On the chronotope of the ethno-music worldview of the Kalmyks

Abstract

The research subject is the national parameters of the chronotope of the Kalmyk ethno-music worldview. In the mindset of the Mongolian language peoples, time and space are inseparable, interconnected, and interpenetrating. The chronotope composes a unique system of axes which is later complemented with other components of the national worldview. This explains the topicality of the research subject. The purpose of the research is to detect the music peculiarities of the national chronotope. The research is based on the previously studied manifestations of the national chronotope as a whole (the philological and linguistic aspect of the Kalmyk chronotope is studied by Ts. Ayushova, E. Golubeva, E. Omakayeva, V. Salykova, and others); the author systematizes them and establishes the most significant features. In the understanding and feeling of a nomad, a steppe-dweller, a Kalmyk, space is an unlimited, vast and extended category, which is measured not only horizontally, but also vertically. In the study of the music space patterns, the most significant are the properties of sound, its spatial and acoustic characteristics. The dominant idea in the interpretation of time within a Kalmyk worldview is repeatability, which manifests itself in a twelve-digit period of the national calendar and other things. The temporal properties of the national chronotope are concentrated in a binary opposition of two genres of singing: Ut dun (long song) and Akhr dun (short song). The music culture of the Kalmyks is one of the ways of semiotization of the space and time of the steppe world.