Traditional Folk Culture Research Articles

Longxian Shehuo: Two-thousand-year-old folk customs gestated from eight hundred miles of loess

Shehuo originated from a kind of entertainment activity in the square of "Hundred Dramas", which was gradually combined with other acrobatics in the activities of sacrificing to the Earth God and the Valley God in ancient China. This activity was widely spread in China, and it was one of the folk ways of social sacrifice to seek good fortune and avoid bad luck. Later, it gradually evolved into an entertainment activity for the Spring Festival. As one of the birthplaces of Chinese culture, the Weihe River Basin in Shaanxi Province has bred ancient national culture. The Shehuo in Longxian County is one of the unique cultures bred on the 800 mile plain. In the 21st century, there are still many problems in the inheritance and protection of the community fire culture in Longxian County. To actively solve these problems, we need to promote the inheritance and innovation of traditional folk culture through government guidance, mass participation and other ways.

Wood, Stone, Thread: Aesthetics of the Most Ancient Archetypes in Modern Decorative and Applied Art

The article is devoted to the transformation of traditional folk culture archetypes of wood, stone, thread in modern decorative and applied art, as well as ways of using threads, wood and stone as materials for the manufacture of objects of modern art. The research does not aim to repeat classical ethnographic studies or to refer monographs on the history of culture. The article is an attempt at a comprehensive analysis of the modern practice of decorative and applied art from the point of view of the philosophy of culture and practical aesthetics. This approach is a unique experience in the analysis of jewelry and decorative practices of processing heterogeneous materials of natural origin. The cluster of masters of decorative and applied art in Russia is expanding, there are more and more opportunities and materials for creativity, but the authors of the products themselves are not engaged in stylistic, art criticism or philosophical understanding of their activities. Nevertheless, their works, according to researchers, reflect the oldest mythological images that are the cornerstones of Russian culture and represent the heritage of world culture, transformed by post-culture and man-made trends that have penetrated, among other things, into art. Archetypes of wood, stone, thread, preserved since ancient times, acquire new meanings and new forms of embodiment in the works of modern authors.

Siberian Animal Style as a Conceptual Basis for the Conversion of Traditional Artistic Heritage into Cultural Industries

The process of acquiring the author’s style, its semantic distinctive features, and the creation of the author’s identity is a fundamental problem for artists. The paper is devoted to the analysis of the artist’s native culture code influence on the creative concept and artistic language. Artistic inversion is important ‒ the inverse representation of the cultural code in the artist’s work. We consider artistic, pictorial inversion as a form of the artistic conceptualization. It contributes to the successful understanding of the connotations and intentions of the artist’s work by his audience. An analysis of Namdakov’s work allowed us to conceptualize the representation problem of the cultural code in Far East peoples’ contemporary art and describe artistic strategies that represent the influence of such semantic aspects of the cultural code as the influence of the artistic worldview, the strategies elevation of original interpretation and transformation of the animal style, the influence of the academic background. We define the artistic paradigm of the style as a style-forming factor in contemporary creative industries of artists who emerged from traditional crafts communities. The phenomenon of ethnic artistic tradition has been widely studied in the art history literature (T. M. Stepanskaya, A. V. Edokova, L. I. Nekhlyadovich). We believe, however, that attention should be focused on the content of “cultural code of artistic paradigm”, because ethnic artists consciously transform national artistic images and techniques through integration of their heritage into contemporary artistic language, culture and art background. This is particularly relevant for artists who institutionalize their style into a recognizable contemporary art language strategy. The main research question addressed in this paper is the representation peculiarities of the Namdakov’s artistic strategy semantic forms. He creates innovative ways of shaping, applies illogical, provocative and asymmetrical compositional solutions, creates fresh artistic metaphors, overcomes visual and figurative traditions and transforms ethnic artistic traditions into the leading artistic world-class trends of contemporary art. It has been proved that the animalistic style acquired a new modern dimension with the development of the creative industry in the regions of South-East Asia: the north of modern China and the art workshops of D. Namdakov and Zhigzhit Bayaskhalanov in the Russian Federation. It was the original interpretation of the animalistic style that became a powerful source for the development of traditional folk craft culture and brought the Far East peoples’ modern art to a new level of development, contributed to the evolution of the artist’s creative potential and gave many artists hope for creative expression.

Національна ідентичність у вимірі етнокультури: досвід славістичної фольклористики

Analysis of urgent problems, connected with the concept of identity, in particular the folklore significance, becomes nowadays the leitmotif of modern cultural-anthropological and ethnofolklore studies, determining the relevance of those aspects in Slavonic ethnology aimed at the thorough study of problems concerning national, regional, local identity, both on the theoretically-methodological and practical, social-cultural levels, enlisting wide European scientific experience. Taking into account modern expansion of the notion of folklore text to the scales of communication act and text of culture, as well as its contemporary functioning in the form of the folklorismus, it seems to be the most perspective to apply to the works in the field of Slavonic ethnology, folkloristics and cultural anthropology, where immaterial cultural heritage is considered in the context of cultural, identification factors of a certain region. Identity of a separate community is formed according to them. Such investigations have been carried out in the scientific centers of Bulgaria, Macedonia, Serbia. They have confirmed the fact, that the complex, polyfunctional and interdisciplinary trend in the study of traditional folk culture, especially folklore, still remains a relevant task of modern Slavistics.

