Areal and Narrowly-localized Types of Formula Chanting in the Wedding Tradition of Slobіdshchyna

Abstract

The wedding ritual cycle can be considered as one of the most investigated in the Ukrainian ethnomusicology. However, historically it turned out that the territories of late-settlement of south-eastern Ukraine remain insufficiently explored. Therefore, scientific research of this region is now arousing the interest of the musicologists. Numerous materials of expeditions in the Kharkiv region of the 70s-2000’s made up funds of phono archives, folklore collections, audio publications. This significant empirical material became a groundwork for the further scientific findings. Having basic information about the genres of local folklore and their typical features, we can detect unknown artifacts from the huge amount of data. Our attention was attracted by the distinctive archaic style of the wedding song tradition of Rozsoshi village, Velykopysarivskyi region of Sumshchyna that borders on the modern Kharkiv region. In our opinion, it is a manifestation of a narrowly local tradition, which in many ways does not coincide with the musical stylistics of the rest of Slobozh nshchyna. Thus, the aim of the scientific research is to display authentic material from the neighboring villages of Rozsoshi (Sumskyi region) and Korbyni Ivany (Kharkiv region) and to compare its morphological parameters in order to mark its place in the stylistic system of the Slobіdshchyna region.Analysis of formula tunes of Rozsoshi village gives grounds for the conclusions that here arises such form of interrelation of elements of the local song style, at which the most stable and dominant is the level of melody and tonality (minor third scale with subquarte within burdo diaphonia), which are indirectly coordinated with a certain rhythm. It is the melodictextured type itself that has become the system sign of the narrowly local tradition of Rozsoshi village.Analysis of three formula tunes of Korbyni Ivany village showed that their basis is the scale of the fifth ambitus, yet with different types of basic tones, which are coordinated with various rhythmic patterns. Such a so-called “Podilski” wedding and its musical and style components are dominant not only in the Bohodukhivskyi region, but also in other areas of Slobіdshchyna: Kupianskyi, Zolochivskyi, Krasnokutskyi, Lozivskyi etc.As a result of that, the study of wedding rituals and structural-performing features of the wedding songs of Slobozh nshchyna has revealed an interesting fact of their coexistence in the form of an oppositional-hierarchical pair of “regional–narrowly local”. The described features are not accidental. Apparently, they are a manifestation and result of a peculiar historical process of these lands settling for three centuries. This process, as we know, was far from equable and ethnically heterogeneous. So, the material and conclusions presented in the article allow us to argue the existence of sustained archetypical “codes” that each tradition has been maintaining for centuries up to the present day.