Rock band’s nomination for the Shevchenko Prize a first
The winners of the national Taras Shevchenko Prize for 2007 will be announced in one month, and the works submitted to the awards committee are now being reviewed. As part of this effort, an evening with the musicians of the rock band Komu vnyz was held on Feb. 5 at Kyiv’s Museum of Literature. This is the first time that a rock band has appeared on the list of candidates for this prestigious prize.
The band’s musical compositions, created in the late 1980s and early 1990s, are based on the works of Taras Shevchenko, Oleksandr Oles, and Volodymyr Samiilenko. This impressed the Committee of Businessmen of Lviv Oblast enough to submit the group as a candidate for the prize. I remember how people of my generation would scout out individuals who owned recordings of those songs (they were not on CD then) and then made copies of the songs.
“There is still a demand for the series of songs set to Shevchenko’s verses, performed by us,” says the leader of Komu vnyz, Andrii Sereda. “This is probably fostered by the situation in our state, which is to some extent associated with the period of the Ruin in Ukrainian history. And, in general, Shevchenko’s poems have been topical since the days they were written all the way to the present time. I am looking forward to the day when we do not regard Taras Hryhorovych as a prophet but simply as a poet of genius.”
The art soiree, as stated in the press release, turned out to be a conversation on the relationship between art and government, based on the example of Komu vnyz and the Shevchenko Prize. This encounter considerably differed from the usual reviews, when members of the committee first watch a play, listen to a concert, or launch an exhibit and then discuss the event. This time an interesting discussion emerged.
Sereda admitted that most Ukrainian awards no longer have any resonance: “That is the reason why we have a rather daring dream supported by the 19-year existence of Komu Vnyz, during which we have not gotten off track, a dream that our band is on the list of potential candidates. In a certain sense this is helping the prize itself to introduce a degree of novelty, for example, to start considering performers in the genre of rock music, not just academic music, as candidates for the prize.”
Journalist Mykhailo Brynnykh, who is a fan of Komu vnyz, went even further. “The fact that these musicians may receive the Shevchenko Prize is important not just for them. This is a way of morally and socially rehabilitating the Shevchenko Prize. Let the circle of prize winners be filled with the names of people who have a real impact on public opinion and cultural processes in the country, as well as the names of charismatic personalities.”
These remarks are applicable to any award. There are always people who regard awards with piety, and those who view the assigning of prizes as a subjective process. The Day asked the poet Vasyl Herasymiuk, Shevchenko Prize winner and member of the Shevchenko Prize Committee, to comment: “I think that Komu vnyz and the rest are two different civilizations. Everyday we are offered ‘gold’ and ‘silver’ voices of Ukraine — people who really don’t have voices and no sense of the country where they are working. And as for the fact whether the band deserves the prize ...If you put the question this way, why bother submitting?
“Now about charisma. We understand it exclusively in the sense of influence. But what has influence? If we go on Khreshchatyk Boulevard, we will hear that everybody knows Yan Tabachnyk, whereas only a few individuals have heard about Yevhen Stankovych. But Stankovych is the representative of our music. Yet who talks about his charisma now? This is a question of culture. But I still want to stress — I like the fact that Komu vnyz has a code of honor. This is a very rare phenomenon anywhere, not to mention pop culture. Musicians with a code of honor are a miracle on par with talent.”
