^ Grigorenko site Archived at the Wayback Machine.^ Rainer Maria Rilke, Susan Ranson, Ben Hutchinson(2008), Rainer Maria Rilke's The book of hours, Camden House.^ Volodymyr Kushpet 'Startsivstvo', 500pp, Kyiv 'Tempora' 2007.The Orthodox Church however was often suspicious of and occasionally even hostile to kobzars. These guilds then would take care of one church icon or purchase new religious ornaments for their affiliated church (Kononenko, p. 568–9).

These guilds were thought to have been modelled on the Orthodox Church brotherhoods as each guild was associated with a specific church. They developed a system of rigorous apprenticeships (usually three years in length) before undergoing the first set of open examinations in order to become a kobzar. In Ukraine, kobzars organized themselves into regional guilds or brotherhoods, known as tsekhs. Their repertoire primarily consisted of para-liturgical psalms and 'kanty', and also included a unique epic form known as dumas.Īt the turn of the nineteenth century there were three regional kobzar schools: Chernihiv, Poltava, and Slobozhan, which were differentiated by repertoire and playing style. Kobzars accompanied their singing with a musical instrument known as the kobza, bandura, or lira. The professional kobzar tradition was established during the Hetmanate Era around the sixteenth century in Ukraine.

Kobzar literally means ' kobza player', a Ukrainian stringed instrument of the lute family, and more broadly - a performer of the musical material associated with the kobzar tradition. Kobzars were often blind and became predominantly so by the 1800s.

Kobzar by Taras Shevchenko