Folk Performance Research Articles

Reconciling the Conservation of Cultural Heritage with Rural Development

Reconciling the Conservation of Cultural Heritage with Rural Development

Haji Mutamakin Dan Cerita Dewa Ruci Dalam Serat Cebolek (Relasi Sosial-Budaya Dan Keagamaan Dalam Kacamata Fenomenologi Edmund Husserl)

Serat Cebolek as a classic literary work is authentic evidence of the religious conflict between Haji Mutamakkin and Ketib Anom Kudus which is motivated by different perspectives on Islam. There is an imbalance in describing the two figures. Haji Mutamakkin, who tended to be cornered in court, seemed to have deviated and left Islam in preaching on the pretext of using the Dewa Ruci’s story as his medium. In this context, there is a need for historical rectification, what Yasadipura I described about Haji Mutamakkin is not in accordance with social facts. Phenomenology as a problem analysis tries to see two sides, namely the text of Serat Cebolek and existing socio-cultural phenomena. Dewa Ruci's story as a cultural trend of Javanese society became the prima donna which was later supported by wayang as a folk performance art. Coupled with the existence of a spiritual relationship in the analogy of Islamic teaching. Of course this has had a positive impact on the development of Islam in Java, especially in Pantura’s society (Pantai Utara). Islam develops humanistly without eliminating existing culture.

Vocal improvisation using interactive music technology

ABSTRACT This paper aims to study the features of vocal improvisation using interactive musical technologies. The survey method contributed to determining the level of vocal skills of 214 respondents auditioned before the experiment. The authors developed a training programme based on previously received information. It included breathing, technical, aesthetic, and vocal improvisation skills. The results showed that 93% of the experimental group believed that interactive technologies had advantages in the educational process, and 63% of the control group believed that they had no advantages. The survey of the students allowed identifying elements that required improvement or changes in the curriculum. The students of the experimental group showed that using national Chinese instruments for accompaniment was important for 32% of the respondents, 27% chose the answer “other”, which included systematic and more frequent cross-sections of knowledge, the involvement of foreign approaches to learning. The calculation of the level of knowledge obtained showed that 88% of the students demonstrated a high level in the experimental group, a low one was only in 2%. Study prospects relate to studying technical and aesthetic elements to be applied during classical and folk vocal performance.

Spatial Memory and Ecologically Displaced Subjectivity in Western Tharu Folk Songs of Nepal

This paper critically examines the folk dance songs of Dangaura Tharu fromthe perspective of space, memory, and performance. The paper establishes the relationship between Tharu subjectivity and conscience of their past topography inherent intheir folk dance songs. In one aspect where the overall folk performance of Tharu reflects their lifestyle, in another aspect, their folk songs and rituals assist them to connect with the natural environment where they inhabit. This paper has brandied their performance as the art reflecting their bucolic lifestyle and melancholic memory. The songs have been collected, translated, and interpreted from different visual sources and personal communications. To analyze the primary texts, the notion of folklore performance from Alan Dundes, Richard Schechner, and other different folklorists have been utilized as the theoretical and review guidelines. The paper also includes the translated version of the songs. As for the indigenous culture aspirant like me, the study of folklores of Tharu indigeneity helps us to understand the spatial memory of one of the largest ethnicity of Nepal and their socio-economic history. It will provide a new perspective of their historical changes from literature which have not been critically assessed in the already conducted studies. Hence, the findings of the research help us to understand the necessary social index of one of Nepal’s largest indigeneity.

