Nazariy Yaremchuk

Nazariy Nazarovych Yaremchuk (Назарій Назарович Яремчук) was a Hutsul Ukrainian singer, born in the village of Rivnya, Chernivtsi Oblast.

He was posthumously named Hero of Ukraine in August 2021.

In fact, Nazariy's half-brother Dmytro (born 1924) then resided in Winnipeg, Canada, after he had fled there at the end of World War II due to his activities the UPA.

Nazariy Yaremchuk was said to have a happy childhood and enjoyed music from a young age.

That changed when his father died in 1963, when Yaremchuk was only twelve.

This led to the decision of his mother to send him to a boarding school in Vyzhnytsia.

There, he started to interest himself for choral music and mandolin.

He eventually transferred to a secondary school to finish his education.

In 1969, Yaremchuk finished secondary school and tried to enroll himself at the Faculty of Geography of Chernivtsi State University, but his attempt was unsuccessful.

Instead of studying, he started working as a seismographer and was employed in the Army.

Through his Army service, he could enroll himself in a driver's course at the House of Culture in his local Vyzhnytsia.

After a driver's course class, Yaremchuk stayed in the House of Culture and attended a rehearsal of the VIA Smerichka as a spectator.

Drawn in by the music, Yaremchuk, who had enjoyed singing a lot in his childhood, asked to join the group.

After Levko Dutkivskiy, the musical director of Smerichka, heard his voice, he was invited to become a singer alongside Vasyl Zinkevych.

In September 1970, Yaremchuk successfully enrolled himself in the Faculty of Geography at the Chernivtsi State University after all and started studying.

In the evening, he kept attending rehearsals of Smerichka in Vyzhnytsia while in the morning, he had to attend class in Chernivtsi.

Because of the hassle, Yaremchuk sometimes stayed at Dutkivskiy's home.

Around the same time, Yaremchuk befriended Boryspil-based journalist Viktor Spivak of the Silski Visti newspaper.

Spivak had only come to Vyzhnytsia by mere chance as he wanted to do a report in the Carpathians.

There, he attended the rehearsal of Smerichka by accident as he was left bored in the small town.

Spivak later recalled Yaremchuk's extreme musicality and very good pitch when they were hiking in the mountains during their encounters.

"'Once, when I arrived in Vyzhnytsia, Nazariy found me and proposed me to take a walk in the mountains. It was a beautiful Carpathian Septembery Autumn. Nazariy took me on an unknown trail, I only saw unknown places around the mountains, and in the sky, God had spilt hundreds of stars. The stars were such large ones, there was such a serenity, it was such a warm evening that I just fell in love with the rich nature. At that time, Nazariy told of the mountains, of the local people. And then suddenly, Nazariy, stood still, and said silently:

'Viktor, a wedding.'

'Where?' I asked.

'Listen, music is playing.' He whispered.

Until his death in 1995, Yaremchuk was one of the most-loved singers of Ukraine.

He held on to the title People's Artist of Ukraine and was a posthumously recipient of the Shevchenko National Prize.

In Ukraine, he was commonly nicknamed "the favourite of the country" and the "nightingale from the Bukovyna".

Yaremchuk was mostly known for his Ukrainian-language repertoire.

Together with Vasyl Zinkevych and Volodymyr Ivasyuk, he was the first singer to sing in his native language at Pesnya goda.

As part of VIA Smerichka, Yaremchuk first popularised songs as "Chervona ruta" and "Vodohray".

Yaremchuk's children became known in music as well.

His two eldest sons Dmytro Yaremchuk and Nazariy Yaremchuk were both assigned the title People's Artist of Ukraine.

Daughter Mariya Yaremchuk became a well-known recording artist and represented Ukraine in the Eurovision Song Contest 2014.

Nazariy Yaremchuk was born as the youngest and third child of Nazariy Tarasovych Yaremchuk and Mariya "Marichka" Dariyivna in the village of Rivnya (nowadays part of Vyzhnytsia) on the banks of the Cheremosh river.

Due to the aftermath of World War II, the family was of a composed nature.

His father was thirty-four years his mother's senior and was therefore already 64 when Nazariy was born.

At that time, his father already had two adult children from an earlier marriage, Dmytro and Emilia.

However, neither of them lived with them in the house.

Young Nazariy grew up with his older brother Bohdan and older sister Kateryna "Katryusha", and their father's grandson, Stepan.