Prethodno priopćenje
THE CROATS AND THE TAMBURA IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA (Summary)
Stjepan Sremac
; Hrvatski sabor kulture, Zagreb, Hrvatska
Sažetak
The appearance of the tambura in the Croatian community in the United States of America is a continuance of a tambura-playing practice that was present during the last two decades of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century in Croatia.
During that period of time a new direction of the tambura orchestras, the so-called concert direction, was formed, and it ended the process of the orchestration and of the spreading of such orchestras among all Croats, thus making the tambura the Croatian national instrument. Historian, player and composer of the tambura music, Josip Andrić,
claims that the tambura orchestra “Hrvatska lira”, whose leaders were Mijo Majer and Milutin Farkaš, founded in 1882 in Zagreb, had played a deciding role in initiating and spreading of the tambura concert orchestras.
The development of the tambura orchestra music has taken three basic directions from that time onward. One of them was the above mentioned concert direction. It includes at least basic musical literacy (being able to read the notes), larger body (twelve or more musicians) and a conductor, and was mainly connected to larger or smaller urban environments. The second direction was pointed towards rural and smaller urban settlements, in which half-professional tambura groups have almost entirely pushed aside
the soloists with time, thus becoming the main accompaniment to dancing and singing. The third direction is composed of professional tambura orchestras that used to play in cafés, and were especially popular in Bačka, Srijem and Slavonia. Being the founders of
all the tambura orchestras, they have kept their original features: playing varoške and bećarske songs, round dances, patriotic songs and marches for the most part, and accompanying the dance only from time to time.
In his book “A History of the Tambura”, conductor and tambura historian Walter W. Kolar places the first American tambura orchestras and performers at the end of the nineteenth century. For the most part, these are smaller groups, at the beginning having
three to six members, later six to ten, twelve the most, and the instruments they were playing were most often the farkašice. Most of them learned how to play the tambura in their homeland before their arrival to the States, and those players make the core of all
the groups. The groups are often composed on a family level, at the level of a village or an area of settlement from different Croatian regions. They used to play and sing at local dance parties, weddings, family, birthday and other functions, festivities, banquets and
picnics. Their engagements were mostly within the frame of the Croatian ethnic community, and sometimes within a wider, Slavic one; they rarely played for others.
There were the ones who had successful professional careers, which demandedstepping out of the ethnic framework and appearing on stage at public events. Their success was often connected with the stage appearances within chautauqua and vaudeville shows, that were especially popular in the public life of America from the
beginning of the twentieth century until the World War II. This was the way for the tambura to appear in front of a non-Slavic audience and play an active role in the development of the American entertainment and musical life.
During the late 1920s and the early 1930s, first children tambura orchestras have been founded. The generations born in the States have overtaken the responsibilities for their further development. Another incentive came from founding a large professional
orchestra at the Dequesne University in Pittsburgh. The orchestra was founded as a high professional profit institution, and it widened its work by establishing a school for tambura players, that soon spread through its branches throughout the cities of western
Pennsylvania. Youth tambura orchestras, all being a spitting image of their mentor and idol, have arisen from the local schools. It motivated the Croatian Fraternal Union to establish youth cultural choirs, the so-called nests of the CFU. Ten years later, in 1966,
the Croatian Fraternal Union Junior Cultural Federation was founded, and from that period on the CFU has finally overtaken the leading role in further development of the amateur playing the tambura, singing and dancing in the United States. Each year, the Federation organizes a festival at which almost all the members gather and where, besides individual performances, common playing takes place as well.
The appearance of folk dances within the framework of the tambura youth orchestras has been motivated by the “Duquesne University Tamburitzans”. Already inthe second half of the 1960s, the university orchestra has gained a respectable professional folklore dance group and its programmes have become a mixture of orchestra music, songs and dances from a wider south Slavic area. During the early
1970s, the youth tambura choirs also introduce folk dances to their programmes, but, unlike their idol’s practice, those were for the most part Croatian.
Ključne riječi
Hrčak ID:
27679
URI
Datum izdavanja:
20.2.2003.
Posjeta: 3.539 *