Spiritual Song in Ukrainian Folklore Milieu

Abstract

The paper outlines the original phenomenon of a spiritual song in the Ukrainian oral tradition, determines characteristic features of these texts and their functions. Besides, the author focuses on some special research issues concerning the folklore religious repertoire, first of all, the specificity of the relationship between spiritual and secular epic songs.
 The spiritual song in the Ukrainian oral tradition is a large group of poetical and musical works, united primarily by the religious Christian themes and endowed with the ability to acquire special spiritual meaning in the life of a believer, exercise an important function of satisfying his/her spiritual religious needs. Another defining feature of these songs is a lack of clear attachment to a certain rite, time, occasion. An episodic attachment of individual texts to the rite only reveals their multifunctionality, since, as a rule, the same work may be used in various rituals, appear in the repertoire of professional singers, and perform some other functions simultaneously. Essential for the differentiation of the spiritual song phenomenon in the folklore milieu is the fact of distinguishing this group of works and perceiving it as integrity by the bearers of tradition themselves until now. They use special folk concepts for its designation (‘God’s songs’, ‘psalms’). At the same time, this large stratum of folk repertoire is divided into two sub-groups, namely folklorized songs of book origin and those of folk origin. Thus, the phenomenon of a spiritual song in the Ukrainian oral tradition is characterized by a rich variety of texts in terms of character, time of emergence, nature, form, style, and genre features.
 The practice of perception, recording, and comprehension of spiritual songs has developed certain concepts and approaches. The present paper offers an attempt to systematize the previous experience and distinguish the problems that were raised in the works by various researchers and remained topical, often lacking a proper resolution. Attention to the system of the research approaches gives a guideline to the author and forms a sense of the continuing tradition.