Maoist Laughter ed. by Ping Zhu, Zhuoyi Wang, and Jason McGrath

Reviewed by: Maoist Laughter ed. by Ping Zhu, Zhuoyi Wang, and Jason McGrath Howard Y. F. Choy Ping Zhu, Zhuoyi Wang, and Jason McGrath, editors. Maoist Laughter. Hong Kong UP, 2019. 224 p. In the beginning of The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte (1852), Karl Marx adds to G. W. F. Hegel's remarks that history always appears twice: "the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce." Could it be tragedy and farce at the same time? With the trademark smiley faces of Chinese artist Yue Minjun's 岳敏君 hilarious acrylic pink painting The Sun (Taiyang 太陽, 2000) as its cover image, Maoist Laughter is a groundbreaking addition to laughology, after similar works like Not Just a Laughing Matter: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Political Humor in China, coedited by Kingfai Tam and Sharon R. Wesoky (Singapore: Springer, 2018). The new publication's ten essays represent the most recent American and British studies of laughter in modern and contemporary Chinese literature, culture, cinema, dance, and theater. Zhu's introduction begins by discussing the healing effects of laughter, arguing that the Mao era actually "institutionalized laughter as a social practice and an ideological discourse" (1). Such "socialist laughter" had a "class identification function" (5) and "was closely intertwined with the production of Maoist discourse" (7). Dating the genealogy of Maoist laughter back to the Yan'an period (1935-1948) when Mao Zedong advocated Lu Xun's 魯迅 (1881-1936) [End Page 161] satirical essays and transformed the libidinal energies of humor into the revolutionary, militant spirit, Zhu traces the regulation of cartoons and comedies to the time of turmoil from the 1940s through 1976. Her claim that laughter marked the end of the Mao era's legitimacy and the beginning of "a new historical force" (12) is quite unclear and it is uncertain whether "Maoist laughter" is limited only to its historical context or a specter that is still haunting post-Mao China. The volume is divided into three parts: "Utopian Laughter," "Intermedial Laughter," and "Laughter and Language." Based on Zygmunt Bauman's assertation of socialism as an "active utopia," Zhu suggests that utopian laughter is "a revolutionary apparatus" for "a collective dream" (12). In the two case studies of film comedies, Wang Jiayi's 王家乙 Five Golden Flowers (Wu duo jinhua 五朵金花, 1959) and Guo Wei's 郭維 Happily Ever After (Hua hao yue yuan 花好月圓, 1957) based on Zhao Shuli's 趙樹理 novel Sanliwan Village (Sanliwan 三里灣, 1955), Ban Wang observes in the former that eulogistic and transethnic laughter was essential to the socialist agenda of national unity with ethnic minorities, while Charles A. Laughlin addresses the problem of socialist leisure in the latter where "no rigid boundaries in space or time between physical labor and rest and relaxation" exist (52). Using cross-cultural comparison with the "joke rite" found in post-WWII US sitcoms and "interracial buddy film" (67, 69), Emily Wilcox points out the "unpredictable, surprising, and rebellious" (64) potential represented by the choreography underneath the joke pattern of "conformist humor" (57) in the Chinese military dance "Laundry Song" ("Xi yi ge" 洗衣歌, 1964), created to promote Han-Tibetan and soldier-civilian harmony after the 1959 Tibetan uprising. In the second section, Xiaoning Lu demonstrates how the film Wandering in the Zoo, Awaking from a Dream (You yuan jing meng 遊園驚夢, 1956) innovated the interplay between cinema and Hou Baolin's 侯寶林 xiangsheng 相聲 or "cross-talk" to produce "sociopolitically appropriate laughter"—even though Hou himself "named satire as the first and most important element in the humor of a good xiangsheng piece" (73, 75n)—before the suspension of film comedy projects during the Anti-Rightist Campaign (1957-59). Yun Zhu's chapter illustrates how Yang Xiaozhong's 楊小仲 1963 screen adaptation of Zhang Tianyi's 張天翼 novella "The Magic Gourd" ("Bao hulu [End Page 162] de mimi" 寶葫蘆的秘密, 1958) played between "satire" (fengci 諷刺) and "extolment" (gesong 歌頌) in the aftermath of the hyperbolic Great Leap Forward (1958-60) that resembled the young protagonist's unrealistic ambitions. Then Li Guo investigates how adaptations between traditional pingtan 評彈 storytelling, film, folk performances, and radio-broadcast songs negotiated between individuals and the nation-state through vernacularization and redefinition of "'laughter' as an ideological act" with class consciousness (108). The final four essays explore laughter as a popular...

