at Staten Island, he looked into the sky. He couldn't be sure whether there were tears in his eyes or whether it was just the rain, but he felt an ineffable sadness, for he knew he would miss this. 

He looked at everything for the last time, and he was aware that there was too much to be seen at a single glance. He was sorry he had failed to look at everything with eyes that understood---until now. This final moment only impressed upon him how much he had missed, and how much more he would miss after he was gone. He stepped off the Ferry wondering if Walt Whitman had stopped, waiting for him somewhere up ahead.

The Bill of Rock

Having known Bill Rayner for many years, I had never heard him perform in his true setting of a rock band conceived in New Paltz in the 80s and still going strong. I had known him as a doctoral student who created inventive concoctions on the Fairlight, and composed contemporary music of all styles and genre. I knew of his background in Rock, but I didn't know it. At that time for me, he was the Bill of Composition and Contemporary Music. I knew he played a mean guitar, but I never really heard him play.

Recently he performed a gig at Wicked Willy's, and I had the good fortune to be there for a non-stop two-hour feast of music from the heart and soul of Last Generation with Billy Rayner (guitar, vocals), Dave Ostram (bass), and Mark Flynn (drums).

Billy has an immediacy and energy that infuses the space with electricity. His music is outstanding, much more insightful than the crowd at Wicked Willy's expects, but there were a number who realized that Last Generation is something special. Of course there are the others who don't care, as long as the music is loud and constant. His vocals are often lyrical and smooth or punching and driving. He slips in and out of voices in chimerical fashion, and his guitar provides raucous timbres or smooth and mellow vibes, more kinds of vibratos and right hand technique than one might hear in other bands, and it all is connected with the past while carving out a niche in the here and now.

His bassist, Dave Ostrom, is, as Rayner referred to him, awesome. He bass lines are pure liquid, original, with such shape and range that I was constantly amazed at his inventiveness. He creates a driving energy that Billy and the drummer, Mark Flynn, assimilate and fuse with their own work so that the ensemble is tight and yet incredibly open and versatile. Every moment is incandescent, vibrant, and even amidst the clamor of a come-and-go style bar like Willy's, thoughtful and perceptive. Standing in the middle of the band, his work took on a fusional role, constantly responding and commenting, and adding to and transforming the mix.

Mark Flynn is another musician that I knew of but had never heard his professional work. His contribution was integral, obviously attuned to the mood and ambiance of each work. He was often a catalyst to get things started, or to establish the song. His performance captured and propelled every moment. He also did backup vocals. Some believe that the driving force of a rock band is the drummer, and Flynn's perceptive empathic sense of what is going on and his anticipation of texture and expression might reinforce that perception. His work was very musical, at times, even lyrical.

Last Generation has gone through many iterations and generations. Billy has evolved over time and his work has no doubt deepened. His inspiration comes from his life and his connection with the past, his friends and family. It is work that I wished I had known earlier. It is of the past and present, and searching for a vision for the future. If you check out Last Generation, you will get a taste of the group, but only the spontaneity of the live moment can really give you a sense of the dynamism and charisma of the man that I have come to know now as the Bill of Rock.