Genre-ritual popuri – an unique song sample from the upper reaches of the Goryn River

Abstract

The article is devoted to the consideration of one unusual vocal composition in the traditional Ukrainian wedding ritual. The purpose of the publication is, firstly, to present the work itself and introduce it into scientific use; secondly, to attribute it from the point of view of genre features and ritual function; thirdly, to find out whether set of episodes that form a complex and highly original compositional form is random, which form a complex and very original compositional form. The study is based on a complex of analytical methods , which are determined by the peculiarities of the composition. Thus, the analysis involves several levels of its organization –such as genre, syllabo-rhythmic, scale-melodic, and subject-textual ones. The village of Zaluzhzhia in the Khmelnytskyi region is located in the upper part of the basin of the Horyn River, in an area that belongs to the transition zone between the Podillia and Volyn regions. As everywhere in Ukraine, the traditional rural wedding ritual lasted several days. His final stage – “ perezva ” – is always filled with entertaining game scenes, parodies of a real wedding ceremony, comic dialogues and songs that often have erotic subtexts. One of these songs turned out to be very strange and even mysterious; local residents sing it just during the “ perezva ” ritual. Here are the main features of this vocal composition: a) a comic poetic subject with elements of fiction, where all events are mixed up fantastically. At the same time, they are quite logically connected in a single subject chain; b) a complex form that goes far beyond the strophic. The song consists of six different episodes, which determine its form and size; c) these episodes do not belong to the same genre cycle – the wedding cycle, but to completely different ones: in addition to the wedding songs, there are presented “quotes” from the texts and melodies of calendar folk songs – spring-time round dances, summer-time Kupalo songs, and winter-time Schedrivky songs. The authors of the article describe and analyze this folklore phenomenon in details – its storyline and internal logic, as well as possible subtexts; rhythmic and sound-pitch organization; compositional form. The study leads the authors to the following conclusions: The main function of such songs in the wedding ritual is entertaining, laughter. Its traditional, non-random nature is indisputable, since many times repeated fixations of a song at a distance of several months each time gave the same result – the same sequence of poetic texts and melodies, without any significant structural changes; Such songs,together with fragments of songs from various ritual genres, from which they are formed, really exist in the region. The architectonics of this song medley reveals signs of several different musical forms – such as two-part and three-part reprisal forms, rondo, and concentric forms. The question of such songs origin remains open: we cannot definitely say how old they are, whether their performing tradition was spontaneous, and whether its birth was due to an individual author creation