Slastion The Ethnographer
Slastion was also a leading Ukrainian folklorist and ethnographer. In 1875, then a student at the Petersburg Academy of Arts and a budding folklorist, he spent his holidays in Ukraine and got the chance to know the artistry of the kobzar Nekhovaizub.
In 1876 P. Martynovych and his colleague Slastion travelled to Lokhvytsia and recorded the duma parody by kobzar Ivan Kravchenko. In 1887 Slastion made an engraving of kobzar P. Siroshtan. In 1905 he painted a portrait of kobzar Pavlo Hashchenko and noted that Hashchenko knew four dumy. In 1906 Slastion met the kobzar Zhovniansky, recorded his performances of dumy, and painted his portrait.
In 1908 in Yalta the technically savvy Slastion helped Lesia Ukrainka and her husband Klyment Kvitka make live recordings (on phonograph cylinders) of the dumy performed by the blind virtuoso Hnat Honcharenko (circa 1837 - circa 1917). These recordings were transcribed by Filaret Kolessa, who later published them in his collection Melodiyi ukrayins'kykh narodnykh dum (The Melodies of the Ukrainian Folk Dumas). It is known that Slastion corresponded with another well-known blind kobzar, Tereshko Parkhomenko (1872–1910). In 1909 Slastion made recordings of the repertoire of kobzar Hovtan, including the duma "The Widow and Her Three Sons".
Selections from Slastion's repertoire originally recorded on wax cylinders can be found on a record released as a dedication to Lesia Ukrainka.
As an architect, Opanas Slastion was one of the founding fathers of the "Ukrainian Modern" style in architecture.
Read more about this topic: Opanas Slastion