BDAA Founder – Steve Wolownik
Back in 1982, Steve Wolownik had, he estimated, taught over 300 people to play various balalaikas and domras. This is probably a modest estimate, and given Steve’s ability to engage in numerous activities – musical and otherwise – concurrently, this is no surprise.
Steve Wolownik was the person who, especially in its formative years, kept the BDAA going by being the details man. He’s the one that took care of BDAA business, so that the rest of us could enjoy the music, camaraderie and fun that we came to identify with BDAA conventions.
Steve and Charley provided most of the material for the early BDAA Newsletters, and Steve spent many hours in his Atlanta apartment typing labels, licking stamps, and often typing all of the newsletter articles.
At the same time that Steve was organizing the details of the first BDAA convention at Stockton, he was sitting up nights translating chapters of Anatoly Peresada’s “History of the Balalaika” for the newsletter, and during that time he made time to run up to Syracuse, N.Y. to be a “ringer” with a new balalaika group that was just getting started. Throughout the years, Steve has been the ultimate ringer in the balalaika community, always finding time in his busy schedule to play with groups for their concerts. And he always looked like he was having a good time … because he was!
Steve had always been an organizer. “That’s just how I am,” he says. “I work under pressure when I’m doing a lot of different things.” At one point, Steve recalls, in his undergraduate days he was involved in the following activities in the same semester: directing the Penn Balalaika Orchestra; playing in the Penn band; playing in a four-piece balalaika group; directing a Balkan song and dance ensemble; he was in a Ukrainian dance group, a bandura chorus, the folk dance club, and a couple of other groups that he can’t remember. All this while keeping up his grades. “I remember a friend of mine made Phi Beta Kappa.” says Steve, “and I was angry thinking I might have made it if I’d dropped a couple things.”
Steve Wolownik grew up in Philadelphia, and in his youth was always around the music of Russia, Ukraine, and Poland. His first instrument was the clarinet, and when he was fourteen he joined Paul Kauriga’s St. Nicholas Balalaika Orchestra. In college, Steve started out as a physics major, but found himself spending all his time on his Russian studies, and none on physics. So he switched his major to Slavic linguistics. It was at the University of Pennsylvania that Steve became familiar with the music of Romania and other Eastern European countries, mostly through the folk dance club. Steve organized the Penn Balalaika Orchestra in 1966 and, in those days. Was becoming known as an organizer of vecherinkas, fancy spreads and minor feasts.
“The first vecherinka I organized was a group effort,” says Steve, “where everybody cooked.” “The Penn Balalaika Orchestra started doing vecherinkas when they wanted to put on a concert mid-year, between the big concerts. So we played some numbers we already knew, did a dance skit, and put out tables of food along the wall. The concert was 25 minutes long, and admission was 25 cents. People broke down the door to get in. The next year, we charged $1.00 and they still broke down the door!” Some of Steve’s vecherinkas have become legendary. In the early months of the Houston Balalaika Society, Steve was directing and learned that the Ossipovs were coming to town. “We’re going to throw them a reception,” Steve announced. The group’s Paul Phillips recalls doubting that “a group of 20 wannabe musicians who carried their rusty rehearsal chars around in car trunks could pull off a classy reception for 120 musicians.” But Steve organized everyone and, Paul says, “pulled things out of thin air.” After the reception, Paul says, he believed that Steve could do anything. If Steve had said ‘O.K., tomorrow we’re going to walk to the moon,’ Paul would have said “O.K., what time?”
“My cooking skills are inherited,” says Steve, “In fact, all the men in my family are cooks. In Philly, I grew up in my parents’ restaurant, Pete and Mary’s.” Most of the vecherinkas I’ve done were group efforts.” says Steve, “but the one I did at UCLA for the Friends of the Institute of Ethnomusicology was a one-man show. I cooked for 400 people, and spent a lot to time trying to figure out how one person could pour hot water out of huge pots of boiling potatoes. But it was worth it, because that’s where I discovered flavored vodka. Someone at the Institute made some.”
The Institute of Ethnomusicology at UCLA tried twice to recruit Steve to move to California and help organize a balalaika orchestra for the Institute. The Institute had been left a collection of Russian folk instruments by a Russian man who had died, and they knew Steve’s Penn group. “It was a whole set of instruments,” Steve says, “like what Al Parks used to have… sort of a Crate-O-Balalaika Orchestra.”
In 1973. Steve moved to Los Angeles, and began graduate studies in ethnomusicology at UCLA. He organized the UCLA Balalaika Orchestra (the Institute got its wish!), and he had a teaching assistantship teaching Balalaika Orchestra, a for-credit course. UCLA had the world’s best ethnomusicology Institute, Steve says, and it wasn’t unusual for them to want to have a balalaika orchestra. While at UCLA, Steve also played in a Chinese and a Persian orchestra. The Institute had about twelve ethnic orchestras, including two gamelan orchestras, a Thai orchestra, two Mexican orchestras and a Japanese group.
One of the original members of the UCLA Balalaika Orchestra was Judy Sherman, who played with Steve in the Odessa Balalaikas and Gypsy Balalaikas in Philadelphia. What Judy remembers most about the UCLA days, she says, was the incredible amount of fun and excitement Steve created for beginners and people who didn’t group up in the tradition of ethnic music. “People who would never otherwise have picked up a balalaika found themselves a part of a wonderful community that Steve created,” says Judy. “There were wonderful parties with Russian toasts and Ukrainian egg decorating. Steve’s gift was getting people involved in all aspects of ethnic culture, and making it an interesting part of their lives. A shy person could feel at ease with Steve, and learn music in a comfortable and fun environment.”
The UCLA Balalaika Orchestra evolved into the Odessa Balalaikas, a smaller professional group that Steve directed which toured the U.S. and Canada. Steve moved to Houston in 1976, and, when Charley Rappaport lined up the Great American Gypsy Band job at the Peachtree Plaza Hotel, he moved to Atlanta in 1977. Steve played contrabass at the hotel six nights a week, and at the same time focused al his energies on getting the BDAA started, and doing all the behind-the-scenes things that nobody else could do.
Steve moved back to Philadelphia in 1980, and returned to the Penn Balalaika Orchestra, directing them from 1981 until 1994. And although, as was expected most of the faces were new; it was great to see some of the original Penn members there. Steve then directed the Schuylkill Cossacks, played with Balalaika Russe, and with the Gypsy Balalaikas. He also played with a Romanian group, Jorgovan. In 1999 Steve organized his final balalaika event called the “Road Diner” This was a gathering of musicians and dancers who participated in a balalaika and Balkan dancing camp.
On May 18, 2000, Steve Wolownik passed away suddenly. He was a man with a big heart. He was generous. He was human. And, he had the courage to be gentle, to encourage the best in everyone.