The Memory of Performance: From Contents to Contexts of Selected Tharu Folk Dances

The major objective of this paper is to analyze the historical context of the Dangaura Tharu folk dances of Nepal. The study discusses the Tharu subjectivity by assessing the performance as an agency. The primary discussion is based on the issue of Kamaiyahood in the songs narrated during the dance of the community. Dangaura Tharu ethnicity resides across five Tarai districts of Nepal: Dang, Banke, Bardiya, Kailali and Kanchanpur. This study is to identify and evaluate the role of memory in the folk performance of the community. It concludes by justifying the abundance of Kamaiyahood, spatial memory and empathy for nature in the community's folk performance. To collect the data required for the study, this study has adopted the qualitative research method, using the techniques such as direct observation, interview and relevant documents to understand the performing arts and rituals of the Tharus of Nepal. In addition, to analyze the collected data, Richard Schechner's idea of performance as a fortitude for identity has been applied critically. In addition, Alan Dunde's concept of folklore as the identity has also been considered. Thus, the study finds the memory of displacement inherent in the Tharu folk dance. The spatial memory and the Kamaiyahood appear as the dominant motifs in Dangaura Tharu folk performance. Since the dance of the community comprises the songs, reflecting the symbols and their meanings of the dances, for each dance has been critically analyzed in the paper.

Effect of a low-cost, behaviour-change intervention on latrine use and safe disposal of child faeces in rural Odisha, India: a cluster-randomised controlled trial

SummaryBackgroundUptake of Government-promoted sanitation remains a challenge in India. We aimed to investigate a low-cost, theory-driven, behavioural intervention designed to increase latrine use and safe disposal of child faeces in India.MethodsWe did a cluster-randomised controlled trial between Jan 30, 2018, and Feb 18, 2019, in 66 rural villages in Puri, Odisha, India. Villages were eligible if not adjacent to another included village and not designated by the Government to be open-defecation free. All latrine-owning households in selected villages were eligible. We assigned 33 villages to the intervention via stratified randomisation. The intervention was required to meet a limit of US$20 per household and included a folk performance, transect walk, community meeting, recognition banners, community wall painting, mothers’ meetings, household visits, and latrine repairs. Control villages received no intervention. Neither participants nor field assessors were masked to study group assignment. We estimated intervention effects on reported latrine use and safe disposal of child faeces 4 months after completion of the intervention delivery using a difference-in-differences analysis and stratified results by sex. This study is registered at ClinicalTrials.gov, NCT03274245.FindingsWe enrolled 3723 households (1807 [48·5%] in the intervention group and 1916 [51·5%] in the control group). Analysis included 14 181 individuals (6921 [48·8%] in the intervention group and 7260 [51·2%] in the control group). We found an increase of 6·4 percentage points (95% CI 2·0–10·7) in latrine use and an increase of 15·2 percentage points (7·9–22·5) in safe disposal of child faeces. No adverse events were reported.InterpretationA low-cost behavioural intervention achieved modest increases in latrine use and marked increases in safe disposal of child faeces in the short term but was unlikely to reduce exposure to faecal pathogens to a level necessary to achieve health gains.FundingThe Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and International Initiative for Impact Evaluation.

THE FUNCTIONING OF SCENOGRAPHY IN THE UKRAINIAN PROTOTHEATER

During the period of the full-scale war, the process of self-identification of Ukrainians as a nation intensified, therefore intereSt in one’s own cultural roots and spiritual heritage is conStantly growing. At the same time, modern Ukrainian art, in particular the art of scenography, is characterized by the search for new perspectives and original methods of embodying the synthesis of arts, which in part manifeSts itself as an echo of the original integrity of all forms of consciousness, all forms of self-expression of the Ukrainian proto-theatre. Material attributes of proto-theatrical actions and rites become a source of inspiration for modern scenographers. After all, it was in those ancient times that the foundations of scenography, as a separate type of fine art, were laid and its main functions were formed. Therefore, it is appropriate to consider the characteristic features of the visual-figurative component of ancient Ukrainian actions in the context of their content, syncretic character and influence on the modern art of scenography. The author of the article claims that there were two types of folk performances in the Ukrainian proto-theatre: ritual and game. Proto-theatrical actions were synthetic and the visual-figurative series was an integral part of them along with speech, music, dance, etc. The visual-figurative series of proto-theatrical actions can be characterized as: not separated from other components, functional and metaphorical. The main function of the object-coStume world of ancient rituals was the character function, which over time gave way to the game function. The proto-theatre formed the firSt scenographic syStem in the hiStory of the theatre – game scenography, which later dominated the buffoon theatre and partially the Ukrainian school theatre.

