Electronic Library of Scientific Literature - © Academic Electronic Press
No. 3 / 2000
The music of the Romas has until now been regarded as music intended for ”others”, i. e. for other ethnic groups, while authentic folklore of the Romas was for long marginalised. The study summarises first results of the research conducted continuously from the end of the 1980s on locations of Eastern Slovakia where the Roma folklore is still relatively alive.
To find authentic Roma music, one has to visit either the countryside or Roma communities in the cities, where it survives in intimate circumstances. The song repertory found in this environment is divided into several stylistic and developmental layers.
In terms of origin, the old songs layer is the most important one (phurikane giľa), and it is divided into two groups:
The slow, lingering songs are sung for the purpose of listening. Originally, the lyrics of these songs were long, reflecting the hardships of life, and singers adapted them to their experiences. Although nowadays these lyrics do not reflect the personal experience, the emotional input of the singers is considerable. The songs are characterised by parlando and rich ornamentation of the melodic line. They are usually sung by one unaccompanied singer (or accompanied by one instrument). The texts express sorrow, they describe death, illness, old age, unrequited love, and God’s punishment.
Dance songs – čardaša – are sung to dances. In Roma communities, occasions to dance can come every day. Dancing is also typical for festive occasions (wedding, baptism, dance party). Čardaša are in regular rhythm, in double meter, and they use the effect of accelerando. Čardaša dances and tunes are often grouped into a continuous medley. The lyrics speak of women, of drinking, of jokers and teasers.
For the next group of songs we use the term intermediate layer. This group is heterogeneous without a unifying style. We consider the definition of such a group warranted, as it includes the songs which cannot be included in the previous group of old songs, or in the next group of songs influenced by pop music. A detailed characteristics of this group is open to further research.
Nowadays, the Roma communities, especially young people and children, are dominated by new songs. This group is not particularly profiled in terms of style, but all songs are distinctly influenced by contemporary pop music. Over the last decade, Roma communities have produced many music groups. The standards vary, but they are increasingly popular and their repertory is mostly made of new songs.
This last group is a proof of the influence fashionable trends in music have on the Roma music, and of the adaptability of musicians to the environment they live in. In spite of this, Roma music preserves its characteristic features, i. e. the specific elements of vocal expression.
The Ruthenians in Slovakia inhabit the mountainous areas of north-eastern Slovakia, where they form several separate ethnic islands. In Spiš, they significantly influenced the profile of traditional culture. The Ruthenian dialect has no unified form, but varies from one locality to another. The Ruthenian communities are mainly Greek Catholic, with some Orthodox.
In the past, the inhabitants of the Ruthenian villages devoted themselves mainly to agriculture, with an emphasis on rearing of cattle and sheep. In upper Spiš, the men devoted themselves to wire-working as a supplementary employment. Traditional Ruthenian musical culture is mainly vocal. The song repertoire comes from a stylistic basis, typical of the whole sub-region of upper Spiš. It is dominated by the layer of songs, based on the tonal skeleton of the interval od the fifth, which are also the most numerous group in the Slovak and Goral communities. Ceremonial songs connected with anniversary and family customs have a dominant place.
Apart from the common features with the vocal cultures of the other ethnic groups in upper Spiš, the Ruthenian song repertoire includes some individual features:
After the expulsion of Germans in the mid 20th century, two localities in Slovakia preserved the continuity of their original German population in the form of a compact community. Chmeľnica/Hobgarten was founded in the framework of Silesian-German colonization, by which upper Spiš/Zips was settled in the 13th and 14th centuries. It preserved the character of an agricultural community with a traditional way of life and culture. Development in isolation from the German towns of Spiš in the past resulted in Chmeľnica preserving a relatively high level of independence until the middle of the 20th century. At present the village is bilingual in German and Slovak. Medzev/Metzeseifen originated in the framework of the mining colonization of lower Spiš in the second half of the 13th century. In the 17th and 18th centuries, it was an economic centre in the Kingdom of historical Hungary, with an orientation towards the production of mining and agricultural equipment. Medzev developed an open type of culture of a small town with a craft tradition and activities of the local intelligentsia. The town is still trilingual in German, Slovak and Hungarian.
