Journal of Ethnology and Folkloristics

Singing out Strange Days

2024-02-19T13:43:56+00:00

In Slovenia, group singing played an important role in times of political change and crisis. It was deliberately used in times of uncertainty, when there was a greater need for cohesion, such as during the First World War, the Second World War and the Covid-19 pandemic. The songs that were most widely used at a given time reflected the emotional needs and desires of people in precarious situations. With the advent of new technologies, new modalities of group singing, such as singing at a distance and virtual choirs were enabled. During the Covid-19 pandemic lockdown, group singing was realised via online tools, which has a number of limitations. Using three examples from times of uncertainty the specific characteristics of group singing that allow it to thrive in times of crisis are analysed.

“Oh, the Red Viburnum in the Meadow”: Reflecting the Ukrainian National Mood

2025-06-10T13:28:42+00:00

The article investigates the Ukrainian folk song “Oh, the Red Viburnum in the Meadow”, recognised for its opening verse, and examines its historical, cultural, and social dimensions, alongside its various adaptations. By addressing questions of authorship and the folklore origins of the song, this study explores its transformations in response to prevailing socio-political contexts. The endurance of this tradition is traced from the Cossacks to the Sich Riflemen, the Ukrainian Insurgent Army and the modern Armed Forces’ soldiers of the Russo-Ukrainian War, as well as civilians. The research reveals the song’s dynamic interplay between historical tradition and contemporary relevance. The findings highlight the song’s power in building collective identity and expressing aspirations for independence, resistance and endurance.

Multipart Music as Self-determination: Perspectives and Discourses in an Arbëresh Community of Singing Women

2024-06-10T11:00:17+00:00

Anna Stratigò (b. 1958) is an influential singer, musician and songwriter within the landscape of Arbëresh traditional music. She organises singing gatherings where she also holds important discussions about the role of women in the practice and transmission of traditional music. She established the Vuxhë Grash (Voices of Women) choir in 2017 and has been its leader since then. The choir includes several women from the village of Lungro (Province of Cosenza, Calabria, Italy) who regularly take part in the learning and performing of songs from the Arbëresh oral tradition. The learning sessions occur in self-managed, participatory meetings where each participant has the opportunity to experience the reviving of unique songs together with others, exploring and examining the repertoire during friendly singing sessions. These gatherings serve as the heart of their music-making process.

From Lament to Lamenting Song: Musical Models, Meanings and Expression in Seto Solo and Choral Funeral Laments

2025-06-10T14:13:15+00:00

The distinctive ancient culture of the Seto (south-eastern Estonia) is of special interest, among other things, for its rich lament tradition which survived until the recent past. Unlike the laments of other Balto-Finnic peoples, which are an exclusively solo genre, some Seto laments – all the bridal laments and the funeral laments for a deceased maiden – are performed by a group of lamenters as a kind of polyphonic lamenting song. The unusual practice of choral lamentation raises important questions about the functions and meanings of laments in traditional culture, the specificity of the lament genre as a form of expressive behaviour, and the relationship between the genres of lament and song in Seto culture. This article explores these and some other questions by means of musical analysis of Seto lament tunes and attempts to place the Seto lament tradition in the context of the laments of linguistically and geographically related peoples.

Techniques of Melody Formation and Improvisation in Latvian Recitatives

2024-06-10T10:58:11+00:00

The documentary material available for the study of recitatives (the dominant style of the older layer of Latvian folk song) mainly consists of field transcriptions from the late 19th and the first half of the 20th century. The material is fragmentary, although some of it when adequately read provides valuable insight into melody formation and improvisation. The study also points to findings in the rhythmic formation of Latvian recitatives, achieved through measurement of syllabic duration in audio recordings. A concept of melody formation techniques was developed, and two groups of techniques were identified: morphologic, and syntactic, each subdivided into an array of smaller groups of techniques. By defining and systematising these techniques it was possible to get a structured general picture of the melodics of Latvian recitatives as style. Some transcriptions made by Andrejs Jurjāns in the late 19th century and Emilis Melngailis in the 1920s, which extensively document the performance process (comprising a large number of transcribed melostrophes), indicate that in the solo sections of the melostrophe change of techniques was used as a method of improvisation. A procedure for indirectly detecting technique change has been developed by analysing and comparing early transcriptions.