Krishna kee bansi bhajay

Nachania (नचंनिया), translated as ‘female dancer’, refers to both a traditional Indo-Jamaican folk dance that has local origins in indentureship, and to those who perform it. The dance is characterized by flamboyant flailing hands, counterbalanced by acrobatic feats and yogic moments synchronous with beat drops. Its unbound choreography salvages important religio-cultural and historical narratives through ecstatic paroxysmal dance often with sexual overtones. This performance is important in ritualized and celebratory spaces to entertain crowds. While performing, Nachanias would have money launched at them, and they would sometimes engage men in dance. The performers were, and still are, frequently men who assume a different gendered role garbed in conscious ‘feminizing’ technologies such as make-up, jewellery and a frock. Especially during indentureship and the period immediately after, it was ‘vulgar’ for women to dance publicly or perform at religious ceremonies. Early women Nachanias were read as tainted spectacles, some of whom the archives record as professional ‘entertainers’. Inspired by the author’s curiosity, Indo-Jamaican identity, observations of Nachania and discourses with Ghanesh Maragh (one of the few contemporary performers of this artform), this article casts Indo-Jamaicans into the unbound erotic gendered tradition of Jamaica and indentureship by (a) tracing the (inter)religious, gendered, and historical anatomy of the lauded folk performance from the period of indentureship to the present in Jamaica and the Indo-Jamaican diaspora; (b) exploring themes of bidesia; and (c) examining possible problems with situating Nachania within categories of queer.

Archives in drag

‘Archives in drag: Performing nachaniya towards a queer theory of indenture’ takes as its object the figure of the Indo-Jamaican nachaniya dancer as a paradigm for re-thinking queer theories of indenture. Nachaniya is a highly stylized Indo-Jamaican folk dance featuring a heterosexual male dancing in drag. The performance, which can be traced to the nineteenth century, is still common within present-day Indo-Jamaican communities and the diaspora. Nachaniya therefore presents both parts of a queer historical and living archive. By using an archival photograph from the 1960s of a nachaniya dancer as a point of entry, I consider the ways in which this genre of Indo-Jamaican folk performance demonstrates gender non-normativity as deeply embedded within the indentured archive. Since nachaniya is also read as not necessarily queer but ‘cultural’, I am interested in the tensions between a refusal to categorize the performance as a kind of drag while simultaneously elevating its ‘cultural’ status and the slippage between ‘queer’ and ‘culture’. I consider the figure of the nachaniya dancer as what Anjali Arondekar has termed a site of ‘ordinary surplus’ rather than a site of queer exception. Through a reading of this queer archival photograph, I consider destabilizing narratives of loss or absence that saturate approaches to the queer archive of indenture to suggest that nachaniya is a useful paradigm for theorizing the nexus at which Indo-Jamaican archives and queers of indenture have been theorized as ‘nothing to see’.

Folk Literature and Social Space: Interdependences and Correlations

Art is not a mirror held up to reality, but a hammer with which to shape it.” this dictum attributed to famous playwright Bertolt Brecht as quoted by Bleeker et al., (2019) sums up the interdependence and correlation between art and literature and society. The world has never been a singular entity. There have always been groups that lived a powerful, privileged existence and it is their experience that has passed down the generations as literature, as the core narrative of human existence at a given time. For long ‘Literature’ did not include ‘Folk’ or their culture as was relegated to the peripheries of academic discourse as belonging to the savage, subaltern people. However, it is now increasingly being recognised as an archive of vernacular knowledge systems and a great contributor to the social and cultural development of the people. Both social space and folk literature affect and mould each other. What happens in social space gets reflected in folk literature and what folk literature depicts becomes part of social space. Saang as a form of folk performance tradition has been the source of or a defining influence on the various forms of Folk performance traditions of North India. It has been called “a north Indian Folk Opera” by Vatuk, V. P., & Vatuk, S. (1967) because the dialogues between characters are sung. Taking it as a representative form of North Indian folk performative tradition, my paper attempts to analyse issues of representation of culture, society and morality on the Saang stage. The paper, would focus on some selected Saangs of Lakhmi Chand (1905-1945), as compiled by Sharma, P. Chand. (2006) in Lakhmi Chand Granthavali. He is known as the greatest exponent of the Saang form and often referred to as the Shakespeare of North India. His Saangs invariably represent the values and experiences that formed the core of the society of his times. He has taken tales from history, myth and local legends as the basis for his performances. The present paper analyses the content of some Saangs composed and performed by Lakhmi Chand to analyse the knotty question of representation of culture and morality and how one can see reflected in the tales performed by the Saangi, the major social concerns of the times.

