Haidai, Mykhailo

Haidai, Mykhailo [Гайдай, Михайло; Hajdaj, Myxajlo], b 9 December 1878 in Dankivka khutir, Pryluky county, Chernihiv gubernia, d 9 September 1965 in Kyiv. Composer, choir director, ethnographer. A conductor of various Ukrainian choirs in Vinnytsia, Moscow, and Kyiv, where he conducted the DUMKA Chorus (1924–7), Haidai wrote works of choral music and arrangements of Ukrainian folk songs. As an ethnographer, he was associated with the Ethnographic Commission of the All-Ukrainian Academy of Sciences (1920–33), the Institute of Ukrainian Folklore of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR (1936–41), and the Institute of Fine Arts, Folklore, and Ethnography of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR. He transcribed over 2,000 folk songs, many of which were published in his Zrazky narodnoï polifoniï (Examples of Folk Polyphony, 2 vols, 1928–9).

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 2 (1988).]