Song interrupted

Nazarii Yaremchuk was born in a small village near Vyzhnytsia, in the days when this locale was known perhaps only to the NKVD as a center of anti-Soviet resistance. In the 1970s this small Carpathian town became known even as far away as Bodaibo beyond Lake Baikal. The town’s claim to fame is connected to Yaremchuk, a teenager from a large family with solid Ukrainian traditions, who was born in the village of Rivnia on the banks of the Cheremosh River.

The future singer’s grandfather helped build the village church, and his father was an educated man, even though he had completed only the seventh grade. An avid reader, all his life he stored books in the attic for which he could have gotten an escorted trip to Siberia. His elder brother Dmytro fought in the ranks of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) was captured by the Germans, and sent to a concentration camp. Later he immigrated to Canada. In the 1950s people in the USSR with this kind of background were referred to as “enemies of the people.”

Be that as it may, no one was forbidden to sing on the banks of the Cheremosh. Little Nazarii heard his parents’ beautiful singing. Both had excellent voices and he inherited their vocal talent. He later admitted that his pop singing career may well have started with “Kopav, kopav krynychenku,” a folk song that his mother taught him.

FIRST SUCCESS

In late 1966 Levko Dutkivsky, who was then a methodologist at Vyzhnytsia’s raion House of Culture, and is now a well-known composer, formed a rock group — known as a “vocal-instrumental ensemble” — that was destined to make a real breakthrough in Ukrainian pop music. Its name was Smerichka and its first performance took place on New Year’s Eve. Getting tickets to the group’s concerts was a dream for many young men and women, let alone singing with the group.

Vasyl Zinkevych became Smerichka’s lead singer in 1968. In 1969, a young worker from a geological prospecting expedition by the name of Nazarii Yaremchuk started attending the group’s rehearsals. He used to sing after truck driving lessons assigned by the local viiskomat, the military commissar’s office.

A very handsome young fellow came out on the stage,” Dutkivsky recalls, “and started singing Ihor Poklad’s ‘Kokhana’. I must say that I was instantly aware of Nazarii’s inborn talent. His timbre was special, different from everyone else’s. He had a natural, fine vocal capacity, his tone was clear, and he had a great sense of rhythm.”

Dutkivsky wrote the song “Nezrivniannyi svit krasy” especially for the new soloist, and it became Yaremchuk’s calling card. He sang it on the popular TV show “Good Mood Tuning Fork.”

HITS FROM BUKOVYNA

On Sept. 13, 1970, Volodymyr Ivasiuk’s famous songs “Chervona ruta” and “Vodohrai” first sounded all over Ukraine and were later performed in Ukraine’s first music film Chervona Ruta (1971). This was the title track on Yaremchuk’s first megahit LP recorded in 1980, a copy of which the singer presented to Ivasiuk’s father with the inscription, “Volodia’s songs called out to millions of people. They called out to me as well, because they fill the heart with joy, sorrow, and pride.”

People of that generation will never forget the famous Bukovynian trio of Volodymyr Ivasiuk, Vasyl Zinkevych, and Nazarii Yaremchuk at the Ostankino concert studio in Moscow and their performance in Chervona ruta. On Jan. 1, 1971, television viewers in the vast Soviet Union first heard that at the edge of the world, in the Carpathians, was a little town called Vyzhnytsia, where these talented young men lived.

Interestingly, mailmen delivered all the fan mail that the songwriter and singers were receiving from everywhere — and there were thousands of letters. Some had bizarre addresses, like “Cherepovetskoe television, Smerichka group” or the “Carpathian village of Vyzhnytsia; to the author of the song ‘Chervona ruta.’”

Eventually, Yaremchuk paired up with a new female soloist, Myroslava Yezhelenko, to perform Ivasiuk’s “Vodohrai” in Ostankino. The song became an instant hit. Ivasiuk always had great respect for every performer of his songs. He singled out Nazarii for his remarkably beautiful voice. Shortly before Ivasiuk’s tragic death the composer wrote “Ia shche ne vse tobi skazav” for Yaremchuk in 1979. He was supposed to perform it during the TV contest “Song of the Year” on what was then Central Television. Unfortunately, after Ivasiuk was murdered, his songs also suffered; few people dared perform them. Yaremchuk was the only singer who began every concert with “Chervona ruta.” He first sang “Ia shche ne vse tobi skazav” at a contest commemorating his great friend Volodymyr Ivasiuk.

WIND OF CHANGE

Nazarii spent all his creative life with Smerichka. Although its artistic directors, musicians, and singers changed (at times they were simply fired), Yaremchuk remained the unvarying leader. This status was anything but enjoyable. The oblast leadership, namely regional party committee functionaries who controlled everything, even music and wood carving, i.e., people who were far from being admirers of his creative achievements, not even the administration of the Chernivtsi Philharmonic Society where he was employed, wanted him to remain “little Nazarii” who sings about little fir trees.

