Bandura player, student of O. Slastion. Member of the Poltava Bandura Chapel. He was a concertmaster. After V. Kabachok's arrest, he became the artistic director of the Poltava Bandura Bandura Chapel. For some time, he was also the director of the Kyiv Bandura Chapel from 1938-41. He composed The Word of Taras. He died at the front in 1941. He sang as a second tenor. He composed many arrangements of folk songs for the bandura band.
Pika was one of the strongest players in the chapel. He performed in the bandura quartet with Serhiy Minyaylo, Yakiv Kladovyi, and O. Kostetskyi and recorded Hopak (his arrangement), Stukalka (arrangement), and Kucheryava Kateryna (arrangement) in 1937. Kapella also recorded his arrangements of "I would take a bandura" by M. Hryshko in 1937 and by the Hrechanyky. "Oj hop ty-ny-ny," often accredited to Pika but previously labeled as a work arranged by Lysenko-Kropovnytsky but credited to Pika in 1939.
Pika became the artistic director of the Poltava Bandura Bandura Chapel after Volodymyr Kabachok's arrest in January 1934 until the group was liquidated in October 1934. During his leadership, the members of the Poltava Bandura Band stopped paying. He was the strongest bandura player in the group and the first to play the bandura in the group. He first turned the singers into bandura players, and he taught them all at first. He always had aspirations for leadership, but no administrative skills. Some believe that he was a KGB informant and that he informed Mr. Kabachok and caused his subsequent arrest.
He briefly became the artistic director of the Kyiv Bandura Choir.
Pika signed his name to numerous arrangements by Khotkevych (From Kyiv to Lubny, Oi Dzhyhune - when Khotkevych's arrangements and compositions were banned after 1934) and others, accredited as the composer of Tropak - Oi Hop Tyni-Ny-Ny (original 1911 recording by Sadovsky's choir of Kropovnytsky's arrangement). Kabachok's son (in Bashtan's work Memories of Kabachok K.1995) claims that one person in the Poltava chapel was a negative informant for the NKVD and moved to Canada. However, none of the members of the chapel moved to Canada (Nazarenko, Miniyailo and Panasenko moved to the United States). The informant was D. Pika, who also reported on V. Kabachok in 1937 after a concert by the United Bandura Band in Leningrad.
In 1941, he was mobilized to the Red Army and died in September 1941. His last address was listed as Poltava, 21/2 Lamanyi Lane, apartment 2.
