Paper Short Abstract:

The folk choir Ukrainian Village Voices engages in a yearly practice of Koliada, or Christmas caroling, through the streets of New York's Ukrainian Village. While the external urban setting of these ritual songs may be the most apparent change from their agricultural origin in the home country, a focus on performance practice and transmission of vocal technique reveals adaptive capacities of ritual to change the bodies of performers as well as in the contexts of cultural meaning.

Paper Abstract:

Ukrainian Village Voices is a multi-ethnic choir based in the Ukrainian Village of Manhattan which is dedicated to preserving and performing the polyphonic vocal traditions of Ukraine's villages. In 2023, the choir was invited to participate in the Smithsonian Folklife Festival in Washington DC with a specific focus on the choir's performance repertoire of ritual song. In addition to performances throughout the New York's folk music scene, the choir engages in a yearly practice of Koliada, or Christmas caroling through the streets of New York's Ukrainian Village. In this most urban of settings, Koliada links together the sometimes frayed connections of the changing urban neighborhood of the Ukrainian diaspora community, while also engaging the multi-ethnic and cosmopolitan streets and audiences of New York.

This paper will explore the choir's understanding of its own ritual practice of Koliada and other ritual year vocal traditions such as Vesnianky (Spring Songs) and Kupala (Midsummer) in their urban setting and in relation to the source traditions in Ukraine. As a performing member of the choir, but as a non-Ukrainian, I explore this practice through a reflexive ethnographic analysis of my own vocal learning process and performance experience within the choir. While the external urban setting of these ritual songs may be the most apparent change from their agricultural origin in the home country, a focus on performance practice and transmission of vocal technique reveals the capacities of ritual song to change the bodies of diaspora performers while adapting to urban contexts of cultural meaning.