But Yaremchuk had evolved into a powerful creative personality, who was seeking self-expression. When he took the first step in this direction and suggested a new aesthetic concept, it was forbidden outright. In 1980 Ukrainian television released Smerichka’s concert program, which later encountered official obstruction on the instructions from the Ministry of Culture. Then a directive was issued strictly forbidding programs like this and ordering every new project to be coordinated with the “creative council.”

Smerichka performed in Chernivtsi on rare occasions, because it was always touring throughout the vast expanses of the Soviet Union. The group always attracted large audiences because Yaremchuk was an extremely popular singer. The public loved his voice, his looks, and his Ukrainian songs. One time Smerichka was touring Kazakhstan. During a concert the performers noticed a woman in the audience who wouldn’t stop crying. The woman was from Ukraine and life in the Kazakh steppes was not her choice; she was a deportee.

In 1995 a man from Dnipropetrovsk wrote that Nazarii “had the big heart of a humanist.” That must have been the reason why he visited our troops in Afghanistan and risked his health giving a concert for the rescue teams in Chornobyl.

Yaremchuk’s creativity peaked in the late 1980s, when the first gusts of the wind of change were blowing over Ukraine. The singer seemed to have rid himself of some burden. He was inspired and daring. In September 1989 Chernivtsi hosted the 1st All-Ukraine Chervona Ruta Festival. It was a revelation for both participants and guests. For the first time Ukraine played host to singers from the Diaspora, who performed songs that the regime did not like because they were about the 1933 famine and the repressions, and revealed the truth about life at the time.

During the festival the oblast party committee demanded to see the lyrics of the songs performed by the bards Andrii Panchyshyn, Edward Hrach, the rock singers Viktoria Vradii, and the Hadiukin Brothers. They even instructed the festival organizers to submit the text of Taras Shevchenko’s poem “Rozryta mohyla” because Andrii Sereda had written a song based on it. After the festival a directive was issued banning from the airwaves all audio and video recordings made during the festival.

At the time Yaremchuk was hosting a music program on Chernivtsi television and playing songs forbidden by the oblast party committee. In 1990 Smerichka and Yaremchuk gave a charity concert for the Prosvita Society, which was being revived. The authorities also frowned on this action.

The singer was so popular in Chernivtsi that people would gather wherever and whenever he appeared. They simply wanted to talk to him. Nazarii was a very modest individual and, most importantly, he could never turn down a request. He would attend a senior prom on the spur of the moment or give a concert in a remote village or collective farm. He went on canvassing trips for democratic candidates during the election campaigns. Self-conceit was alien to him.

Yaremchuk was popular with various audiences. He received thousands of letters, not just simple song requests. Those fan letters were confessions and stories about the letter writers’ successes and failures, invitations to visit them. Letters came from all over Ukraine.

“I FEEL BETTER WHEN I’M SINGING”

“Forty-three is the limit of life. I am in the hospital after stomach surgery. Everything is dreamlike: doctors, chatting, and the feeling of an abyss. The execution lasted five hours. Dr. Hairte said there is no more cancer,” the singer wrote in his diary.

Nazarii’s friends had helped him fly to Canada for treatment, hoping that Western medicine would help him. Tests were done and he learned the horrible diagnosis: stomach cancer. But the surgery was too late to do any good. Even though he was gravely ill, Nazarii continued to perform. After returning to Ukraine, he performed at Yurii Rybchynsky’s creative soiree, where everyone noticed that he had lost a lot of weight. His eyes were large and burning brightly.

The poet Vadym Kryshchenko sadly recalls going backstage during a concert to celebrate Kyiv Day at the Singing Field. He saw Nazarii, who was waiting to go on. He apologized for not feeling well, then placed a couple of chairs and lay down. A minute later he was up and forced himself to smile: “It’s OK, it’ll pass. I feel better when I’m singing.” And then he briskly walked out on stage and sang with ease. But at the end, waving to the audience, he looked weak and unsure of himself. It was as though the singer were waving goodbye.

Unfortunately, destiny follows its inexorable course. The celebrated singer’s life was cut short very early. But maybe “the Lord prophesied a better life and took him so that he would sing in the Garden of Paradise,” as the poet Stepan Haliabarda wrote.

The singer died on Nov. 30, 1995. He lay in his coffin dressed in a Ukrainian embroidered shirt, surrounded by throngs of people mourning his passing. He was buried at the main cemetery in Chernivtsi. Yaremchuk was posthumously awarded the Shevchenko Prize.

MEMORY

On Nov. 30 Ukraine Palace hosted a soiree in tribute to Nazarii Yaremchuk. Ukrainian pop stars performed his hits and songs written especially for the late singer.