The bandura is the evolution of the kobza, combining qualities of the harp, lute, and cimbalom. A modern concert bandura has 64 strings: bass strings along the neck and pristrunky in a fan across the soundboard, allowing the player to perform melody and accompaniment at once.
Outstanding banduraists: Ostap Veresai — a blind 19th-century kobzar; Hnat Khotkevych — creator of the Kharkiv-type bandura and author of a definitive method book; the Shevchenko Bandurist Chorus, which has carried Ukrainian music around the world for over a century. In the Soviet era, kobzars and banduraists were persecuted — in the 1930s dozens of folk singers were executed.
