1951–1995
Nazarii Yaremchuk
Pop singer, the voice of Smerichka
More than 150 songs, almost all of them in Ukrainian. Nazarii Yaremchuk, from a Bukovyna village, became the voice of Smerichka, sang Ivasiuk’s “Chervona Ruta” with Vasyl Zinkevych, and filled concert halls, sometimes giving two or three concerts a day.
Key accomplishments
- Soloist (from 1969) and artistic director (from 1982) of the vocal-instrumental band Smerichka
- Volodymyr Ivasiuk’s “Chervona Ruta” and “Vodohrai,” sung in a duet with Vasyl Zinkevych, which brought them their first recognition
- The songs “Stozhary,” “Smerekova Khata” (The Spruce Cottage), “Hai, Zelenyi Hai” (Grove, Green Grove) and “Batko i Maty” (Father and Mother)
- Shevchenko Prize (1996, posthumously) and the title Hero of Ukraine (2021, posthumously)
A boy from Rivnia
Nazarii Yaremchuk was born in 1951 into a peasant family in the village of Rivnia in Bukovyna (now part of the town of Vyzhnytsia). After his father’s death he studied at the Vyzhnytsia boarding school, where he began singing in the choir club. From November 1969 he was a soloist of the band Smerichka at the Vyzhnytsia district House of Culture, led by Levko Dutkovskyi. He got into university only at the second attempt, in 1970.
How “Chervona Ruta” made him famous
In Smerichka Yaremchuk sang in a duet with Vasyl Zinkevych and worked with the composer Volodymyr Ivasiuk. Wide fame came with the musical TV film Chervona Ruta (1971), in which he and Zinkevych sang Ivasiuk’s song of the same name. In 1973 Smerichka was invited onto the professional stage of the Chernivtsi Philharmonic, and from 1982 Yaremchuk led the band. He toured the whole USSR, performed in Canada, the United States, Brazil and India, and in 1986 he sang for the Chornobyl disaster cleanup workers, including inside the 30-kilometer zone.
His repertoire numbered more than 150 songs, about love, family and the native land. Among the best known are “Stozhary” and “Smerekova Khata” by Pavlo Dvorskyi and “Hai, Zelenyi Hai” and “Batko i Maty” by Oleksandr Zlotnyk. Nazarii Yaremchuk died of cancer in 1995 in Chernivtsi and is buried there.
Why his songs are still heard
Yaremchuk sang almost exclusively in Ukrainian, and he filled concert halls to overflowing. Posthumously he received the Shevchenko Prize (1996) and the title Hero of Ukraine (2021), and since 1996 the Smerekova Khata museum-estate has operated in his family’s home in Vyzhnytsia.
