Original scientific paper
Folk Music from the Island of Zlarin
Jerko Bezić
; Institute of Ethnology and Folklore Research
Abstract
Folk music, as understood by the present author, includes all those musical phenomena which circulate among the members of relatively small human communities in direct communication. They are musical phenomena which people freely choose, adopt, perform and transmit to others. This approach defines folk music primarily in terms of its existence and only secondarily in terms of its musical and extramusical characteristics and contents.
Three researchers worked with the author in collecting materials
for this study. Dušan Dean of Zlarin recorded the texts of many songs and various other data about music (all kinds, not just folk music) on Zlarin. Ivo Furčić of Šibenik gave his permission for 17 of his folk music recordings (published in his book Narodno stvaralaštvo šibenskog područja, I - Šibensko otočje/The Folklore of the Šibenlk Region, I - The Šibenik Islands /, Šibenik, 1980) to be Included in the present study. Such recordings are marked »Furčić« here, while all the other recordings have been transcribed by the author and these remain unmarked. Zorica Rajković, Research Assistant at the Institute for Folklore Studies in Zagreb, gave her permission to the author to transcribe nine examples of children's metro rhythmic rhymes and songs from her material.
The collected and transcribed material (6Gc, or 72, musical examples) is grouped according to three main criteria: (a) place and role of singing, and music generally in the life of the Zlarinians,
(b) textual content of the songs, (c) musical characteristics of the tape-recorded material.
The first group includes lullabies (examples 1-8, two of them Italian for purposes of comparison - one from Zlarin, ex. 7, and one from Buje in Istria, ex. 8). The lullabies are transcribed in full, that is, as much as the women whose singing was recorded actually sang. This approach clearly reveals examples of quite a free musical form (ex. 1) and those with formally fixed melody-stanzas (ex. 5). The tonal relations of the narrow intervals and tones with the changing pitch are found in ex. 1; ex. 6 shows a clear diatonic scale. The metrorhythmic foundation of the rockmg of the cradle may be quite different and totally independent of the metrorhythmic foundation of the text which is being sung (ex. 2).
Examples 9-13 are wedding songs. Memories of small-range
tunes with the refrain on the lengthened syllables oj, e - e - oj are still alive (ex. 9). The wedding songs from the mid-twentieth century, including the seventies, are mainly performed as two-part songs in the major key (ex. 13). Over the last twenty years, funeral dirges and wailing songs have all but disappeared. The transcribed examples (14-17) al'e given in full, so that the interested readers can clearly see the intonational and formal freedom in the performance
of wailing songs. It used to be the custom among the Zlarin women to wail for a deceased person in the house or in the field, sometimes even several years after his death. This fact made the recording for the present study all the more realistic, as it was not necessary to ask them to sing without being in the right mood. As soon as the conversation turned towards their departed members of the family, the bereaved women would begin to wail spontaneously. In example 17, the wailer's frequent sobs (marked with asterisks) ended in her crying when the wailing song was over, and the women who had listened to her song also burst into tears. As for other types of songs, only carolers' songs (exx. 18a-22) still survive as part of a folk custom. Carolers (known as kolojani) visit houses in the village round Christmas and the New Year's Day and sing two-part, sometimes three-part, songs of more recent origin.
One-part and two-part tunes of narrative songs are divided into two groups according to their musical characteristics: (a) in tonal relations of diatonic tetra- and pentachordal sequences -148exx. 23-28, such as a long narrative poem about Prince Marko (ex. 23), or a more recent and shorter narrative poem (ex. 28); (b) In the major key - exx. 29-32. The examples of love songs are also divided into two groups, based on the same musical characteristics as the narrative songs - diatonic tonal relations (exx. 35a-36) and the major key (exx. 37-42). There are considerable differences in tonal relations among the selected examples. Examples 33a and 33b illustrate the so-called clucking sounds made in tunes known as kocavice in Zlarin. In the second group of love songs, three-part tunes in the major key are found alongside two-part tunes, with the chords clearly marking the functions of the tonic, the dominant and the subdominant (ex. 40). One of the songs in this group is »Ponoć bije, ja nemam sna« (Midnight is Striking, and I Cannot Sleep, ex. 42), which the Zlarin girls sang as one of their popular songs. It was only later that the author learned that this was in fact a composed song (»Puste su kale« by Duško Šarac, F avorit - Note popularnih melodija, Zagreb, 1975, pp. 22-23; also on the gramophone record, SUZY, Zagreb, SP 1106).There are very few differences between the song of the Zlarin girls and Šarac's song (ex. 42 is the transcription of the song sung by the Zlarin girls).
Songs that accompany dancing are more recent two-part tunes, parallel thirds in the major key (exx. 45 and 46). This group includes
also an adopted and subsequently adapted tune from northern Croatia (ex. 43), as well as an unadapted tune from northern and eastern Croatia (ex. 44). Of the two Partizan tunes, the first is a three-part tune (ex. 47) accompanying the well-known Kozara reel-dance with couplets describing events from the 1941-1945 Liberation
War and from the period of postwar reconstruction.
Quite a number of examples are children's metro rhythmic songs and rhymes. Songs which accompany children's games are given in examples 49-53. It Is noteworthy that there are some narrow intervals and tones of changing pitch in these songs. Examples 54-61 are counting-out rhymes, known as razbrajalice in Zlarin.
The last group includes the following songs: a narrative legend (ex. 62), a partly sung prayer for protection against lightning (ex. 63), then church songs, two songs in connection with the custom of evening prayer for three consecutive days in the house of a deceased person (exx. 66a, 66b; 66c compares these songs with
the well-known Latin Dies irae), and four tunes for two paraliturgical
songs (the first is the well-known Our Lady's Lament, exx. 64a and G4b).
The examples are supplemented by summary tables of metrorhythmic patterns of musical sequences and metrorhythmic patterns of children's game songs and counting-out rhymes. As for instrumental music, only textual data are given without musical examples.
Keywords
Hrčak ID:
50800
URI
Publication date:
15.12.1981.
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