Gradus ad Parnassum: International Online Training for Microtonal Singing with 22 Pitches within the Octave

2025-06-10T15:02:59+00:00

In the musical cultures of the world, including the oral traditions of European peoples, a wide variety of musical scales have been and still are used. In contemporary Western music, growing awareness of other musical cultures, as well a certain saturation with the sounds of the 12-tone scale have led to experimentation with alternative scale systems. Applying a microtonal scale that divides the octave into 22 equal parts (22-EDO), this article discusses possible strategies for training musically educated Western adults. According to experiences from the research and teaching/learning process, the article introduces the music theoretical fundamentals of the 22-EDO scale, knowledge of which is an integral part of a potential training method, the creation of teaching materials and musical compositions. This knowledge was also the basis of my practice and performance at concerts in 2022 and 2023, and helps with the evaluation of the results based on direct experience and audio recordings. The analysis focuses on the online Gradus ad Parnassum course, which was initiated during the Covid-19 pandemic to teach microtonal singing.

The findings indicate that the level of familiarity with the intervals (compared to those of the 12-tone scale) had a significant influence on learning outcomes, sometimes facilitating, but sometimes hindering, the process. Although the online format offered a number of advantages, such as connecting participants who would otherwise not have the opportunity to meet, it turned out that in-person training allowed for much faster progress due to the absence of physical distance and technical limitations.

Identity and Mental Well-Being: A Case Study of the Estonian Vikerlased LGBTQ+ Mixed Choir

2025-06-10T16:26:41+00:00

The act of making music together serves to connect people, creating a sense of belonging and unity while being a powerful tool to facilitate mental well-being. This case study concentrates on member motivation and how this is related to their participation in the Estonian LGBTQ+ mixed choir Vikerlased, with research questions being focused on the political and psychological identity aspects of group singing. Data collection was carried out by means of participatory observation, a questionnaire, and in-depth and focus group interviews. The findings suggest that singing in an LGBTQ+ choir serves multiple functions for its members, serving to support identity, maintain social, institutional, and musical aspects of participation, and promote mental well-being.

Collective Singing in the Jewish Shtetl

2024-07-11T10:23:45+00:00

Traditional collective singing among Eastern Yiddish speakers – a heretofore unexplored phenomenon – is discussed as part of the European-Jewish musical polysystem, which evolved in small towns (called a shtetl in Yiddish) from early modernity to the Holocaust (1933–1945). In the absence of living informants in Eastern Europe, the only applicable methodology is historical ethnomusicology, employing a comparative analysis of late documentation, in light of premodern literary sources, with the goal of reconstructing and describing musical semiotics. It reveals that the main types of collective singing were marked by an interaction from the idiom of instrumental music – (klezmer) intonatsia, apparently due to the latter’s symbolism as representing the communal experience of a wedding. Liturgical refrains, folk-theatre choruses, wedding songs, paraliturgical domestic chants, and Hasidic wordless tunes shared specific musical patterns and overall aesthetic principles – a preference for asymmetry and a combination of old Ashkenazi and Slavic features. Although not central to the traditional music by Yiddish speakers, these collective songs comprised a significant constituent of the European soundscape.

