Ukrainian bard, kobzar, bandura player. Winner of the Grand Prix at the first Chervona Ruta Festival (1989) in Chernivtsi. Laureate of the "Oberih" festival (1990, Lutsk).
Biography.
He was born on May 23, 1958 in the village of Gurmai, Krasnodar Territory, Kuban.
From 1960 he lived in the village of Bilokrynytsia, Kremenets district, Ternopil region.
He graduated from high school in Kryvyi Rih (1975). He studied at the Ukrainian Agricultural Academy (Kyiv) and Lviv Conservatory. Graduated from the conducting faculty of the Rivne Institute of Culture (1987), where he created the Ptakh Quartet.
He sang in the Volyn Folk Choir, Pochayiv Lavra, Ternopil Regional Philharmonic, Rivne Regional Philharmonic, and in 1988-1990 - in the studio theater "Don't be sad!" (Lviv). In 1990, he began to perform as a kobzar.
He was married, had a son, Ivan, and two daughters, Khrystyna and Anastasiia.
He worked and lived in Kremenets, Ternopil region, and sang in the church choir of the Kremenets Monastery of the UOC-MP.
On September 2, 2019, around 8 p.m., he left home on his scooter and got into an accident. A car hit him a few hundred meters from his home. The singer died in an ambulance.
Musical activity
He sang in a baritone voice. He accompanied himself on the kobza. His repertoire included songs based on the poems of the Ukrainian Lemko poet Bohdan-Ihor Antonych, as well as Ukrainian classical and contemporary poets: Hryhorii Skovoroda, Taras Shevchenko, Bohdan Lepkyi, Eduard Drach, and Ivan Malkovych.
In the summer of 1987, a recording of the song "Black Arable Land" performed by V. Zhdankin was first broadcast on the Divertissement program on the First Channel of the Ukrainian Radio. Soon after, the program aired a whole story about Zhdankin with a long interview and several songs.
Vasyl Zhdankin was the first person to publicly perform "Ukraine Has Not Yet Died" after many years of prohibition (together with Viktor Morozov and Eduard Drach). It happened on September 24, 1989, at the final concert of the Chervona Ruta festival.
His repertoire includes:
"The Black Arable Land Is Isolated",
"The Message of the Mother of God",
"Hey, fly eagle, fly gray",
"Hey, there is a Sich on the mountain",
"Out of captivity from under Izmail"
"God was born on a sleigh" and a cycle of carols based on the words of Bohdan-Ihor Antonych and others.
He starred in the films "And Life is Covered with Snow" and "Ukrainians, We Are Saved".
He has toured in more than 20 countries, including Argentina, Canada, the USA, Russia, and others.
He is the author of a number of musical compositions based on his own poems and those of Ukrainian poets. Among his published works is The Epos of Kremenets (1992).
