Valentyn Dubravin (May 9, 1933, Kyiv - December 7, 1995, Nizhyn, Chernihiv region, buried in Kyiv) was a folklorist, ethnomusicologist, teacher, composer, and candidate of art history. Member of the Union of Composers of Ukraine.
He was brought up in an orphanage, where he chose the surname Dubravyn, similar to the name of the announcer whose voice he loved.
During the war, as a boy, he was a partisan in the Vinnytsia region, got hit by a mine and almost lost his eyesight.
After the war, having a talent for music and singing, he received a special education and devoted his entire life to music.
1960-1978 - teacher of theoretical subjects at the Sumy Music College.
1961 - graduated from the historical and theoretical faculty of the Kyiv Conservatory, where under the influence of such famous founders of Ukrainian musicology as Onysia Yakivna Shreer-Tkachenko and Yevhenia Moiseevna Stolova, he determined the specialty of his future activity: ethnomusicologist and cultural historian.
1964-1967 - studied at the graduate school of the Leningrad Conservatory (modern St. Petersburg State Conservatory named after Mykola Rimsky-Korsakov) under the guidance of Feodosii Rubtsov.
1972 - defended his PhD thesis in art history.
1978-1983 - Head of the Department of Theory and History of Music and Playing Musical Instruments at the Sumy Pedagogical Institute (modern Sumy State Pedagogical University named after A. S. Makarenko).
Since 1983, he has been working at the Mykola Hohol Nizhyn State University.
Since 1990 - Professor of the Department of Theory, History of Music and Playing Musical Instruments.
The musicologist's daughter, Dubravina Olena, is the director of the Levko Revutskyi Bucha School of Arts, who has been teaching children to master the secrets of piano skills for almost 15 years.
Musical and ethnographic activities
Valentyn Dubravin's cultural, historical, and ethnographic interests were formed under the influence of the revival of folklore studies in the 1960s and 1970s, which became a qualitatively new stage in the development of national folklore studies.
It was at this time that the scholar's scientific and creative contacts with the editorial board of the Vpered magazine began, where he selected lyrics, edited them, and transcribed them in Braille. Using Braille, V. Dubravin wrote lyrics that were accessible to blind people.
The beginning of his scientific work
His expeditionary and scientific work began at the House of Folk Art in Sumy. It was here that amateurs from all over the region came to get advice on collecting folklore and listen to lectures on theory and composition given by Valentyn Dubravyn. The result of the research work was a number of scientific publications, as well as a sheet music collection of songs from the Sumy region with comments and an introductory article in which the author analyzes the genre composition of the region's folklore, defines the boundaries of musical dialects, and points out their characteristic features.
Folk Songs of the Chernihiv Region
In 1983, the scholar began studying the folk songs of Chernihiv region: for several years he researched the songs of Bakhmach, Borznyansky, Varvynsky, Kozeletsky, Koryukivsky, Nizhynsky, Snovsky, and other districts of the region. Based on the material he collected, V. Dubravin compiled a collection that includes the best examples of folk songs, selected by the compiler taking into account local and stylistic features of Chernihiv region folklore.
About the work of Ukrainian kobzars
Some of Dubravin's expeditions are devoted to the work of the following Ukrainian kobzars: Yevhen Adamtsevych Adamtsevych, Oleksandr Kovshar (recorded his repertoire in 1994), and Yehor Movchan.
Creative work
The collection includes more than 28 thousand folklore samples; 2369 tunes have been notated; collections have been published:
"Songs of One Family" (1988),
"Songs of Sumy Region (1989; both in Kyiv),
"Folk Songs of Chernihiv Region Recorded by Valentyn Dubravin" (Chernihiv, 2001), "Songs of One Village" (2002),
"Songs of the Shevchenko Region (2005; both in Nizhyn),
"Ritual songs of Slobozhanshchyna and Sumy region" (S., 2005),
the collections "Songs of Poltava Region" (436 items) and "Baptismal Songs of Cherkasy Region" (175 items) remain in manuscript.
Compiler of the textbook "Ukrainian Musical Folklore" (3 parts, Nizhyn, 1994-1996).