The Adoption of Runosong Techniques in Estonian Antiphonal Psalmody: Toward a Circular Model of Chanting

2025-06-11T06:58:18+00:00

This interdisciplinary hymnological article reflects on some aspects of a creative journey within the evolutionary process of Estonian-language antiphonal psalmody from 2010 to 2024. It investigates the integration of performance elements from the archaic communal folk singing tradition of Estonian runosong (regilaul) into the contemporary prose-rhythm Estonian ecclesiastical chant, or pühalaul (‘sacred chant’), with a particular focus on antiphonal psalmody. Employing an artistic research approach, intertwined with autoethnography, the study draws on long-term artistic experimentation with pühalaul to explore how this idiomatic style for communal chanting in the Estonian language came into being. This research addresses a long-standing challenge in Estonian hymnology: the need to create an idiomatic ecclesiastical chanting practice aligned with the prosodic qualities of Estonian prose texts and local communal singing traditions, rather than relying on musical models and traditions, including rhythmic patterns shaped by German and other Indo-European languages, which were introduced through historical contact and adopted over time. While the broader repertoire and melodic foundations of Estonian antiphonal psalmody were shaped during earlier stages of the artistic research process, the present focus is on elaborating specific performance techniques for chanting, to achieve a runosong-like uninterrupted flow. Drawing on selected features of runosong, such as the circular musical phrase, anticipatory entry (leegajus), and ingressive phonation (inward speaking), the study culminates in the formulation of a circular model of antiphonal psalmody offering a new approach to communal ecclesiastical chanting.

The Faces of the Central Eastern European Region in Hymnals of the Global Ecumenical Movement

2024-06-10T11:04:56+00:00

Motivated by the 2023 Kraków assembly of the Lutheran World Federation (LWF), the article offers an insight into the formation of global hymnals from a Central Eastern European (CEE) perspective. The author – the leader of the international worship team at the event – integrates pragmatic considerations in the fields of music making and church diplomacy with an academic hymnological approach. After looking at the theoretical framework that surrounds worship embedded in different cultures and the complex expression of Lutheran identities through words and music, the article presents a detailed description of musical material from the CEE region in LWF hymnals between 1947 and 2023. The LWF focus is complemented by a few parallels from ecumenical hymnals, drawing attention to the fact that certain musical items tend to overarch hymnals of different confessional families rather than act as distinctive features between them. The discussion centres on criteria defining Lutheran core hymns (Ger. Kernlied) of our time from a global perspective and in the CEE region and encourages further research on the decisive factors related to hymn choices during the editorial process of global and local hymnbooks.

Inheritances Past and Future: Addressing the Everyday Legacy of War in Times of Militarisation

2024-09-12T14:18:13+00:00

The article takes its point of departure from the concreteness of unexploded ordnance left over from World War II, which in the 2020s runs parallel to an increasing militarisation of the public sphere and a rise in arms production. Old and new weaponry globally endangers lives and environments long after peace accords. This is perhaps not a welcome but a necessary opportunity for cultural researchers to problematise the blind spots in cultural practice and communication surrounding the continued presence of old wars in daily life, and in doing so encourage renewed efforts for peace and disarmament. Working with ethnographic and historical data from Germany, some avenues for such research are suggested first with a case study of a medium-sized city where finds of dangerous war waste still occur frequently. In documenting how new cultural practices are devised to manage difficult and costly bomb diffusions, the effort to normalise what better not be downplayed comes to the fore. Further, a look at language and imagery surrounding the experts carrying out the bomb diffusions points to the foregrounding of hero narratives. The efforts of countless volunteers receeds into the background, as does the necessary evacuation of citizens to create a space within which the work takes place and the real and complex craft skill needed for the task unfolds. Finally, the focus turns to the unpredictable agency of eighty-year-old bombs for which the categorisation ‘heritage out of control’ is recommended – an inheritance whose existence humanity should eradicate and forestall.

Editorial to the Special Issue: From Desperation to Hope: The Meanings and Effect of Group Singing

2025-06-10T12:01:27+00:00

Editorial to the Special Issue

“This Is My Path All by Chance”: Interview with Leonard Kamerling

2025-06-11T08:11:04+00:00