ABSTRACT
Ukraine, the second largest country in Europe after Russia, consists of forests in the north, steppes in the south and east, and mountains in the southwest. Western Ukraine, known historically as Galicia, was part of Polish or Austrian states from the 1300s until 1939. In peasant Ukraine before collectivization, most village musical life was formally organized around the Christian calendar of feasts and fasts, or longstanding institutions of civil society, such as weddings, funerals, seasonal or agricultural celebrations, and ritual and nonritual evening social gatherings of various kinds. Vocal music among peasants in Ukraine varied by region and genre. A succinct regionalization of vocal practice is hard to formulate because practices overlapped from region to region in ways that defy easy description and classification. Ukraine's blind peasant minstrels were named, after the instruments they played, kobzari 'kzobza players' and lirnyky dira players'.
