Kushnerik Fedir Danilovych (7 (19) September 1875, Velyka Bahachka village, Poltava region - 23.07.1941, Velyka Bahachka village. Velyka Bahachka) - Ukrainian kobzar. He became blind at the age of seven. He taught himself to play the violin and harmonium, with which he went to weddings and fairs, earning his living. In 1909, he met M. Kravchenko, who took him as a pupil.
Kobzars are called Ukrainian folk singers, expressors of the dreams and aspirations of ordinary people, their ideals and aesthetic tastes. Kobzar art was particularly developed in Poltava region, which gave the world Ostap Veresai, Samailo Yashnyi, Mykhailo and Ivan Kravchenko. Their best traditions were borrowed and carried with dignity throughout his life by Fedir Kushnerik, a native of Velyka Bahachka.
"I was born in a happy place - in a field near buckwheat. My mother was reaping buckwheat and gave birth to me at work. She put it in a cloth skirt and washed my shoulders while she was carrying it home. My father and mother worked for a lord for twenty years, mowing arable land or hay - he got four tithes and she got a fifth. They had no land of their own. There was only a small house and a hut, and that was the whole household. There was as much vegetable garden as you could walk around the house. I could see well until I was six years old. Then my eyes got sick. My grandmother took me to the priest. The priest put something in my eyes, and by the time we got home, I was completely blind..." Fedir Danilovych recalled.
From an early age, Fedir had a passion for science. Although he was blind, he went to school and learned by ear. His parents noticed his desire to learn music, so they saved fifty kopecks and bought him a violin. One day they took Fedko to Velyki Sorochyntsi for a fair, where the famous kobzar Mykhailo Kravchenko noticed him and gave him his kobza, which Kushnerik played all his life, travelling with it to almost fifty thousand places. His kobza was played at weddings, on the streets of Kremenchuk, Khorol, Poltava, Myrhorod, Lubny, Kyiv, Romny, Pyriatyn. He sang dumas "About the Three Azov Heroes", "About Samailo the Cat", "About Oleksii Popovych", songs based on poems by Taras Shevchenko and Stepan Rudanskyi, and composed his own dumas.
One year, Kushnerik performed satirical songs at the market in Lubny, which the gendarmes did not like very much. They dispersed the audience, and the kobzar was taken to the police station. The guide ran away in fright, so the policeman himself had to lead the way. On the way, Fedir came up with the words and sang: "Oh God, oh God, what a world it is now that the Lubny official has become a blind man's guide."
Kushnerik learned to read braille when he was 37 years old. He composed songs and dumas about the hard life of peasants. In Soviet times, he composed the dumas "The Autumn Sun Has Risen", "About Tractors", "The Snow Has Melted, the Water Has Melted", and "The Song of the Pioneer Pavlo", a poetic story about the murder of the pioneer Pavlo Tesla in Velyki Sorochyntsi.
In 1939, Fedir Kushnerik was invited to the capital to attend the Republican Conference of Kobzars and Lyre Singers, and was accepted into the Writers' Union of Ukraine. At the end of the following year, the 65th anniversary of his birth and the thirtieth anniversary of his kobza activity were widely celebrated. Representatives of the Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, the Writers' Union, and public organisations came to Velyka Bahachka to attend the celebrations. In his speech at the meeting, Pavlo Tychyna emphasised: "...the voice of the oldest Ukrainian kobzar can be heard in the Soviet choir of folk singers".
But it was not heard for long - in July 1941, Fedir Kushnerik's heart stopped beating. In his homeland, in Velyka Bahachka, a kobzar festival is now held every year.
Repertoire
Dumy:
The brothers' escape from Ozov
Oleksiy Popovych
Samiilo Kishka
Fedir the rootless
About a sister and a brother
Marusia Bohuslavka.
Bandura
Fedir Kushnerik's bandura is kept in the Museum of Theatre Art in the Kyiv Cave Monastery.
Bandura (1920s-1930s), played by F. Kushnerik:
master F. Ubiyvovk;
3 basses, 14 strings, oval body, wooden pegs;
Length 95 cm. № 2783. The instrument is indicated as a kobza.
