The Passing of a Bard

As I was getting ready to go to bed last night I got an SMS from a friend of mine from UkrMusic. It read "Tryzubiy Stas pomer! Pokhoron zavtra o 15:00 na Askoldovi mohili!" I thought for a moment, do I know this person who has just passed on, and whose funeral is being held tomorrow at 15:00 [actually today]. I couldn't recall who this was at all last night so this morning I decided to quickly Google him. It wasn't long before I discovered that Tryzubiy Stas was the pen name of Stanislav Shcherbatykh, and that I may have had even met him at some time over my years in Ukraine.

Stanislav Shcherbatykh was born on February 24, 1948 in the Altay Region of Russia and when still a child his family relocated to Stanislav (present day Ivano-Frankivsk).

Back in 2004 he had over 300 compositions to his name in which he used everything from allegory and hyperbole to satire to express the ups and downs, joys and sadness of contemporary Ukrainian life.

Using a mix of different types of music, including that of John Lennon for his song Isty Daj [Give us something to eat] and his song Ekskursiia po Kyivu [An Excursion around Kyiv], a mix of Ukrainian and English about a group from Cambridge that has a tour guide who speaks to them in Ukrainian-English surzhyk. See the words here.

In the late 1980s and early 1990s had on occasion performed with the L'viv based Show Theatre Ne Zhurys' [Don't Worry].