Electric bandura, Metallica cover and concerts at the front: service of a military musician from the Cultural Forces

The light shines through the window into the small room. Several soldiers are sitting in a circle — one of them is holding a bandura.

“People used to be killed for playing it,” one of the soldiers starts a conversation. The bandura player's fingers move along the strings in a magical dance. A few seconds later, the soldiers recognize the melody — Nothing Else Matters by Metallica. The instrument is played by the Honored Artist of Ukraine, Taras Stoliar.

In his civilian life, he is a bandura player with the National Academic Folk Instrument Orchestra. On the first day of the full-scale war, he joined the Armed Forces of Ukraine, and now he is a member of the Cultural Forces unit.

“The commission had doubts about whether to enroll me”

Taras is originally from Chernivtsi. He has been playing the bandura since he was eight years old — his mother took him to lessons. According to him, his love for music came during his studies.

“When you first start playing, it's quite a routine thing. At first, you need to get your fingers used to the strings,” Taras explains. “I first felt the pleasure of playing when I was playing in an ensemble. And in my third year at the Chernivtsi Music College, I realized that the bandura was my life's work.”

He entered the Kyiv Conservatory. “For me, it was a competition — I wanted to prove myself and that I could be the best. Back when I was studying at the college, in the winter after the first exam session, the head of the department admitted that the commission had doubts about whether to enroll me.

However, in the first six months, I proved that the decision was right. I don't know if I was really the worst among the applicants, but I remembered these words very often later. Sometimes it happens that we are motivated by secondary things that we memorize and look for strength in them.”

This motivation worked: in 1998, as a third-year student, Taras won the Hnat Khotkevych International Competition in Kharkiv among performers of Ukrainian folk instruments.

For about twenty years, Taras has been playing in the National Academic Orchestra of Folk Instruments (NAOFI) and even became a concertmaster of the Bandura group.

“I wrote two pieces for orchestra and made several instrumentations. For example, a funk arrangement by Volodymyr Ivasyuk. It's an incredible feeling when you hear the notes that just came to mind being played by an orchestra.”

Among other projects, the musician took part in the recording of ONUKA's first album Look. In particular, the influence of Ukrainian tradition is so pronounced in the recording because of his bandura.

“There were moments when I realized it was my second birthday”

On the first day of the full-scale war, Taras left his music behind and stood up to defend Ukraine. He joined the 112th Territorial Defense Brigade and participated in the battle for Kyiv.

“In mid-March 2022, we were on the outskirts of the city, and mortars were firing at us. In between the shelling, we were strengthening the defense line: digging sand, installing logs, cutting down trees,” recalls Taras, who received the call sign Bandura during the war.

“Back then, everything had to be done very quickly. Before the Great War, I always tried to do the housework myself, so it so happened that I even became a foreman in my platoon.”

After the Kyiv region, Taras fought in the east, near Kreminna and Bakhmut. At first, he was a rifleman, then became involved as a drone operator.

“There were moments when I realized it was my second birthday. But it would be better not to have such memories,” the soldier says.

In November 2023, Taras joined the Cultural Forces unit, an association of Ukrainian artists who visit soldiers on the front line, in military hospitals, and de-occupied cities.

“The video of me playing a Metallica song was recorded by guys from the Third Separate Tank Brigade in the Kharkiv region back when I first joined the Cultural Forces.

Then I received a response from Valerii Zaluzhnyi. And it seems that Lars Ulrich and James Hetfield themselves commented yellow and blue hearts under that post. Although I didn't post that video, I didn't even have TikTok at the time.”

Currently, the Cultural Forces unit operates in five areas: one group works in the center of Ukraine, performing in hospitals, and educational and rehabilitation centers. Another group works in the Kharkiv, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson regions.

“For example, former rock 'n' roller and guitarist Oleksandr Remez; Artur Temchenko, an actor at the Lesya Ukrainka Theater in Lviv; and singer Svitlana Cherednychenko, who used to work in the Exemplary Demonstration Orchestra of the AFU and has now transferred to us.

Each direction has different teams and, accordingly, different programs. For example, in Donetsk, a significant part of the program is occupied by the plays. One of them was developed by actor Valerii Dzekh, a puppet show for the military about an angel and a human being. It's something similar to Antoine de Saint-Exupéry: about the meanings, where to find the strength to go on — not to give up and to unite people, to do a common cause.”

“When you get to the frontline, everything in you stops”

“When we visit the military, we tell them that we are also military personnel, that most of us have combat experience. They perceive us as equals, there is no barrier between us.

Here we do not expect applause, smiles, or everyone dancing. There is no standard program for these performances: you need to understand the military and what to perform for them.

Sometimes you come and see positive guys, and you want to support this spirit, play them something energetic and light. When the military are a bit depressed, I choose something else.”

The musician is especially pleased when the military ask about the bandura and assure him that they have never heard the instrument sound so powerful before.

“Music can motivate a soldier, encourage him. The defenders watch videos from these concerts on their phones for several days, searching the Internet for songs they heard from us by our names.

The main thing is for the military to be motivated and healthy: then they will have the strength to fight and find the strength to improve themselves. In war, you have to learn all the time. For me, the Cultural Forces unit is about the fact that you can restore and strengthen faith in victory in various ways. And the knowledge that for this you need to continue doing your job. That sooner or later it will bring the desired result and you will be able to return to normal life.”

Until he joined the Cultural Forces, he could not play the bandura.

“At the front, there is no desire to practice music at all. And there are no conditions: you can't keep such an instrument in a dugout — the bandura will fall apart from the dampness.

