Mykhailo Stepanovych Kravchenko (1858-1917) was regarded as one of the most outstanding kobzar

Kobzar

A Kobzar was an itinerant Ukrainian bard who sang to his own accompaniment.-Tradition:Kobzars were often blind, and became predominantly so by the 1800s...

s of Poltava

Poltava

Poltava is a city in located on the Vorskla River in central Ukraine. It is the administrative center of the Poltava Oblast , as well as the surrounding Poltava Raion of the oblast. Poltava's estimated population is 298,652 ....

 province of the late 19th early 20th century.

Biography

Kravchenko was born in Velyki Sorochyntsi

Velyki Sorochyntsi

Velyki Sorochyntsi is a village in the Poltava Oblast of central Ukraine. It can be translated as the Grand Sorochyntsi. The village is located in the Myrhorodsky Raion of the oblast, at around , and is famous as both the birthplace of the great writer Nikolai Gogol and the location of the...

, Myrhorod

Myrhorod

Myrhorod or Mirgorod is a city in the Poltava Oblast of central Ukraine. Serving as the administrative center of the Myrhorodskyi Raion , the city itself is also designated as a separate raion within the oblast, and is located on the river Khorol.-History:The town was founded either in the 12th...

 county in 1858. At the age of 15 he caught scrofula

Scrofula

Tuberculous cervical lymphadenitis refers to a lymphadenitis of the cervical lymph nodes associated with tuberculosis. It was previously known as "scrofula".-The disease:...

 and lost his sight. At the age of 17 he began to learn to sing psalms from Samiylo Yashny. Under whom else he studied we do not know. Literature states that he spent 9 months studying under Fedir Hrytsenko-Kholodny, but in his discussion with Hnat Khotkevych

Hnat Khotkevych

Hnat Martynovych Khotkevych December 31, 1877 in Kharkiv, Russian Empire – October 8, 1938 in Kharkiv, in the Ukrainian SSR of the Soviet Union) was a Ukrainian writer, ethnographer, playwright, composer, musicologist, and bandurist....

, Kravchenko made no mention of this. It is assumed that he spent time with other kobzars after his apprenticeship with Yashny.

He was very poor because he not only supported his own family, but the family of his sick brother. In order to support two families he would also weave ropes for sale. This was a common occupation for the blind, but one which negatively influenced the art of the kobzar

Kobzar

A Kobzar was an itinerant Ukrainian bard who sang to his own accompaniment.-Tradition:Kobzars were often blind, and became predominantly so by the 1800s...

 - "When you weave a ropes for a month - Kravchenko stated - from your fingertips 20 layers of skin would come off - how can you play?"

The Myrhorod artist Opanas Slastion

Opanas Slastion

Opanas Georgievych Slastion was a Ukrainian graphic artist, painter and ethnographer.He was born in the Ukrainian port town of Berdyansk on the Berdyansk Gulf of the Sea of Azov...

 became interested in Kravchenko in 1900. Slastion highly praised the artism of Kravchenko and wrote about him in an article published in "Kievan Antiquities." The article made Kravchenko famous among folklorists throughout Ukraine and beyond. The Russian Geographical Society invited Kravchenko to Saint Petersburg

Saint Petersburg

Saint Petersburg is a city and a federal subject of Russia located on the Neva River at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea...

 to take part in an artisans exhibition in 1902. In the fall of that same year he was invited to Kharkiv

Kharkiv

Kharkiv or Kharkov is the second-largest city in Ukraine.The city was founded in 1654 and was a major centre of Ukrainian culture in the Russian Empire. Kharkiv became the first city in Ukraine where the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic was proclaimed in December 1917 and Soviet government was...

 to the XIIth Archeological Conference. He also performed at the XIIIth Archeological Conference in Yekaterinoslav (modern Dnipropetrovsk

Dnipropetrovsk

Dnipropetrovsk or Dnepropetrovsk formerly Yekaterinoslav is Ukraine's third largest city with one million inhabitants. It is located southeast of Ukraine's capital Kiev on the Dnieper River, in the south-central region of the country...

) in 1905, and in 1906 at the artisans exhibition in Kiev

Kiev

Kiev or Kyiv is the capital and the largest city of Ukraine, located in the north central part of the country on the Dnieper River. The population as of the 2001 census was 2,611,300. However, higher numbers have been cited in the press....

. He was also invited to Moscow

Moscow

Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...

, where he performed at academic gatherings and ethnographic concerts.

At his performances at the XIIth Archeological Conference in Kharkiv, Hnat Khotkevych

Hnat Khotkevych

Hnat Martynovych Khotkevych December 31, 1877 in Kharkiv, Russian Empire – October 8, 1938 in Kharkiv, in the Ukrainian SSR of the Soviet Union) was a Ukrainian writer, ethnographer, playwright, composer, musicologist, and bandurist....

 wrote: "...Extremely valuable in his playing and singing was his ability to sing in Ukrainian, with colorings which are not possible to notate, bending his voice with unusual fine melizmas and with his whole apparatus of performance, which was strikingly different from the professional."

Professor Mykola Sumtsov who was also involved with the organization of the conference wrote that the best performers were Terentiy Parkhomenko, Pavlo Drevchenko and Ivan Kucherenko. He did not include Kravchenko in his list. Kravchenko's renditions did not leave a deep impression on him.

The hard life Kravchenko led left its impact on the life of the kobzar. He died at the age of 59 - on April 22, 1917. Opanas Slastion

Opanas Slastion

Opanas Georgievych Slastion was a Ukrainian graphic artist, painter and ethnographer.He was born in the Ukrainian port town of Berdyansk on the Berdyansk Gulf of the Sea of Azov...

 had painted 5 portraits of the kobzar during the years of the most activity of the kobzar.

Mykhailo Kravchenko's last bandura was given to Opanas Slastion

Opanas Slastion

Opanas Georgievych Slastion was a Ukrainian graphic artist, painter and ethnographer.He was born in the Ukrainian port town of Berdyansk on the Berdyansk Gulf of the Sea of Azov...

 who gave it to the Myrhorod ethnographic museum where it lies today.

Repertoire

During the expedition to collect dumy

Duma (epic)

A Duma is a sung epic poem which originated in Ukraine during the Hetmanate Era in the sixteenth century...

(sung epic poems) by Filaret Kolessa

Filaret Kolessa

Filaret Mykhailovych Kolessa was a Ukrainian ethnographer, folklorist, composer, musicologist and literary critic. He was a member of the Shevchenko Scientific Society from 1909, The Free Ukrainian Academy of Sciences from 1929, and the founder of Ukrainian ethnographic musicology.- Biography...

 in Left-bank Ukraine

Left-bank Ukraine

Left-bank Ukraine is a historic name of the part of Ukraine on the left bank of the Dnieper River, comprising the modern-day oblasts of Chernihiv, Poltava and Sumy as well as the eastern parts of the Kiev and Cherkasy....

 in 1908 he recorded six dumy from M. Kravchenko.

1. The duma about the Captive's lament on a galley
2. The duma about the Captive's lament in Turkish slavery
3. The duma about the Escape of the three brothers from Oziv
4. The duma about Marusia Bohuslavka
5. The duma about the three Samara brothers
6. The duma about the poor widow and her three sons

At the end of 1905 there was a revolt in the village of Sorochyntsi which was brutal suppressed by tsarist Cossacks. The revolt and the subsequent repression were set by Kravchenko into two dumy: "The Sorochyntsi matters of 1905" and "Dark Sunday in Sorochyntsi".

Sources

• Mishalow, V. and M. - Ukrains'ki kobzari-bandurysty - Sydney, Australia, 1986