As a child, Mykhailo Hnatyshyn (Mikey Hnat) heard a vast range of popular music in New York City, where he was born and raised. His Ukrainian immigrant parents immersed him in traditional folk songs and sent him to St. George’s Ukrainian School in the city’s East Village neighborhood, also known as Little Ukraine.
His first language at home was Ukrainian, but as soon as he stepped outside there was English. Strains of classic rock music – Jimi Hendrix, Led Zeppelin and the Allman Brothers – would waft into his window from the legendary Fillmore East theater across Second Avenue. As a youth, he would walk past the CBGB club where punk rock was born and simultaneously hear the staccato rhythms of young black men rapping in the streets, auguring the new hip-hop explosion that would eventually take the world by storm – even Ukraine.
Like many, he learned how to play a guitar and dreamed of following in the footsteps of rock stars lionized by the radio stations and magazines shaping pop culture. He even put out an album of his own eclectic compositions, “Unrequited,” on which he sings.
But unlike most of his peers in New York, he was steeped in classical Ukrainian poetry. At school, he memorized the verses of Ukraine’s national poet Taras Shevchenko. In his teenage years, he would translate Beatles songs into Ukrainian and play them at parties.
Those influences have converged in Hnatyshyn’s most recent work: a collection of Taras Shevchenko’s poetry put to contemporary music using the AI tools now readily available. One of Shevchenko’s best-known poems, “Dumy moyi” (Thoughts of Mine), is set to a hard-driving rap rhythm most young Ukrainians would be more familiar with from their clubbing forays than any classroom.
Instead of the usual lament, Hnatyshyn uses an arrangement that conveys Shevchenko’s rage – which is probably more suited to the younger generation of Ukrainians fighting for their survival.
“I wanted to educate people about Ukrainian poetry,” Hnatyshyn says. “I wanted to do something for everyone. Use music you wouldn’t expect.”
While growing up, he sang Shevchenko’s verse put to music that often sounded like a solemn dirge. By contrast, his “Plach Yaroslavny” (Yaroslav’s Lament, a fragment from the medieval “Song of Ihor” that Shevchenko translated into modern Ukrainian) is performed as a melodic ballad that blends a host of folk music influences from Joni Mitchell to Nina Matvienko.
On the heels of his Shevchenko collection, Hnatyshyn has put out an album of traditional Ukrainian Christmas Carols he heard throughout his childhood. The arrangements are often unexpectedly upbeat. “I wanted something different from the sound of old people out of breath from climbing six flights of steps,” he jokes, remembering the carolers who visited the neighborhood’s many walk-up tenements when he was a child.
“Boh Predvichyj” (Eternal God), for example, almost becomes an anthem worthy of a Madison Square Garden packed with 20,000 rock-and-roll fans. Whereas “Vo Vyfleyemi Nyni Novyna,” (In Bethlehem Today There is News) has a funky guitar groove that may have seemed utterly foreign to the émigrés he sang with as a child.
The AI process – not just pressing a button
Thanks to the current revolution in AI technology, producing music has become much less prohibitive. But it still requires a lot of work, creativity, and an impeccable ear.
“It’s just another tool,” Hnatyshyn says. “I play guitar. But if I have arthritis, then I can’t play guitar long enough to perform or work out some ideas before it starts to hurt.”
At his studio space, where he now lives in the New York City borough of Staten Island, he uses one software program to find the type of music and voice best suited to the mood of any given poem. Then, with another more complex program, he fine-tunes the music like a sound engineer to give each work its own unique sound.
The result is an utterly fresh rendition that will surprise those who know the poetry and entice those unfamiliar with it.
More poets and folk coming
Next on his list of poets to be revamped is Vasyl Symonenko.
“I love Symonenko, and his rhymes are perfect for songs,” Hnatyshyn says. After Symonenko, there will be albums of Lesia Ukrainka and Ivan Franko. “Franko rocks. He’s made for that heavy metal sound.”
But before adding to the list of poets, Hnatyshyn will first put the finishing touches on a collection of traditional folk songs, including the relatively recent “Dva Kolori” (Two Colors), based on Dmytro Pavlychko’s well-known poem from 1964.
Historical fiction and art
When not in the throes of making new songs out of old poems, Hnatyshyn delves even further back in time, studying the art and culture of Kyivan Rus’. He has even published a historical novel, “The Road to Rus’,” that tracks the exploits of Varangians, Slavs, Polonians and others in ninth century Ukraine as a plan to attack and lay siege to Constantinople is developed.
“Not enough has been written about that period in history,” he says. And Hnatyshyn’s novel is an action-packed romp through the wild political escapades leading to the establishment of Kyivan Rus’, replete with intrigues, thievery, Viking long boats, betrayal, and other ingredients for a rich historical thriller.
Cover of the novel “The Road to Rus’” (Design by Paul Gourhan)
Hnatyshyn reluctantly admits to working on a sequel that covers events closer to the times of Volodymyr the Great. “But writing a novel is much harder for me than writing poetry,” he says.
He also collects Ukrainian contemporary art and supports various defense forces on the ground in Ukraine fighting against Russia’s invasion. “As I get older, I know it’s all about getting it out there, letting people know about Ukraine, keeping it alive,” he says, sipping his favorite libation. It’s a clear mission, and Hnatyshyn certainly seems to be enjoying his commitment.