I also had a lot of things to do: even when I came for rotation, I took many different courses. You have to learn theory like you would at school. And when you get to the front, everything in you stops, you become a different person.”

But Taras's brothers-in-arms desperately needed music.

“When I was on rotation in Kyiv, I was constantly asked to play the bandura. Unfortunately, some of those guys are no longer with us.

We had an Afghan man named Johnny, who moved to Ukraine when he was eighteen and knew a few Ukrainian songs. I played him ‘I would take Bandura’, and he also liked ‘What a Moonlit Night’ and ‘Unhitch the Horses, Boys’. He sang Afghan songs to us, and I played along a bit. He was an interesting guy. He died last summer.”

“The point of this war is not who will win who”

Taras believes that meetings with the military also help to debunk propaganda myths about Ukrainian culture — through the history of musical instruments and works, to tell something more, to plunge into the depths of centuries, to show the continuity of tradition.

“The bandura has always been a symbol of struggle. Katsaps fought against weak Kobzars and bandura players. This happened in the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries. That is, they have always understood that the bandura is a weapon of resistance, and they have always tried to destroy it.

The instruments were taken away, burned, broken, and the performers were killed. During my travels, my stories help the military understand that the meaning of this war is not only about who will win on the battlefield. It is also a war for meanings.”

The military musician adds that when he plays Leontovych's “Shchedryk”, he always retells the story of the diplomacy of the Ukrainian People's Republic under Symon Petliura.

“The melody traveled around the world, and the choir that performed it promoted our right to separateness and statehood.

When you've been in the trenches for more than two years, you start thinking about general questions: why everything is the way it is now, how it should be. That's why during these meetings we try to give ideological guidelines — what we need to hold on to and why we will survive. We explain that Ukrainians have been doing this for a long time.”

Taras often plays songs on historical themes.

“I adore the academic work ‘Duma’ by the 20th-century composer Mykola Dremliuha. Fragments of it were used in the film The Lost Letter by Borys Ivchenko. In particular, ‘Duma’ describes how kobzars played and how they said goodbye to their brothers-in-arms. There are also historical marching fragments. I always play it at the beginning: it can show the instrument in all its glory and immerse a person in the history of Ukraine.”

The bandura player often performs the works of our contemporary Volodymyr Zubytskyi and the early 20th-century composer Vasyl Barvinskyi. But he also enjoys playing pop songs.

«Sometimes I play єTwo Colorsє by Oleksandr Bilash, sometimes the Zaporizhzhia march when the guys are cheerful. Also foreign covers: Metallica, Scorpions, Sting. Sometimes the military ask for something Ukrainian, like Scriabin or Okean Elzy, because they are interested in how they will sound on the bandura.”

The Cultural Forces are accompanied by another project, Book to the Front. Within its framework, Ukrainian publishers send books to soldiers for free.  “They are very happy to receive them, they are interested in various topics — philosophical, historical, and fiction. This is how we bring a ray of knowledge to the soldiers with our visits,” Taras is convinced.

“People abroad understand that our army is not a horde”

Taras also participates in missions abroad, where he promotes Ukrainian culture by playing the bandura. In the summer of 2022, he played Myroslav Skoryk's “Melody” at the International Classical Music Festival in Ravenna, Italy, together with the choir of the National Opera of Ukraine. Recently, the bandura player returned from Washington, D.C.: Ukraine's Ambassador to the United States Oksana Markarova posted a video of Taras playing Mykola Leontovych's “Shchedryk” in front of the White House.

“Such missions are necessary to show the world that we are the same as they are. To help people abroad distinguish us from the post-Soviet countries, and to show our uniqueness.

It really works — I realized this from the reaction of people in Italy. They understand that our army is not just another horde, but civilized people who used to do something else in civilian life. Even though this is often perceived by people abroad as something bizarre, such performances once again convince them that they need to help us win this war.”

Taras is convinced that we are now experiencing a special historical moment, even though our ancestors have lived through wars many times before.

“Now the whole world knows about us. They can finally support us because information is reaching us much faster. It is easier to explain to people abroad who Ukrainians are, how many of us there are, and what we are fighting for. And thanks to this support, there is a belief that we will be able to avoid leaving the war to our children.”

Most often, foreigners ask Taras what his instrument is called.

“It often happens that they have never heard the word at all. When I play something familiar to a foreign audience, people are surprised that the melody sounds completely different, that the bandura is so powerful and deep.”

About the exclusive electric bandura

When Taras joined the Cultural Forces, he bought a new bandura through his friends. After a few months of playing, it had already dried out in several places.

“These instruments are affected by dryness, humidity, and frost. That's why I try not to play my previous concert bandura very often, even though I brought it with me to the Kharkiv region. It is delicate and unique,” the musician explains.

Taras's main pride is his exclusive electric bandura.

“At first I dreamed of it because I wanted to process sound. Then I wanted the sound to last, to stretch. Because with an ordinary bandura, you pinch a string and the sound stops.

So once I convinced a unique bandura maker from Chernihiv, Oleksandr Beshun, to make me an unusual instrument. He designed it, and I had only a few wishes: I wanted the bandura to have corners and not be round.”

Taras recalls that when he joined the Cultural Forces, he already played the electric bandura. But it was inappropriate to use it to perform for the military.

“We play in very small spaces-sometimes for just a few people. This instrument needs to be connected to an amplifier, and it's also preferable to perform with a band.

Only when we can return to the big stages will we make other music. But for now, I'm always thinking about the victory. I won't be able to get everything back, but I want everyone to be well. I would like to continue what I started. If it is still needed and important after the war.”

Author: Anastasiia Krupka