Ukrainian Songs (original) (raw)
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Soviet War Songs in the Context of Russian Culture
This volume presents a unique study of war songs created during and after World War II, known in Russia as the “Great Patriotic War”. The most popular war songs, such as “Katyusha”, “The Sacred War”, “Dark Night”, “My Moscow”, “In the Dugout”, “Victory Day”, provide illuminating insights into the musical culture of the former Soviet Union and modern Russia. In the year of the 70th anniversary of victory in the war, the book studies the cultural heritage of famous war songs from a new perspective, exploring the historical background of their creation and analysing their lyrics as part of Russian cultural heritage. The book also discusses the modifications required when translating the songs from Russian to English. It concludes with a description an educational project studying war songs at Moscow schools run under the auspices of UNESCO.
The Slavonic and East European Review, 2021
Given how enmeshed popular music has been in Ukraine’s key political transformations of the past thirty or so years, it is perhaps surprising that this rich material has not come to scholars’ attention more often. Since Adriana Helbig’s pioneering monograph, Hip Hop Ukraine: Music, Race, and African Migration (Bloomington, IN, 2014), until recently, no dedicated book- length study has addressed the intersections of popular music and politics in contemporary Ukraine. That is why the appearance in 2019 of two such volumes at once constitutes a particularly important addition to the field.
Genesis, motifs and images of Ukrainian lullabies
Background: Lullaby as a folk genre is naturally considered by most researchers to be one of the very first means of ethno-national coding, but the mechanisms of such coding have not yet been definitively identified. Scientific analysis of a lullaby as an object of research involves the use of a large number of multidirectional approaches to its study, among which the general ones are descriptive (collection and description), comparative (comparison and analysis) and explanatory (explanation and interpretation). Taking into account the subject of the research, they determine the basic types of approaches to lullabies in various areas of Ethnology and related disciplines: folklore, ethnomusicoznavchiy, semiological, structural and thesaurus, motivational, communicative, Joint-Stock, functional, cultural and ethnographic, etc. Based on this, the modern science of folklore postulates the need to form a comprehensive approach to The Lullaby, which would include positive components of all basic types of analysis, taking into account the achievements of its predecessors. Materials and Methods: The article applies a complex research methodology: the method of system analysis, which allows for the systematization of research material; a historical and genetic method that helps to identify the stage nature of the evolution of a lullaby and its social factors; typological and structural-descriptive methods for the systematic consideration of motives and images presented in lullabies. Results: The genesis of the lullaby is directly related to the mythopoetic ideas of the ancient Slavs (and more deeply-Indo-Europeans). This is clearly traced at the functional level of the lullaby text and their genetic relationship to spells. Thus, in the mythopoetics of the lullaby, we observe several heterogeneous layers that somehow reflect the stages of its formation and transformation into a separate folklore genre: the similarity of lullabies to conspiracies is noted by the characteristic intonation manner of performing lullabies, «subtext», «joke», the presence of a formula character similar to the plot of the construction of the motive; personifications and images of evocations; signs of socialization; the environment closest to the child and everyday realities ; antifrustrative components. In accordance with the functions and historical stages of composing a lullaby, it is worth considering their motives. Based on this, we present the entire body of motifs of the Ukrainian lullaby song: motives of the onyric group, motives of the apotropeic group, motives of the cognitive group, motives of the communicative-glossolative group, motives of the antifrustrative group. Its images and poetics are closely related to the functional nature of the cradle. Images of lullabies are interpreted differently and have different purposes. The main pragmatic purpose of lullabies is to put the child to sleep. Undoubtedly, the central image of Ukrainian lullabies, the most frequent and most functional is the image of a cat. The amulet function of a lullaby stimulates the appearance of bird images in it. Nowadays, this genre (like many other pearls of folk art), in all its diversity and uniqueness, unfortunately, leaves everyday life-this is very insulting, because a lullaby is a melody of the soul of every person, accompanying it from childhood and for life. Conclusion: The article is devoted to understanding and revealing the cultural and symbolic meaning of lullabies. The study identified the lullaby as a genre of Folk Family lyrics that is genetically associated with conspiracies and lamentations. The motives of the lullaby song are determined on the examples of modern lullabies that exist among Ukrainians, namely: the motives of onic, apotropeic, cognitive, communicative-glossolative, antifrustrative groups. The system of images of the presented texts and their functions are considered.
Ukrainian Romanticism and the Modern Ukrainian Psyche
The Ukrainian Quarterly: A Journal of Ukrainian and International Affairs, 2016
The article is about the folklore-centered Ukrainian Romanticism represented by such genres as the ballads, lyric-epic poems, elegies, Romantic short stories, historical novels, dramas and tragedies. The historical social types of Kozaks and Haidamakas (the rebels) in the writings of Ukrainian Romanticists were awakening the socially and ethnically oppressed Ukrainians to action. The Romantic idealization of Ukraine’s heroic past raised popularity of the dumas—a distinct national form of historical songs about the olden times. With their generic features of sublimity, solemnity, glorification, and epic monumentalism, the dumas were extolled by Romantic poets to the heights of the cult folklore genre. The Ukrainians are now reliving a renaissance of their human dignity and freedom. That is why the cultural and moral heritage of the Romantic age is nowadays even more important and topical than ever before, signaling that the Romantic revival of Ukraine is ongoing and gaining momentum, while Shevchenko’s poetry with its spirit-strengthening impetus has become the emblem of present-day faith in the democratic, moral, and flourishing future of a single unified Ukrainian state.
Creating art song in the South Slav Territories (1900-1930s) : femininity, nation and performance
2018
In this thesis I explore a double life of art song as a work of art and a symbol of newly emerging Yugoslav identity in the South Slav territories during the first three decades of the twentieth century. I examine this repertory as performance, through activities of two leading sopranos, Maja Strozzi-Pecic (1882-1962) and Ivanka Milojevic (1881-1975). They collaborated with composers Petar Konjovic (1883-1970) and Miloje Milojevic (1884-1946), respectively, to create the repertory and establish its concert tradition. Aiding this was Bela Pecic (1873-1938), Strozzi-Pecic’s husband-accompanist. By analysing the repertory’s creation in the context of nation-building in Yugoslavia I identify the two sopranos as ‘patriots’ - bearers of national identity. I argue they legitimized this body of work as ‘national’ high art in performance. Key performative factors in this process were gender, high vocal technique and language, and in the case of Strozzi-Pecic the star factor. As ideal female ...