Making Music in the Polish Tatras: Tourists, Ethnographers, and Mountain Musicians by Timothy J. s> Cooley (review)

Abstract

REVIEWS 549 Vasilok, the blue cornflower'; chapter two 'Youth, Ukraine, the War, and post-war military service'; chapter three 'Lieutenant Bykaiu's prose'; chapter four 'Partisannovels: victims or victors?';chapter five 'On both sides of the front lines: Signs of misfortune'; chapter six 'Scars of war: Being hunted down'; chapter seven 'On oppression in war and peace: Poor folks';chapter eight 'There is no prophet in your fatherland:Vasil Bykau6's crossroadsand the politics of freedom';Epilogue 'Exile and a long way home'. The appendix offers a note on pronunciation and transliteration. The bibliography of primaryand secondary sources is comprehensive. For students or others interested in particularworks by Bykaiuthe Index is, at one level, very helpful, going beyond simple reference to analysis and critical opinion. It in fact ranges very wide indeed, with a quantity of broad items such as 'chance', 'conscience', 'moraltruth'or 'losstheme', to take four examples that referto only one page each. The firstof them concerns specifically Bykaiu'sinterest in existentialism, whilst the second and third are veritable leitmotivs in his writing as a whole. For anglophone readers, however , the translatedtitles of works do not appear separatelyin the Index, so that one of Bykau6's most popular and successfulnovels, Znakbiady(Sign of Misfortune)is given in this form, thus hindering immediate access; another novel, turaulinycyk, [sic]is without the English translationof the title. This is regrettable, for lack of access to a foreign audience is a continuing cry of Belarusianswanting to be discovered and heard in the world. On the other hand, the tone of the book is so committedand passionate,the layout so clear, that very few potential readerswill be deterredfrom findingwhat they want. Gimpelevich'snarrative,informedby a longstandingfriendshipwith the writer and his wife as well as many other prominent literary figures, is at once warmly personal and at the same time informative about the Belarusian cultural tradition (Marc Chagall, for instance, figures on seven pages), and itsplace in a Slavoniccontext, not ignoringBelarus'speculiarpoliticalposition (referencesto dictatorshipappear on nine pages and the word is also crossreferenced ). It is a rare event for a monograph on a Belarusianwriterto appear in any foreign language, and particularlyin English. Gimpelevich's labour of love should bring furtherrecognition to a man who, shortlybefore his death, was recommended for the Nobel Prizeby both Havel and Milosz. It deservesto be purchasedby not only specialistlibrariesor Slavists,but by all with an interest in the rich heritage of a major, stillneglected twentieth-centurywriter. School ofSlavonic andEastEuropean Studies ARNOLD MCMILLIN Universiy College London Cooley, TimothyJ. Making Musicin thePolishTatras: Tourists, Ethnographers, and MountainMusicians.Indiana University Press, Bloomington and Indianapolis , 2005. xvii + 293 PP. Musical extracts. Illustrations.Glossary. Notes. Bibliography.Index. CD. !3I.95. TIMOTHYJ. COOLEY, author of this fascinating book, is Assistant Professor of Music at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and co-editor 550 SEER, 84, 3, JULY 2006 (with Gregory F. Barz) of Shadows in theField:New Perspectives for Fieldwork in Ethnomusicologv (New York and Oxford, I997). As Cooley describes in the Prefaceto the book, the workfirstarose as a resultof his interestin the music and people of the Gorale or Tatra Mountain Highlanders, individual members of which he met when workingas a folkloristand ethnomusicologistat the IllinoisArts Council in Chicago. Chicago is, of course, renowned for its huge multi-ethnicpopulation,but Cooley was struckparticularlyby the factthat the Polish G6rale were most anxious to retain their distinct regional identity as Tatra mountaineers, despite being far removed from their native mountains. He was also impressedby the vigorous nature of the music and dance which was in a style completely unfamiliar to him, although it recalled, to some extent, the American old-time string band music associated with the Appalachian Mountains. It was in Chicago that, among the Gorale musicians, he met the pgymista (leadviolin)WiadyslawStyrczula-Mas'niak and his studentAndrzejTokarz a violinist, bagy(three-stringedcello-sized bowed lute), bagpipe and G6rale flute player. The virtuoso violin playing of Wladyslaw seemed to open up a new world to Cooley and led to meetingswith many other talentedmusicians resident in the Chicago area, Toronto and elsewhere. It was Wladyslaw too, who, when Cooley visited the Tatra District of Poland at a subsequent date, arranged accommodation at his father's house. Another...