Ukrainian bandura player and musician.
Biography.
From 1912-1914, he studied bandura playing with the Chernihiv kobzar Petro Tkachenko-Halashko from the village of Syniavok in Chernihiv region. In 1914, he moved to Lubny, where he graduated from the teacher's seminary in 1917. He returned to the Chernihiv region and taught. In 1921, he continued to improve his bandura playing with bandura player and designer Oleksandr Korniievskyi. In 1922, he moved to Kyiv, where he entered the vocal faculty of the Kyiv Conservatory, graduating in 1927.
Kyiv Bandura Choir under the artistic direction of Mykhailo Polotai, 1925
In 1923, he became a member of the Kyiv Bandura Choir, where he worked until 1930, and in 1924-1928 he was its artistic director.
In 1930, after the IED case, he left the chapel and began working as an editor at the Ukrainian Radio Committee, and later moved to Moscow, where he continued his studies and worked as an editor of Ukrainian materials at the Central Radio Committee.
In 1939, Polotai returned to Kyiv where he directed the Red Army Bandura Band Choir. He contributed to the development of amateur kobzar chapels as a consultant (Konotop, Vinnytsia, Haysyn, Ovruch, Cherkasy, Horodyshche, military units, etc.)
During the Second World War, he was a political officer on the Southern Front. He stood at the origins of the State Ukrainian Folk Choir (founded in 1943) alongside Hryhorii Veriovka, where Mykhailo Polotai became the head of the accompanying bandura group (the First Peasant Bandura Chapel named after Taras Shevchenko, which joined the newly formed Folk Choir in its entirety).
After the war, he created a chapel of blind bandura players at the club of the Society of the Blind in Kyiv. Later, Mykhailo Polotai headed the Kobzar Studio at the Music and Choral Society.
He participated in the creation of a bandura class at the Kyiv Conservatory, where he taught. At the same time, he worked at the INFE and wrote articles for the URE and the magazine "Narodne Tvorchestvo".
Mykhailo Polotai was one of the first Soviet bandura players to perform kobza dumas. He was one of the first to introduce revolutionary, Soviet songs and dumas into the repertoire.
He is the author of collections of works for bandura (1941, 1963) and articles about kobzarism, a number of unpublished lectures such as: "Ostap Veresai", "Ukrainian Song and Music of Kobzars in the Works of Hohol", etc. There are recordings of his performances of dumas on gramophone records.
Students.
Mykola Liskivsky,
Recordings
Duma about the Cossack Holota: A Ukrainian folk duma / Performed by. M.Polotai, bandura // Phonohistorical book of Ukrainian literature for 6th grade - Moscow: Melody, b.p. - 1 grup.
Collections of notes for bandura
M. Polotai "Ten Ukrainian Songs" for kobza ensemble, edited by Prof. M. Hrinchenko. State Publishing House "Art", 1941.