Traditional music of the both localities is represented by vocal music and forms connected with language. Cultural and ethnic identity of two German localities with different types of culture is being applied in two different ways.
At Chmeľnica, with its living folk tradition, the principle of adaptation dominated. Songs in the German dialect consist of the remnants of the genre structure of the traditional peasant community repertoire (lullabies, children’s folklore, wedding songs, work and dance songs). The tunes are mostly taken from the immediate surroundings of the village, where they are found in Slovak, Ruthenian and Goral communities. Chmeľnica similarly adapted the way of performance and other musical-stylistic features. The adoption of tunes and stylistic elements occurred on the basis of direct contacts between the inhabitants of Chmeľnica and the inhabitants of the surrounding peasant communities. Songs, taken from the repertoire of other ethnic groups, were adapted to the local language dialect. Therefore, the musical aspect was appropriated through the medium of the language. Variation reshaping and the way of performing the Wandervogel-repertoire (as well as the old religious songs) can be regarded as a form of musical adaptation. The adaptation of borrowed elements speaks of a high degree of vitality of the local culture.
At Medzev, the traditional folk song was already declining at the beginning of the 20th century. Some of its functions were transferred to new poetic literature in the local dialect and standard German, which was spread by means of singing, and which penetrated into oral tradition as an innovation of the traditional song repertoire. Subjects were taken from local tales, legends, important events from the history of the community and the local smith tradition. In these ways, song helped to create a historical memory, which was the source of the formation of the cultural and ethnic identity of the local population. The songs include widespread melodies, banal tunes, tunes from musical comedies and hits of the time. In the past, the inhabitants of Medzev did not maintain contacts with the neighbouring Slovak and Ruthenian peasant communities, which were on a lower social level. They sought their models in an orientation to Magyar urban culture.
Today, an intensive return to local identity is occurring, and it is found in all generations. It is expressed in a return to active use of the German dialect. Traditional songs intended for children play an important role in these returns. At present, texts of songs in standard German are being translated or adapted into the German dialects (Chmeľnica) and the old children songs are revived from local manuscripts (Medzev). Through singing, the German dialect is transmitted to children, both as a language of natural inter-personal communication and as a particular cultural code.
A comparison of the song repertoire from two German localities was based on the distinction between two different types of culture. This distinction helped to understand different ways how the identity of the German inhabitants was reflected in song repertoire, vocal styles and genres. Some outstanding personalities of the local cultural life played the dominant role in this processes.
The study provides basic facts about the traditional music culture of Slovaks living in the region of Eastern Slavonia, in and around the towns of Našice, Osijek, and Dakovo. It brings to attention the fact, that in spite of the absence of basic conditions for preserving their ethnic identity (education and religious services in the native language), the Slavonian Slovaks managed to keep and broaden their rich repertory of songs and their specific style of music-making. The motivic richness of song lyrics and their significance within each traditional context lead us to assume that folk songs played an important role in preserving the native language and the cultural identity.
The first part is dedicated to the history, the research, and the present cultural life of the ethnic minority in question. Slovaks arrived to Slavonia, devastated by the war with the Turks, from the over-populated regions of Northern Slovakia, especially from Kysuce, throughout the latter half of the 19th century. Due to its strong Catholic faith, the relatively small Slovak community easily merged with the Croatian Catholic environment and Slovaks kept their language and culture only in several villages. Because of this, beside other reasons, no systematic ethnological and ethnomusicological research has yet been conducted there.
The second part focuses on characteristics of the song repertory of Croatian Slovaks, gathered by the author during her ethnomusicological research on ground between 1996 and 1999. The tradition of singing is strong among women, who sing in two parts and who use the vernacular language to describe the lyrics, the melody, and each voice. Though the repertory comprises Slovak and Croatian songs, the singers sing them differently, demonstrating the differences of style between the two repertory groups. Slovak songs are characterised by phrases ending in unison, small range, and the use of the augmented fourth. The genres present in the song repertory still reflect the living traditions, especially weddings and Christmas. Wedding songs are mostly connected to several ritual chants sung to different texts during individual phases of the ritual. In some villages, these chants are the only forms of wedding songs, it is thus reasonable to say that chants of the ”ritual tune” type are more important among Croatian Slovaks than they are in Slovakia.
