Ostap Veresai was a blind wandering kobzar from the Poltava region, blind from childhood, whose art became the summit and symbol of the entire kobzar tradition. To the accompaniment of the kobza he performed dumy — epic lament-songs about the Cossack age, Turkish captivity, and the struggle and suffering of the people.
His singing struck contemporaries with its depth and truth: Veresai was heard and recorded by leading scholars and writers, and he performed before learned societies in Kyiv and in the imperial capital, acquainting the educated public with the living soul of the Ukrainian epic. Veresai's art drew attention to kobzardom as a unique phenomenon of world culture. He became the embodiment of the folk singer-philosopher, the bearer of the nation's historical memory — a very “Ukrainian Homer.”
