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gathered. The salt industry was one of the oldest in dustries in Ukraine and for a long time it was one of the most important. It first emerged in this area, which for centuries was the main salt-producing region of medieval Ukraine. Today there are few traces of the famous Utoropy salt industry. The salt works had brought great riches to the various magnates and offi cials involved in the trade, but the Austrian govern ment had a monopoly on salt. It closed the works in Utoropy in 1786 and they never reopened. However, to this day village people boil the local brine to get salt for home use. We were each given a cup of salt as a memento from Utoropy. The meeting with the village elders that eve ning took place at the Bilenchuk home. We hauled our bags from the car and assembled our recording equip ment. There was a significant amount of it, but we were soon ready for the village elders who were gath ering outside. Maryana talked with some of the older women, while I watched a master craftsman, Dmytro Boldash, build a little wooden chapel and cover it with decorated sheet metal. We had seen a number of simi lar chapels along the roads here. Dmytro said he had built many of them. He told me that in these parts a family would often turn to God in hard times and then they would promise to have a chapel constructed if their prayers were answered. One could say that all the chapels we had seen were answered prayers. Meanwhile, Yaryna found an old friend, Dmyt ro Pavliuk, a musician she had met on her trip to this village five years ago. She was very saddened to hear that Dmytro's father, a well known flute player, had passed away. We walked up the hill to the cemetery with his son and paid tribute to this legendary musician. The sun was setting as we headed back. It painted the surrounding rolling hills a luscious golden purple. We passed a larger chapel and some ruins that I later learned were the remains of the old church in Utoropy, which was struck by lightening in 1899. The wooden church had burned to the ground and the fire had destroyed a treasure trove of ancient church books, parish records and icons. The single surviving icon, which depicts St. Michael, gives us an idea of the beauty of the works that were lost in the fire. A new church was completed further down the hill in 1929. At the Bilenchuk home we were treated to an evening of song and stories, real "vechernytsi, like we hadn't had in a long time" according to one of the Utoropy elders who attended. The lead singer was Nastya Sabadash, a thin energetic woman who didn't look her age. She knew the oldest songs and had a great sense of humor. Her sister Hanna Voloshchuk sang with her and had composed several of the new songs we heard that evening. Especially moving was her song about Vyacheslav Chomovil, the Ukrainian dissident and politician who recently died in a car ac cident. One of the musicians played a "telynka," a flute without finger holes. Since we plan to do our show in the winter, we asked the group to sing us some Christmas carols. The group obliged us with some wonderful old songs with magical tales had little to do with the usual Christmas story. The carolers included several chil dren who couldn't stop giggling at the idea of singing Christmas carols in July. But they were delighted to find that they were treated as well as more seasonal carolers. Each received a big bar of chocolate before being sent to bed. The elders and adults continued to sing long into the night. Although we were up late recording the sing ers, Mrs. Lasiychuk got us up early next morning. She didn't want us to miss any part of the preparations for the wedding that day. A traditional village wedding is a major event that even in its abbreviated contempo rary form takes several days. We had already missed the baking of the "korovai" (wedding cake) and the decoration of the "viltse" (wedding tree) by the brides maids the previous days. We had to catch the arrival of the musicians at the house. We rushed through a dinner sized breakfast, checked our equipment and headed out. The wedding took place at the homestead of the groom, located on a hill accessible only by foot. We "Vechernytsi" in Utoropy
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