The Muravsky Shliakh Research and Reproduction Group works at the Kharkiv Regional Center of Folklore. The group members study and reproduce song folklore of Eastern Ukraine (Slobozhanshchina and Poltava regions). The group also performs rites, games, traditional ensemble music ("troisti musyky") and dances of the region.The core of the group is formed by music teachers who have studied and performed folklore for 25 years as well as by a few students singing in the group.
The group’s repertoire consists of more than 50 unique lyrical, kozaks’ and soldiers’ songs of Livoberezhna (Left-Bank) Ukraine, and of more than 100 examples of calendar-rite and wedding folklore, lullabies, children’s games, instrumental tunes and dances, and fragments of national rites.
The group has an active concert schedule. They perform educational concerts, celebrate all calendar holidays with public concerts, and run TV and radio programs. Muravsky Shliakh has taken part in national and international folklore festivals in Kyiv, Kamianets-Podilsky, Belgorod (Russia), Kharkiv, Tallinn (Estonia), Klaipeda (Lithuania), Kupiskis (Lithuania), Vilnius (Lithuania), Novaya Usman (Russia), Roshchino - St. Petersburg (Russia), etc. The group participated in the social and cultural programs of two World Congresses of Ukrainians (Kharkiv, 1996 and Kyiv, 1997) and the Music of Eastern Europe International Symposium (Liublin, Poland, 1992, 1993 and 1996), etc.
The group’s creed is the preservation of folklore tradition and its presentation without any stylization. Songs are performed in an authentic manner that is associated with a certain action in the rite and with the time of performance as well. The local dialect, traditional dance movements, authentic costumes and rite attributes are properly maintained.
information, photo from official site: http://www.murshliakh.kharkov.ua/