Hryhorii Fedorovych Ponomarenko (*2 February 1921, Morivsk - †7 January 1996, Russian Federation) was a Ukrainian composer in the Kuban and the Russian Federation who was forced to compose almost exclusively Russian-language repertoire. He is the author of more than 5000 songs, including the well-known hits in the USSR "Orenburg Downy Shawl" (lyrics by V. Bokov, 1959) and "Where Can I Get Such a Song" (lyrics by M. Agashina, 1971). Most of the songs are marked with Ukrainian melodies or direct borrowings from the songwriting of the Hetmanate's Cossack class.
As a teenager, he was terrorized by communist famine, which forced his family to evacuate to the city of Zaporizhzhia.
Biography.
He was born in the village of Morivsk near Kozelets in Chernihiv region, where the events with the Moscow occupiers were still ongoing. He comes from a musically gifted family that was part of the Cossack music workshop in the town of Morivsk, Chernihiv province (former Kyiv Regiment of the Hetmanate).
During the Holodomor of 1932-1933, he and his parents fled from Moryvsk to the city of Zaporizhzhia, where he was employed for odd jobs and thus escaped death. In 1938, he was taken as a private to the Moscow army, where he worked in the Song and Dance Ensemble of the USSR NKVD Border Troops. There he was forced to constantly collaborate with military music groups.
From 1952 he directed the Volga Folk Choir, and from 1972 he lived in the Kuban. He is the author of more than 5000 songs, including music for the films Stepmother and Fatherless. Most of his songs bear the imprint of traditional Ukrainian melodies set to Russian-language texts. This subsequently contributed to the hybrid influences of Russian mass culture in Ukraine and created the preconditions for replacing the Ukrainian-language repertoire of mass songs with Russian-language ones. In particular, the canon of Ukrainian melos includes such hits of the communist Russian scene as "Orenburg Downy Shawl" (poem by V. Bokov, 1959) and "Where Can I Get Such a Song" (poem by M. Agashina, 1971).
After the restoration of Ukraine's state independence, he did not return to his homeland. He died in 1996 in a car accident. The Krasnodar Philharmonic in the Russian Federation is named after H. Ponomarenko.
The most famous songs with music by H. Ponomarenko are:
"Oh, Snow, Snowball" (lyrics by V. Bokov), 1959
"Orenburg Downy Shawl" (lyrics by V. Bokov), 1959
"A birch tree grows in Volgograd" (poem by M. Agashin), 1961
"I don't regret, I don't call, I don't cry" (poem by S. Yesenin), 1964
"Naryan-Mar, my Naryan-Mar" (poem by I. Kashezheva), 1964
What was, was" (poem by M. Agashin), 1965
"The golden grove has spoken" (poem by S. Yesenin)
"Give me a handkerchief" (poem by M. Agashin), 1971
"Where can I get such a song" (poem by M. Agashina), 1971
"Poplar" (poem by G. Kolesnikov)
"I'll call you a dawn" (lyrics by V. Bokov)
People's Artist of the USSR (1990).
Family.
He was married and had four children, to whom he gave emphatically Ukrainian names - Bohdan, Taras, Mariia, Olesia.
