The singing style of Turaŭ Mižrečča (area between the Prypiać and the Scviha Rivers) is represented by the songs performed in the Agro-Town of Ryčoŭ, which have been traditionally passed on from generation to generation by the local people for decades. The singing tradition is developing in an organic natural environment, so the performance of the songs in the open space — in the streets, fields, at noisy celebrations — explaines the characteristic loud singing with open sounds. The singing heritage of the local community exists both in the traditional impovisation form (during various celebrations, traditional ‘biasiedas’ /talks/), and in the contemporary organized concert form. The original local song culture manifests itself primarily through a wide variety of genres. Along with the genres of the calendar-agricultural cycle of songs, mostly Christmas and spring ones, it embodied a most complete array of the wedding song cycle, including karavaj (bread) songs. Both single and group singing represent the traditional melodic styles, the latter being mainly single voice-based unison-heterophonic form and polyphonic singing forms with with a top solo voice. The distinctive feature of single voice unison-heterophonic singing is formulated tuning and narrow tonal range, some are characterised by the presence of a refrain, words repeated after each line. The same style of performance include ‘forest’ songs, which are performed in the woods while gathering mushrooms and berries, also when rakeing hay in the appropriate time of the year. Singing with a top solo voice is represented in songs of non-ritual genre
Navahrudak’s traditional vycinanka-vybivanka is a distinctive technique of punching of a particular image on paper using special homemade tools, such as chisels, flattened nails, metal tubes (empty cartridge cases), sharpened aluminum tubes, etc.
The foundation for such creations is a diamond-shaped network that imitates cells of lace curtains. Symmetrical large flowers or bouquets are placed on it, and the edges are trimmed to give them the shapes as little crescents or triangles. Such curtains create the illusion of lace fabric. Today Navahrudak style vycinankas-vybivankas are used in the design of ethnographic corners as elements of interior decorative finishes.
Paper designs created in the genre of vycinankas-vybivankas adorned the interiors of homes in some villages in Navahrudak area in the 1930s – 1950s of the 20th century. This method of making vycinankas was quite rare, since paper is not a lasting material, and the few surviving specimens made in this technique were created by some craftswomen, who were remembered by villagers, and years later their art became the basis for the recovery of vycinankas-vybivankas, which for some time had been lost. Nina Šurak was the one who revived this unique kind of vycinankas. Today, the main bearer of the tradition is one of her students, Natallia Klimko, who passes on her know-how of punching lace patterns on paper to teenagers, youth, and the elderly during master classes, workshops, and at exhibitions and open apprenticeship classrooms
