Spiew Juchasa: Song of the Shepherd - Songs of the Slavic Americans (1977)

Side One
01    OBEREK PUŁAWIAK (OBEREK FROM PULAWY) Baczkowskiego Orkiestra
02    ZAWZIETA DZIEWCZYNA (STUBBORN GIRL) Orkiestra Dukli
03    WSPOMNIENIA SABALY(REMINISCENCES OF SABALA Orkiestra Karol Stoch
04    "NA OBIE NOGI" POLKA ("ON TWO FEET" POLKA) Bruno Rudzinski,Vocal and Concertina
05    PIESN ZBOJNIKOW (SONG OF THE BANDITS) Sichelski i Bachleda i Karola Stocha Oryginalna Góralska Muzyka
06    NIE BEDE SIE ZYNIL (I WILL NOT MARRY) Sicheiski i Bachleda, muzyka: Karola Stoch
07    ŚPIEW JUCHASA (SONG OF THE SHEPHERD) Karola Stocha Oryginalna Muzyka Góralska
08    ZAKOPIANSKA PIOSNKA (SONG FROM ZAKOPANE) Sichelski i Bachleda, Oryginalna Muzyka Góralska Karola Stocha
09    DYE SE DOLU BIALKA (DOWN THE BIALKA VALLEY) Sichelski i Bachleda, muzyka: Karola Stoch

Side Two
01    KOZAK ZAWYDIJA (FAST KOZAK) Ukrainska Orchestra Pawla Humeniuka
02    BOHACKI ZARUCZYNY (ENGAGEMENT CEREMONY AMONG THE RICH) Ukrainska Orchestra i Chor Pawla Humeniuka
03    NA WESILIU PID CHATOJU (AT A WEDDING UNDER THE EAVES) Ukrainska Orchestra Pawla Humeniuka
04    UKRAINSKYJ TRISAK (UKRAINIAN TRISAK) Ukrainska Selska Orchestra
05    SZTAJER Z GORY BARANIEJ (DANCE FROM THE SHEEP MOUNTAINS) Wiejska Czwórka "Bracia Kuziany"
06    HUTZULKA W SEMERECZYNI (HUTZULKA FROM SEMERECZYN) Ukrainska Orchestra Michala Thomasa
07    POPRAWYNY (SECOND-DAY FEAST) Zlozyw i Widohraw Solo Skrypkowe Pawlo Humeniuk
08    WIWCZAR NA SUPYLCI (SHEPHERD PLAYING THE FLUTE) Zlozyw i Widohraw Solo Skrypkowe Pawlo Humeniuk

RECORDINGS OF UKRAINIAN AND POLISH POPULAR MUSIC MADE IN THE UNITED STATES By the early eighteen-nineties it was clear that Thomas Edison's crude 1877 invention had immense potential as an entertainment device. Phonographs were being designed and marketed by a number of companies. Records of popular songs and dance music were being turned out regularly for an eager audience.A sizable portion of that audience included immigrants from Europe and Asia who were still arriving in large numbers searching for political freedom and expanded economic opportunities.

Music from Slavic countries had exerted considerable influence on popular music in the nineteenth century. The polka, from Bohemia, was the rage of American ballrooms by the eighteen-forties. Frdric Chopin had begun even earlier to compose popular art music in the form of the polonaises and mazurkas that were a part of the dance music of his native Poland.These and other foreign-born elements were still threads of the American musical fabric in the nineties. Polkas and mazurkas were among the earliest offerings in record-company catalogues.

We do not know who first had the idea of making records intended for specific ethnic groups in this country. But by the nineties Bohemian (or Czech) popular songs were available on cylinders in New York. And by 1898 the Berliner company was issuing Polish songs on crudely manufactured one-sided seven-inch discs, indicating that Slavic-Americans were among the earliest consumers of recorded music in their own languages and idioms.

The record and phonograph business grew rapidly, and so did the foreign-language divisions of Victor, Columbia, and other record manufacturers who reissued popular items from European catalogues and supplemented them with records by foreign-born musicians living in America. By World War I they were publishing extensive catalogues of dance music, popular songs, and religious and art music from every country in Europe. Polish music was heavily represented from the first, music from the Ukraine less so. Ukrainian immigration and its corresponding influence were smaller, and there was no significant Ukrainian recording activity here until the teens. Poland and the Ukraine have a common border, and the countries had exchanged some territories, notably the province of Galicia, more than once over the centuries. The two cultures had enough in common that Polish music was popular among Ukrainians as well.

World War I made it next to impossible to obtain new recordings from European sources, and American record companies were forced to recruit new artists from this country in order to expand their offerings. Slavic-American record personalities emerged, like the Ukrainian singer Henry Stone and the Polish comedian Ignacy Ulatowski. Their new releases sold well and were awaited by their audiences. One talented Ukrainian Jew, David Medowyj (or Medoff), was multilingual and for years recorded for Columbia's Ukrainian, Russian, and Jewish series.

While not the first in an authentic folk genre to be released, one recording seems to have had an impact comparable to that of Fiddlin' John. "Ukrainske Wesilia" ("The Ukrainian Wedding") was recorded for Columbia around January, 1926, and released on two sides of a twelve-inch disc. It presented an informal skit with dialogue, songs, and instrumental music by the fiddler Pawlo Humeniuk with the singers Nasza Roza Krasnowska and Ewgen Zukowsky. Its depiction of a central rite of passage of Old World community life was sufficiently faithful that the record sold in excess of a hundred thousand copies, an enormous figure for a minority-language recording in those days. It found its way not only into every Ukrainian home with a phonograph but into Polish, Slovak, Russian, and Jewish homes as well. Here for the first time were music and singing that represented the tastes and traditions of the multitudes who had come from village and rural backgrounds in the old country. The success of "Ukrainske Wesilia" showed that these traditions were alive and valued in America. The search was on for other musicians and singers who performed in vernacular styles in Slavic and other languages. Virtually overnight, Old World fiddling and natural, untrained voices became a staple of the record companies' foreign-language programs.

By the twenties there was a great deal of Polish recording activity in Chicago, where a large number of Poles of diverse geographical and cultural origins had settled. Polish traditional music was represented on records by musicians whose backgrounds were in the western Carpathian Mountains along Poland's southeastern border. Fiddling was popular there as it has been with so many other mountain peoples, and there was a ready supply to meet the demand that followed the success of "Ukrainske Wesilia." ---RICHARD SPOTTSWOOD, folkblog.in.ua

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