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What is "bayan" ? "..A bayan is not an accordion. The bayan is typically a Russian instrument which people in the West call a "button accordion". It has a warm melodious sound and a rich and powerful bass making it perfect for playing Slavic music. There are thousands of pieces originally written for bayan. Nowadays, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, bayan started to be named as accordion after some, in my opinion, rash thoughts by some professors in Ukraine. Perhaps they wanted to be more easily understood by Western public or these were reverences towards international competitions. I must admit that I feel somewhat offended when a fellow Ukrainian calls the bayan an accordion. By no means do I denigrate the accordion, which is a wonderful instrument with tremendous possibilities. There's the German and French accordion, the Italian fisarmonica, the bandoneon and then there is the bayan. The bayan was named after the legendary epic bard of Kievan Rus' Boyan." From: Volodymyr Kurylenko's website: http://www.volod.com.ua Volodymyr Kurylenko is an Ukrainian Bayan Master, a talented Photographer, Master of International Law (Kyiv, National University), and a Cultural Anthropologist... *Bayan Masters: Artem Nyzhnyk Artem Reshetov Yevgeny Derbenko *Composers: Sergei Rachmaninoff Artem Nyzhnyk Olivier Messiaen Max Reger Anatoly Kusyakov Johannes Brahms