For more than 50 years, Ukrainian Christmas traditions have been implemented and developed in Bohuslav due to the Koliada group. During our expeditions to the villages of the community and the preparation and implementation of other stages of our project ‘Portal through the Centuries: Bohuslav Carols’, we heard a lot about their work, as well as about the man who created and for decades contributed to the group – Hryhoriy Dzhul. We are honoured to tell you more about this person so that the culture and history of our homeland can be even closer.
Childhood and Youth
The Koliada amateur folklore group, now celebrating 50 years, the Society of Ukrainian Language and Literature, hundreds of grateful students, the introduction and revival of Ukrainian culture, persecution and oppression by the soviet authorities: these are just brief excerpts from the biography of an outstanding personality, Hryhoriy Dzhul, who made an invaluable contribution to the cultural development of Bohuslavshchyna. History is always closer than we think. That is exactly why we want to share stories about great people whose contribution to the development of Bohuslav is of utmost importance. Their work is impressive and inspiring. So today we are starting a series of articles about Hryhoriy Dzhul, a musician, conductor, cultural activist, and educator. His wife, Olha Dzhul, told us about his professional and creative career, achievements and discoveries, his views on life, and how much he loved Ukraine and did his best for its development and freedom.
‘’Hryhoriy Dzhul was born in the Ternopil region, Zboriv district, the village of Mylno. He came from a family of the dispossessed, his grandfather, Ivan Dzhul, had three sons. They all lived in the same house together, worked, had a farm, and had horses. It was because of those horses that they were dispossessed… So Hryhoriy’s father lived in the village. But their family stood out because they all were literate. They had many books and subscribed to a periodical. And, Hryhoriy said, on Sundays, their uncles and neighbours would come to their house. He mentioned they used to smoke tobacco in the house and that was the reason why the kerosene lamp would go off. They would chat, read books and discuss articles from magazines, as well as current events. They had a kind of club. Rarely, but women also came along to visit their mother and grandmother. There was a loom in the middle of the room. Women wove, spun, embroidered, knitted and sang a lot.
Later they came together as a community, bought a piece of land and built a village community centre (club). Young people and elderly people attended it. There was also a reading room there. They donated their books there. A small museum was also located there, and it still exists. And there was a choir. This choir performed both in the club and in the church. And Hryhoriy’s cousin, Michal Yednorovych, had an excellent hearing by nature. He organised this choir. And they sang a lot of songs with four voices.
A Transcarpathian composer, Maychyk, lived in their village. He worked in the village school and organised choirs for children and adults. They sang a lot of adaptations of this composer’s songs. It was a well-known choir in the area. Everyone from the surrounding villages would come to the Divine Liturgy to listen to the choir. They organised their leisure time as best as we could. They would gather to listen to the radio or just read (very few people knew how to read back then).
Hryhoriy was a very inquisitive boy. He had a sister, Iryna, who was two years older, and a brother, Pavlo, who was four years younger. So when Iryna started school, he was five years old only and he followed her all the time. He crossed the Huk River, which divides the village into two parts. It seems to be a small river – the village is located on hills – and when the snow melts in spring, it rolls stones intensively, boulders on limestone, and it makes a humming sound. That’s why it was called Huk (the humming) River. And there was a school in another part of the village. And he kept coming and coming. And the teacher offered him to attend lessons. So he started school when he was 5 years old only and, accordingly, he graduated early. The only primary school in the village was located in the house of some person. Later, kids had to walk 6 kilometres to the neighbouring village of Hayi Roztotski through the forest and across the field, starting from the 4-5th grade. And in winter they stayed in a dormitory there. Parents trusted the process and were not afraid to let the kids go and stay there. It was their way of life back then.
Later, when they grew up, someone had a bike, and one or two of the kids would ride it, and the rest would run after it. He mentioned that they weren’t afraid of anything, because they were all together. Later, Hryhoriy told us about the first occasion when he took part in a Nativity scene performance.
When he was already in the first grade at school, he was assigned to carry a star that his father had made for him. It was decorated with candy foil, ribbons, and bells. Hryts (diminished from Hryhoriy) walked with it in front of the group of carol singers and was very proud of his mission. Later, when he was older, a light bulb connected to a battery was installed in that star, so that it would also glow. This star became a family heirloom.
Back then, there were three groups of carolers in the village: children, young people and the elderly. The hosts would treat the children to nuts, apples, cookies, and sometimes sweets. Sometimes they would give them money, solely for school expenses. The youth most often collected money for the club, and the elderly – for the church.
In the second grade, he started attending the club with his father. A family member, a musician, returned from exile and began teaching children to play various musical instruments. People brought their own musical instruments and organised an orchestra and a choir. Dad played the mandolin and Mum sang in the choir. Hryts had a very good hearing and a sonorous voice, so he first learned to play the bayan (kind of accordion), and later his uncle Pavlo, who lived in America, sent him an accordion.
After graduating from high school, Hryhoriy entered the Lviv Pedagogical College. He failed to enter the first year because he was barely 15 years old at the time and was self-taught. He knew music, but not music theory and solfege. So after the 10th grade, he studied all of this and worked at a quarry in a neighbouring village. A year later he was enrolled at the university…
After graduating with honours, he went to study in the capital along with his friend Anton Marushchak.
After the institute, he had a choice of where to work: either in Zhovti Vody city in the Dnipro region or in Bohuslav city. When asked why he did not opt for Zhovti Vody, a well-known large industrial city, he said: ‘I was attracted by the fact that it is not far from Kyiv, many of my fellow students were sent here, and when I arrived in Bohuslav, which is located on the hills and surrounded by forests, I saw the Ros River – it reminded me of my native Ternopil region.’
In our next articles, we will tell you more about Hryhoriy Dzhul’s first nativity scene experience, the Ukrainian customs and traditions he brought to Bohuslav, and how the Koliada group, which has spanned more than 50 years, came to life in Bohuslav city.
“Portal through the Centuries: Bohuslav Carols” is implemented by the “Around Us. UA” NGO as part of the “From Ideas to Action” training course.
The training course “From Ideas to Action” is implemented with the support of the European Endowment for Democracy (EED) within the framework of the Safe Harbour Initiative. The contents do not necessarily reflect the official position of the EED and are the sole responsibility of the “Buslav Sich” NGO.
