Don Cossacks and music
The name “Don Cossacks” already gives information about the origin of these very special men. The banks of the Don are the homeland of the Cossacks and the birthplace of a great musical tradition, whose history goes back more than 500 years. Even if today the Don Cossacks and music appear to be inseparable, those who were so-named originally were not only artistically inclined. As “free warriors”, which is Cossacks in translation, the legendary horsemen lived, settled and fought by the Don in the fifteenth century, but also by the Black Sea, in Siberia and on the Volga. Written records of the people, however, exist only in the song literature. Around 4,000 songs provide evidence of the lives and sufferings of the horsemen. Within the last five hundred years the Don Cossacks had become an important influence firstly on the Moscow Principality, later on the Russian Tsardom and finally on the entire Russian Empire. A sudden end to the proud tradition of the Don Cossacks came with the Russian Revolution of 1917, because, after the take-over of the olsheviks, every form of cultural independence was brutally suppressed. This also resulted in a dispersal of the Cossack community. The larger part of the proud people went into exile, but others stayed and were almost completely exterminated in 1919. This period also gave birth to the legendary Don Cossacks Choir. In 1921, the unforgettable Sergei Jaroff, exiled in Turkey, founded the choir, which he conducted without interruption until its disbanding in 1979. When the new political freedom under Gorbachev made it possible, after decades of persecution, for the Don Cossacks to return to their homeland on the banks of the Don, the Don Cossacks Choir was re-founded in 1992. In order to bring the choir up to a top international level rapidly, the leading Dutch choir director Marcel Verhoeff was engaged, who, in the shortest space of time, made the Don Cossacks Choir Russia, as it is officially called, bloom as of old. All the members of the Don Cossacks Choir Russia are professional singers, and come from old Cossack families of the Don, the Kuban or the Terek. They are all committed to bringing to life again the old culture and tradition of the proud Cossack people. Old songs and popular airs form the main repertoire focus of the Don Cossacks Choir Russia. Accompanied by balalaika, domra and bayan, the musicians include in their repertoire orthodox religiousness with quiet pieces like the Lord’s Prayer, classical ballads, dances, but above all well-known popular airs like the famous Kalinka. Russian-Orthodox religion, however, is inseparably linked with the choral artistry of the Cossacks, because attendance at the cathedral and singing in the church choir were an essential part of the life of the Cossacks.
