Two years ago, a group of friends gathered outside a house in a snowy Oregon town. The carolers then sang, as best they could, a Christmas carol whose history few Americans know.
Performing Christmas carols with multiple voices is an old (and somewhat old-fashioned) tradition in the United States. Typically, neighbors, friends or colleagues gather in a neighborhood on a cold December evening and knock on strangers' doors to sing them a song.
I was part of the group who chose to sing “Carol of the Bells”, a song with continued success, but which is also complicated for amateur singers like us. And what my friends and I didn't suspect about this haunting melody was that it came from Ukraine. Indeed, the original version, “Chtchedryk”, is a folk song even older than the celebration of Christmas.
“Ukrainian folk culture is very rich,” Mark Andryczyk, a translator and scholar who heads the Ukrainian Studies program at Columbia University, told us.
Mark Andryczyk pointed out that my friends and I were singing “Carol of the Bells” 100 years after it was discovered by American audiences in a concert given by a Ukrainian choir at Carnegie Hall in New York. Since Russia's invasion of Ukraine, more and more people are paying attention to the Ukrainian origin of certain valuable works of Art and traditions, Andryczyk points out.
Today, singing “Carol of the Bells” is a staple of the American holiday season. It was performed by the Tabernacle Choir of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Utah, as well as the renowned a cappella group Pentatonix. It is part of the soundtrack of the cult Christmas film Mom, I missed the plane. It was even played to the sound of basketballs by NBA stars. The Boot Barn chain of stores, which sells cowboy boots in particular, even used it in an advertisement – Carol of the Boots – in which cowboys and farm workers work on a ranch to the rhythm of clicking spurs.
“There is so much room for other elements to enrich this repetitive back and forth,” emphasizes Mr. Andryczyk. Some musicians just use it as a background, then add layers on top…sometimes unnecessarily. »
“Chtchedryk” went from a simple four-note melody sung to a single voice to wish farm families a happy new year —
“Your pretty sheep have given birth
To little lambs of great value”
— to a Christmas classic, which was born when the modern version of “Shchedryk” debuted in December 1916 in Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital.
A very simple song, which the Ukrainian composer Mykola Leontovytch took to make a more complex arrangement.
“The song immediately appealed to the public [de Kyiv] “, writes Tina Peresunko, a former Fulbright scholar at Indiana University, in her dissertation on this topic at the university's Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies.
Since then, “Shchedryk” has become a song of Ukrainian national pride. In 1919, a Ukrainian choir escaped the surveillance of Russian soldiers, traveled 970 kilometers on foot and crossed the country's western border. From there, the singers embarked on a concert tour, performing notably in Prague, Zurich and Paris.
Tina Peresunko talks about a journalist from The Swiss Homeland enthusiastic about a performance he had attended in French-speaking Switzerland. “The Ukrainian Republic seeks to restore its independence and has decided to demonstrate that it really exists,” he wrote. “I sing, therefore I exist,” professes the choir, and they sing wonderfully. »
In 1922, the Ukrainian choir came to the United States and performed “Shchedryk” at Carnegie Hall in New York. She has also performed in Chicago and Washington, Philadelphia and St. Louis – in 115 cities in total, spread across 36 states.
The song I sang that evening in Oregon did not come into existence until 1936, when American conductor Peter Wilhousky rearranged the melody for an orchestra and added English lyrics. . “I focused on the joyful sound of the bells,” he wrote in a letter read by Tina Peresunko.
“Christmas is here
Bringing good cheer
To young and old
Meek and the bold.”
This process of musical composition, with notes repeated in loops and which produces a haunting effect (musicians speak of ostinato), is a common arrangement in the United States. Pop music fans are familiar with this technique, which they would rather call a “riff”. When we have this tune in mind, it never lets us go. (Think Flo Rida's “Low” or the strings of The Verve's 1997 hit “Bitter Sweet Symphony.”)
If the melody of “Shtchedryk” charms Americans and people around the world during the holiday season, it is throughout the year that Ukrainians can celebrate the beauty and resilience of their culture.
“Incredibly beautiful,” comments a user on YouTube after listening to the original song (in English version) composed by a Ukrainian artist. “Lots of love from America. »
Tim Neville is a freelance writer.
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