Русская традиция «играть песни» как феномен народного исполнительства

Russian musical folklore reflects the rich culture of the people, for them performing a song means to reveal the soul in it. Nowadays, there is an acute problem of preserving the traditional criteria of folk performance as a national treasure. But it can be solved not by imitation of the external signs of folklore intonation, but through a deep understanding of the primordial signs of the very process of folk song creation. Many of them are rooted in the Russian tradition of “playing songs”, which was widespread in Russia until the middle of the 20th century. The purpose of this work is to study its features as a phenomenon of folk performance. The signs of the tradition of “playing songs” form a complex, multi-valued concept, which is considered in the article from different positions. The main attention is focused on understanding the artistic, aesthetic and phenomenological principles of this phenomenon. In the folk environment, the concepts of “singing” and “playing” songs are delimited. Spiritual verses were sung, and songs were played. The expression “playing songs” contains a “genetic code’, marking the signs of the Proto-Slavic culture, when the very word “game” meant “singing and dancing in honor of a pagan deity”. In ritual folklore, this concept is revealed as the art of representation. In songs with deep psychological overtones – as the art of experiencing. “Playing a song”, the singers are able to penetrate into the subtle world of poetic images and into the intonation subtext of musical images. In the process of “immersion” in the conditional reality of the song space, they can interpret the idea of the song in a new way and, in the context of certain life circumstances, create new versions of the prototype.

Faces of Tradition in Chinese Performing Arts

Faces of Tradition in Chinese Performing Arts

Festivals for Inclusion? Examining the Politics of Cultural Events in Northern Cyprus

In Northern Cyprus, cultural festivals are increasingly popular. The routinely celebrated festivals transform small villages into colourful celebrations with lots of activities and great culinary experiences, offering opportunities for social contact between members of different generations. People meet in the streets, where traditional food and handicrafts are on display and traditional folk dance performances usually take place. Cultural events provide an important space in which older generations often nostalgically remember the past with others of their generation and share their memories with the young people. Bi‐communal interactions between Turkish Cypriots and Greek Cypriots in these public spaces also help leave behind and bury the violence of the past, nationalistic dogma, and intolerance. Drawing on ideas from postcolonial theory, cultural studies, sociology, and scholarship on public art, this article develops a post‐postcolonial approach to explore the politics and value of Turkish Cypriot cultural festivals and the ways in which Turkish Cypriots are bridging differences with Greek Cypriots. Through observations, conversations, and interviews conducted with Turkish Cypriots from June 2014 to October 2017, the article also discusses the ways in which public art encourages dialogue and multicultural tolerance in Cyprus. The article argues that the rise of interest in Turkish Cypriot folk arts and multicultural tolerance, as propagated by Turkish Cypriots, should be understood in more complex terms than simply that of positive inclusion, as an ambivalence closely connected to the East/West division. Accordingly, the article illustrates that the coexistence of inclu‐ sion and exclusion are at the heart of Turkish Cypriot society.

On a number of issues in the study of management in the field of professional folk choral performance

The article examines the history of the formation of management of musical art in Russia as a discipline and direction of personnel training. The issues of the history of the state cultural policy in relation to folk choral performance, as well as the emergence of an opposite trend in the interpretation and actualization of folk singing art, formed within the framework of the youth folklore movement, are touched upon. Ideas and proposals were expressed regarding the availability of qualified managers in professional folk choir groups.

