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Kozak Mamai playing a kobza

Slobozhan kobzar P. Drevchenko and Poltava kobzar M. Kravchenko in Kharkiv 1902

A Kobzar (Ukrainian: кобзар, pl. kobzari) was a Ukrainian itinerant Cossack bard. Kobzars were sometimes blind, but kobzardom became the domain of the blind, stereotypically, by the early nineteenth century. Kobzar literally means ‘kobza player’, a Ukrainian stringed instrument of the lute family, and more broadly—a performer of the material associated with the kobzar tradition.

The kobzar tradition was established during the Hetmanate Era around the sixteenth century in Ukraine. Kobzars accompanied their singing with a kobza, bandura or lira. After the abolition of the Hetmanate by Empress Catherine II of Russia the apellation "kobzar" was applied to all itinerant blind singers. Their repertoire included epics known as dumas. The stereotypical kobzar of the nineteenth century was usually blind.

In Ukraine, kobzars were organized in Guilds, known as Kobzars'kyj Tsekh and had to undergo a rigorous apprenticeship (usually three years in length) before undergoing the first set of open examinations before becoming a kobzar. These guilds were similar to Orthodox Church brotherhoods in which each guild was associated with a specific church. These guilds then would take care of one church icon or purchase new religious ornaments for their affiliated church (Kononeko, p. 568–9). The members of these guilds thought of themselves as orally spreading knowledge about Orthodoxy by singing the dumy that they knew. However the Orthodox Church was often suspicious of and occasionally even hostile to kobzars who were seen as God's Eyes and possessed greater moral authority among the people.

The institution of the kobzardom essentially ended in the Ukrainian SSR in the mid 1930s during Stalin's repressions including the liquidation of the kobzars of Ukraine.^[1] Kobzar performance was replaced with stylized performances of folk and classical music utilising the bandura.

In recent times there has been an interest in reviving of authentic kobzar traditions which is marked by the re-establishing the Kobzar Guild as a school of historical authentic performance practice.

At the turn of the nineteenth century there were three regional kobzar schools: Chernihiv, Poltava, and Slobozhan, which were differentiated by repertoire and playing style.

Kobzar is also a seminal book of poetry by Taras Shevchenko, the great national poet of Ukraine.

The term "kobzar" has on occasion been used for hurdy-gurdy players in Belarus (where the hurdy-gurdy is often referred to as a "kobza", and bagpipe players in Poland where the bagpipe is referred to as a "kobza" or "koza".

• Kononenko, Natalie O. “The Influence of the Orthodox Church on Ukrainian Dumy.” Slavic Review 50 (1991): 566–75.

Blind musicians

Wikimedia Commons has media related to:

Kobzars

• Kobzar at Encyclopedia of Ukraine
• National Union of the Ukrainian Kobzars official site (in Ukrainian)