By now, as the holiday season draws to a close, you no doubt have heard “Carol of the Bells” many times.
So has Oleksandra Omelchenko, 13, an eighth grader at Our Mother of Consolation School in Chestnut Hill, but she wants you to know two things: First, every time you hear that haunting tune in three-quarter time, you are hearing a chant that has its roots in traditional Ukrainian folk music, perhaps going back 1,000 years. And second, in Ukraine the tune is not sung at Christmastime, but on Jan. 13 and 14, the Eastern Orthodox New Year.
And she would know. Oleksandra and her parents, Roman and Natalia, arrived in Philadelphia – Mt. Airy, to be specific – under the U.S. program Uniting for Ukraine three years ago.
(The Omelchenkos were recently approved for re-parole, which means they can remain in the United States for another year. Roman and Natalia are both physicians but will require years of retraining before they are qualified to practice in the United States. For now, Roman works as a medical interpreter and Natalia recently qualified as a doula.)
The traditional Ukrainian tune is called “Shchedyk.” Oleksandra shared this information, surprising to her music teacher, in a rigorously researched, multi-page assignment that reads more like a paper written at the collegiate level. And this, from someone who not all that long ago barely had a grasp of the English language. Little more, she says, than “hello,” “goodbye,” and “My name is Oleksandra.” Today, she holds first honors and is headed for Merion Mercy Academy next year on a Howley Scholarship.
To Oleksandra, opening eyes to the Ukrainian origins of “Carol of the Bells” is a point of deep pride, and it harkens back to her family’s origins in the now Russian-occupied oblast of Donetsk from which they fled.
“I wrote this assignment because I wanted Americans to understand that Donetsk is and was and always will be Ukraine,” Oleksandra explains.
The song, she says, describes a swallow flying into a household and “predicting wealth, a successful harvest and healthy livestock.”
The folk tune was first translated into a more modern piece by a Ukrainian composer, Mykola Dmytrovych Leontovych, over the course of about 20 years. The most refined version was first performed by a Ukrainian folk choir in 1916 in Kiev, followed by a final edition in 1919. For all intents and purposes, though, the tune was completed in Pokrovsk – a region of Donetsk from which the Omelchenkos hail.
Several years later, a Ukrainian folk choir performed “Shchedyk” in a concert in New York’s Carnegie Hall. A Ukrainian-American composer, Peter Wilhousky, heard the song and wrote new words for it. That song became “Carol of the Bells.”
The paper Oleksandra turned in was a music assignment, as well as a labor of love and patriotism.
“I had missed a lot of days of music in my school, and my music teacher (Elise Malizia) told me to write an essay about music,” she says. “I thought this (“Shchedyk”) would be the most important thing. When I ask, ‘Do you know who wrote Carol of the Bells?’ people say, ‘Peter Wilhousky.’ And they’re always surprised when I tell them that’s not true. They thought an American wrote it. They go their whole lives singing ‘Carol of the Bells,’ and no one knows it’s Ukrainian until I tell them. I wanted to tell my music teacher because she’ll be teaching a lot more kids ‘Carol of the Bells’ and I hope she will tell them that ‘Shchedyk’ was actually made in Ukraine.”
Oleksandra recently found another way to expose an American audience to her Ukrainian heritage. At a school Christmas concert, she sang “Silent Night” in Ukrainian, a capella. Then the first- and second-graders, dressed as angels, chimed in, singing the hymn in English.
Oleksandra also plays basketball. She attributes her success as a student to her teachers at OMC, which accepted her tuition-free not long after the family’s arrival in the United States.
“It’s really a great community,” she says. “Every teacher supports you. Every teacher always helps you. If you have a problem, they understand. I have a friend who is in cheerleading. She missed a week because of competitions and championships. Then she came back, and it was really hard for her to catch up. For example, we had a big math test, and our teacher really helped her. She never says ‘it’s your problem.’ She always helps. Teachers are very dedicated to their students there. It’s really nice.”