Performing the Elements in Indian Eco-Theatre: Deepan Sivaraman’sThe Legends of Khasak

This article considers The Legends of Khasak, a Malayalam play by Deepan Sivaraman, as a landmark Indian eco-theatrical production. I argue for the play as an important development in a nascent Indian eco-theatre, telling an ecologically significant tale about the relationship between humans and nature through performative and scenographic innovations that transform the theatrical space into a sacred grove, a place of deep significance in terms of ecological balance. This essay elaborates on how the play celebrates the pancha bhutas, the five elements of nature, by displaying their agency and invoking the pancha indriyas, or the five pathways of human perception, and thereby awakening an awareness of our status as ecological beings enmeshed in the non-human world. In The Legends of Khasak, Sivaraman has evolved an eco-material aesthetics of performance that, influenced by traditional folk performance forms and rituals and post-independence syncretic theatre, makes a lasting contribution to the development of an Indian eco-drama.

The importance of Vasanthan Kooththu (Art Form) songs in revealing the existence of human social and professional life

The culture of a community plays a major role in narrating the history and life of that particular community. This culture includes various aspects such as religion, ritual, faith, food, customs or practices as well as art and culture. Among these aspects, art is not only for entertainment; but it is also for exposing the social character and tradition of that particular community. The undeniable thing here is the factor that art forms in every country, and in every region are not only to create entertainment but also to preserve the antiquity of their existence up to now. In that respect, Vasanthan Kooththu, one of the Sri Lankan Tamil art forms, is a notable art form in that category. Even though this art form is found in Batticaloa and Jaffna areas, they have differences between each other. This study focuses on the songs of Vasanthan Kooththu performed in the Katuthavalai area of ​​Batticaloa. This type of Kooththu is an art form of tapping and dancing with two sticks in the hands; however, these sticks are also used to express the function of the meaning of the song with dance. Even though this type of Kooththu is a dance form, the greatness of the songs used in this Kooththu is significant. There are 62 types of Vasanthan poems have been in use in the Art Form performances. These have been compiled around the year 1940. These 62 genres of songs are divided into six genres and compiled, namely 'Kattiyam', 'Thoththiram', 'Sariththiram', 'Tholil', 'Vedikkai', 'Vilaiyaattu' and are still in the practice during Kooththu performance. As mentioned earlier, these Kooththu song systems emphasize the art expression of the culture of a community. The songs related to the professions or job involved in these Kooththu songs express the whole series of activities of the agricultural industry. The reason that these Kooththu songs to aim to explore only a specific industry is to be explored. It is vital to discover this factor; and this article explores about how these Kooththu songs are still in operation today as a popular form of folk music performance to describe a particular social professional life, beyond globalization trends, imposition and blends of colonization thinking. This article also explores the significance of these Kooththu songs hold, the importance they have gained in the life of people as well as the value that these Kooththu songs have even today.