The third part focuses on the ethnic and cultural identity of Croatian Slovaks and on the ways these identities are manifested through music. The unintentionally constructed identity is represented by the living song tradition, which separates the Slovak community from its Croatian environment in terms of musical style and performance style, which, however, is not used as a symbol of ethnic identity. In the last decade, conditions have been created for raising the awareness of the slowly dying ethnic identity nurtured by activities of folk ensembles (intentionally constructed identity).
The author presents the results of her own field research in Slovak language islands in Hungary, carried out in the period 1990-2000. The research was oriented especially towards the song repertoire and oral folklore, associated with the Slovak language. The song and folklore expressions in the Slovak language could be studied already only in the form of reconstructions. At the same time, the aspect of external ”cultural impact” (the activity of the local Slovak intelligentsia, the Slovak written word, texts in Biblical Czech, the activity of song, dance and music groups and societies) played an important role in all media, in the preservation of Slovak identification and expressions of cultural identity.
In the paper, we aimed at the problem of distinguishing various levels of identification and memory (the distinction of ”ethnic” and ”cultural” identity and the substitute term ”cultural memory”) in material from the agricultural town of Malý Kereš (Kiskörös), settled by Slovaks about 1718, after the expulsion of the Turks from present-day Hungary. The town preserved its endogamous Slovak character for at least 150 years after its settlement. From the 1880s, its original Slovak inhabitants communicated mainly with the surrounding Hungarian population. From that time, their identification inclined strongly and still inclines towards the majority Hungarian nation. When comparing the results of researches in Malý Kereš with the situation among Slovaks in the Low Lands of Hungary (Slovenský Komlóš, Poľný Berinčok, Békešská Čaba, Sarvaš), Malý Kereš appears as a locality with relatively numerous archaisms in Slovak language, oral folklore and song repertoire, in spite of this. At the same time, very strong influence of dance, mostly Hungarian tunes can be observed in the melodic component of the songs. This appears in high occurrence of the so-called New Hungarian rhythm (which appears mostly as a variable component of the melody). This influence is evident and interesting not only in secular songs, but also in religious songs sung in Slovak. Thus, Malý Kereš is a locality showing on one side, a higher degree of conscious and intentional efforts to merge with the majority Hungarian population. On the other hand, linguistic and cultural archaisms (for example laments) are preserved here, although without much external stimulus (including the printed word). In spite of the effort to merge with the Hungarian population (representing the ”urban cultural model”), Malý Kereš as a locality – simply said – ”without the written word”, has preserved surprisingly resistant expressions of the Slovak ”cultural memory”, in spite of the fact that the population has declared a mainly Hungarian or Magyar ”ethnic” identity from the 1880s, practically until the present.
The purpose of this paper is to present the picture of a Slovak-American folk music ensemble in New York, to show how its members via a unique way of representation of the culture of their ancestors deal with their migration situation and, in turn, how the phenomenon of migration determines their feelings, motivations, and activities.
Migration is considered here not only as the actual process of resettlement, but also a process, the consequences of which extend beyond the immigrants themselves to the generations of their descendants. These consequences can be traced in two parallel ways: as those enforcing an awareness of cultural and ethnic difference and its representation, and those leading to and speeding up an assimilation process. The tension between these two forces creates the contextual background against which the history of the Limbora Slovak Folk Ensemble can be understood.
The focus of this study is on an issue of ”authenticity” as a goal the folk ensemble was striving to reach during the 34 years of its existence. Discussing personal motivations and performance strategies of the American-born members of the ensemble, the author shows how the meaning of the term ”authenticity” can be shifted in different contexts, and how an endeavor to be ”authentic” in terms of being ”real Slovak” can be understood as an important part of dealing with the migration phenomenon. While at the beginning in the 1960s the idea of ”an authentic representation of the Slovak culture” was an outcome of the awakened ethnic consciousness of the second generation of Slovak-Americans, recently in the 1980s and 1990s, this ideal, acted by the ensemble, turned to inspire the youngest generation of Slovak–Americans (whose ties with their history would, eventually, be lost), to look for the roots of their ancestors’ culture.
Electronic Library of Scientific Literature - © Academic Electronic Press