Composer, ethnographer, and Director General of the Hungarian Heriatge House Miklós Both was awarded the Amber Heart for his work in documenting and promoting Ukrainian folk music heritage internationally. The award was presented by Fegyir Sándor, Ukraine’s Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary to Hungary, on August 24 at a ceremony marking the 35th anniversary of Ukraine’s independence. As part of the event, a statue of the Ukrainian poet Taras Shevchenko was also unveiled in the park on Százház Street in Budapest’s 7th district.
The Polyphony Project is an international research program established to systematically document traditional Ukrainian music, primarily the polyphonic folk singing tradition. The field recordings, melodies, lyrics, and background materials produced as part of the project are available to researchers, musicians, educators, and the interested public in a freely accessible online archive. The collection is carried out in collaboration with Ukrainian experts and with the involvement of local communities, and in recent years has enriched the publicly accessible material on Ukraine’s musical heritage with thousands of recordings—a repertoire, part of which could no longer be recorded from living informants today. A testament to its professional recognition is the fact that in 2022, this same program received the European Parliament’s European Citizen’s Prize.
Find more information about the project here
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