THE CONCERT AND PEDAGOGICAL REPERTORY OF KHARKIV BUTTON ACCORDION SCHOOL IN TERMS OF THE GENRE AND STYLE DYNAMIC

Introduction. The article is devoted to the study of the historical stages of the modern button accordion repertoire formation based on the genre and stylistic analysis of the repertoire models used in the process of teaching the students in the Kharkiv button accordion school. The actualization of the current research topic has set up a need for relying to a greater extent not on the printed sources, but on the reports of the witnesses, the first button accordion students of Kharkiv Conservatory, such as University professors Alexander Ivanovich Nazarenko, Anatoly Pavlovich Haydenko, Igor Ivanovich Kharkiv, as well as college professors Yevhen Leonidovych Vashchenko and Yevhen Heorhiyovych Malykhin, who were the first-hand participants in the process of the regional school formation. Theoretical background. Although the historiography of the Ukrainian button accordion art contains a fairly large amount of scientific and methodological studies (M. Imkhanitsky, V. Semeshko, A. Stashevsky, I. Snedkov, A. Svetov), many problems of the modern academic folk instrumental music remain unresolved. In particular, the concert repertoire formation in terms of a pragmatic dimension of the button accordion teachers approaches study within the Kharkiv school has not been the subject of a special interest of researchers in this area yet. The purpose of the research is to trace the stages of formation of the button accordionists’ modern concert and pedagogical repertoire on the basis of the genre and stylistic models’ analysis used in the process of teaching in the Kharkiv regional button accordion school. The object of the article is historical experience of the Kharkiv button accordion school as a component of academic folk and instrumental performance. Methods of research are conditioned by the material and formulation of the problem itself, in particular, a historical method is used to explain the organic connection of the facts, preconditions and personalities that brings together the historical experience of the Kharkiv button accordion school, a genre and stylistic method provides the embodiment of the performers original creative achievements. Results and Discussion. There are three main factors which have influenced the formation of the concert and pedagogical repertoire of the button accordion students of the Ukrainian Folk Instruments Department in KhNUA: ● the performing school and its genesis represented by particular teachers with their own repertoire preferences; ● improving the design of the instrument itself; ● the volume and quality of the original repertoire, as well as the productivity level and number of the composers working to develop it. Considering the general condition of the Kharkiv regional button accordion school of the 1950s, we can point out the prospects of the core guidelines underlying its basis: the formation of a list of clearly regulated and systematized program requirements; the impossibility of the requirements for the performance of genre forms (the absence of full-fledged imitation polyphony in the pedagogical repertoire) in full compliance with the “classical canons”; the predominance of small forms over large ones, as well as their obvious genre affiliation (songs, dances, marches); a significant shortage of the original works inciting the adaptation skills formation. Since the late 1960s the original pedagogical repertoire has been characterized by a great variety of genre and stylistic forms, such as a concert, a sonata, a suite, a partita, a fantasy, small cycles, a scherzo, a prelude, a concertino, a play, an arrangement of folk songs, arrangements of popular works, a concert etude. The representatives of five generations provide an inheritance of the traditions that represent the Kharkiv button accordion school creative experience and simultaneously transform it in accordance with the modern challenges. Conclusions. The conclusions emphasize the fact that the historically settled genre models of the performing and pedagogical repertoire of accordionists were established in the process of the Kharkiv button accordion school activity. The diversity of the original music for a button accordion is now represented by almost all existing genres and stylistic performance directions. It was the high culture of the Kharkiv musicians’ performance that brought the status of the academic art of playing folk instruments into a scientific level, as a new standard of sound and creative thinking.

Karaha Pujan

This article brings to light a kind of worship of lord Krsna practised especially by the communities of Ahir (cowherds), and Gadariya (shepherds) of eastern Uttar Pradesh, called Karaha pujan. It involves life-threatening practices performed, in a state of possession, by a bhagat, a man with charismatic authority. Besides Krsna, two forms of the goddess Sakti, namely Durga and Vansakti, are also invoked. The bhagat comes only from the Ahir or the Gadariya community. It is mostly performed under the scorching sun in summer, where the bhagat, praying to the deities, bathes in boiling hot khir (a sweet rice pudding cooked in milk), and fries puris (flat bread) dipping his hands into the boiling ghee. People come from surrounding places to witness it, feel awe for the bhagat, and believe that he is unharmed because he has been possessed by the deity or deities being worshipped. The bhagat makes predictions about the climatic conditions of the region, and about the future of the devotees, and provides solutions to their problems. This article traces similarities and parallelisms between this folk ritual performance and folk Tantric ways of worship.

NARODNE PREDSTAVE O SUNCU I MESECU U FRAZEMIMA I PAREMIJAMA ITALIJANSKOG I SRPSKOG JEZIKA

In this paper we have analyzed and compared idioms and proverbs of Italian and Serbian, where folk performances and observations about the influence of celestial bodies on human life are present, relying on the theory of Polish ethnolinguistic school. Astronomical culture is one of the oldest, developing from prehistoric man to the modern age in various forms and under different influences, from the imaginary view of celestial bodies to nurturing of cults, and the creation of numerous myths and legends. Due to their physical distance from the man, the Moon and the Sun have often been a subject of fantasy, therefore being animized (receiving the features of a living being), personified (presented as human beings) and sometimes deified (the Sun ascribing divine qualities) in linguistic structures. Idioms and proverbs are an impor- tant linguistic heritage for their speakers, because they are formed based on common values accepted by both language speakers and users showing an anthropocentric and not always realistic view of phenomena in the world. This paper is intended to highlight the existence of a common Indo-European nucleus in the perception of the celestial bodies, as well as to show a number of cultural differences that have left their mark in the observed languages.