Julian Kytasty, a Ukranian-American musician, composer, and conductor, has been invited to speak and perform at Carleton. Wednesday, January 27, Kytasty will be giving a lecture on Ukrainian culture and global identity, specifically within a musical context. His concert will be held on Saturday night, January 30, where he will be performing a variety of traditional Ukrainian folk music. Both the lecture and the concert are open to students, faculty, and the general public.
Because of his dedication to preserving cultural traditions within his work, Kytasty’s concert will include performance of traditional Ukrainian music, singing of traditional folk stories, and original compositions made for folk instruments. He will be primarily playing the bandura, a lute-like stringed instruments originating in Eastern Europe popular among Ukrainian Cossacks, and the flute.
Kytasty was first recommended to the Russian and European Studies Department by French Professor Cherif Keita, who, like Kytasty, is dedicated to preserving and promoting appreciation for the arts and traditions of ancestral cultures. Russian Professor Diane Nemec Ignashev, who coordinated Kytasty’s visit, hopes that Julian Kytasty’s visitation of Carleton will promote awareness of Slavic culture at large, generate an understanding of the issues behind Ukraine’s cultural identity, as well as give students and other guests exposure to authentic folk music and instruments. She also wishes for students to understand the relevance of folk music in modern musical compositions, as will be demonstrated by Kytasty’s performance of original compositions with traditional instruments.