Vasyl' Potapenko born in Berezna, Mensk region, Chernihiv

Chernihiv

Chernihiv or Chernigov is a historic city in northern Ukraine. It is the administrative center of the Chernihiv Oblast , as well as of the surrounding Chernihivskyi Raion within the oblast...

 province was the guide-boy for the blind kobzar

Kobzar

A Kobzar was an itinerant Ukrainian bard who sang to his own accompaniment.-Tradition:Kobzars were often blind, and became predominantly so by the 1800s...

 Tereshko Parkhomenko

Tereshko Parkhomenko

Terentiy Makarovych Parkhomenko was one of the most respected kobzars of the late 19th and early 20th century.-Biography:...

. As a guide-boy he was a participant of the ХІІth Archeological congress held in Kharkiv in 1902. He travelled to Halychyna by himself after discovering that Hnat Khotkevych

Hnat Khotkevych

Hnat Martynovych Khotkevych December 31, 1877 in Kharkiv, Russian Empire – October 8, 1938 in Kharkiv, in the Ukrainian SSR of the Soviet Union) was a Ukrainian writer, ethnographer, playwright, composer, musicologist, and bandurist....

 had invited kobzars to perform there in 1909. When he discovered that the audiences in Halychyna had expected blind bandurists, he tried to blind himself by spraying caustic soda in his eyes.
He returned to central Ukraine settling in Kiev

Kiev

Kiev or Kyiv is the capital and the largest city of Ukraine, located in the north central part of the country on the Dnieper River. The population as of the 2001 census was 2,611,300. However, higher numbers have been cited in the press....

 where he made a living teaching bandura and re-selling banduras. Many of his students joined the Kiev Bandurist Capella

Kiev Bandurist Capella

The Kiev Bandurist Capella is a male vocal-instrumental ensemble that accompanies its singing with the playing of the multi-stringed Ukrainian folk instrument known as the bandura....

 in its second incarnation from 1924. He was a participant at the Xth historic-ethnographic concert held in Kiev in 1928. On October 15, 1930 Potapenko was arrested for being a member of "counter-revolutionary" (anti-Soviet)organizations. There were further arrests ending in his unexplained disappearance.

Potapenko made a significant contribution to the art of playing bandura. He was one of the bandurists who cemented the use of the Chernihiv style of bandura playing in Kiev, and in particular the drag technique exploited by Parkhomenko. After his arrest, he was treated typically as a "non-person" and written out of the history books.

Sources

• Kudrytsky, A. V. - Mystetsvo Ukrainy - Biohrafichnyj dovidnyk - Kiev 1997
• Ukrainians in North America, USA
• Литвин, М. – Струни золотії – “Веселка”, К.:1994 (117с.)
• Мішалов, В. і М. Українські кобзарі-бандуристи – Сідней, Австралія, 1986 - 106с.
• Самчук, У. - Живі струни - Детройт, США, 1976 (468с.)