Dance Performance in New Rural Areas Based on 3D Image Reconstruction Technology.

Because of the special ecological environment and humanistic atmosphere in new rural areas, excellent regional dance art has been created. Through computer-aided technology, the essence of dance art in rural areas can be reconstructed and displayed. Therefore, based on 3D image reconstruction technology, this paper obtains the dance data of southeast Guangxi and puts forward the dance display scheme of new rural areas. Through acquisition of image information and image matching algorithm, the dance pose is estimated, and the extracted dance sequence is simplified by 3D reconstruction and mapped by texture. In addition, extraction effect of data set, comparison of dance similarity, and user authenticity score were used to test the five types of dance, which provides ideas for the inheritance and development of traditional folk dance culture.

Tradičná ľudová kultúra Rusínov a budovanie ich identity v multikultúrnom prostredí základnej školy

Traditional folk culture is a manifestation of cultural identity, historical awareness and a means of learning about cultural diversity. The cultural tradition and cultural identity of the Ruthenians in Slovakia are interconnected and are not genetically transmitted. Ruthenians currently no longer live in homogeneous village communities, live under significant assimilative influences of the multicultural environment, their cultural manifestations are absent in the curricula and in the textbooks for primary schools. In the youngest generation, national cultural awareness, the ability to communicate in the Ruthenian language, is disappearing. Artifacts of traditional folk culture can be part of the content of cross-curricular themes: Regional education and traditional folk culture, Multicultural education and Global education. The subjects of the paper are attributes and forms of implementation of elements of Ruthenian folk culture into the educational process of primary school.

ДИАЛОГ ПОКОЛЕНИЙ: ТРАНСЛЯЦИЯ ЯЗЫКА И КУЛЬТУРЫ В МЕМУАРНОЙ КОММУНИКАТИВНОЙ ПРАКТИКЕ

The article is devoted to the problem of studying Russian folk dialects based on the analysis of texts of the genre of “folk memoirs”. The problems of generational dialogue in the aspect of linguistic and cultural differences that create communication barriers are discussed. The disappearance of folk dialects entails the disappearance of a whole layer of folk traditional culture. Recordings of memories of representatives of older generations, latent speakers of the dialect, allow preserving and transmitting to descendants the elements of culture contained in the images of the Russian word. The article analyses the features of the inclusion of dialect material in the memoirs of village-born, but educated people who demonstrate the linguistic self-reflection of speakers of two language codes — literary and dialect.

Aleksei Petersoni roll vepslaste ja udmurtide rahvuslikus taassünnis (1980.–1990. aastad)

Estonian ethnographers have always taken a keen interest in Finno-Ugric peoples, their linguistic kin. The golden age of Finno-Ugric studies in Estonian ethnography began in the 1960s and lasted until the early 1990s. The State Ethnographic Museum of the Estonian SSR in Tartu (the current Estonian National Museum) emerged as the center of Finno-Ugric research with its long-term director Aleksei Peterson at the helm of the enterprise. Estonian ethnographers visited almost all Finno-Ugric peoples, with the major focus given to the Veps in the 1960s and 1970s, and to the Udmurts, in the 1980s. The museum acquired an awe-inspiring number of ethnographic objects, descriptions, photographs, drawings and films. Did all this benefit the peoples visited? What was the relationship of Estonian ethnographers with the subjects of their research? Did their plight affect Estonian scholars? The Estonian ethnographers had a high regard for the ethnic particularities, languages and traditional folk cultures of the kindred peoples and resisted their disappearance. Their views contradicted the Soviet nationalities policy which until the mid-1980s, emphasized the convergence and assimilation of nations. The interaction between the Estonian ethnographers and the Veps and Udmurts during the long series of expeditions helped to stimulate the suppressed and weak ethnic self-esteem of the latter. The mid-1980s marked the beginning of the era of Gorbachev’s glasnost and perestroika. As a result, national issues could be discussed openly, and it was at that time that the national revival of the Veps and Udmurts began. Estonian ethnologists embraced the process and actively contributed to it. This is especially true of Peterson, who was quite well known in Vepsia and Udmurtia and had a certain authority there. In his speeches at various events and in the press, Peterson encouraged the use of Veps and Udmurt in public life, including the schools. He emphasized the need to place a greater emphasis on traditional folk culture, which he considered to be critical to the national identity of small nations. His ideas influenced the creation of the open-air museum of the Udmurts. He supported the territorial autonomy of the Veps. He could speak as a messenger of perestroika whose word had weight. Thus Veps and Udmurt activists and nationally-minded ordinary people received inspiration and moral support from Peterson (and other Estonian ethnographers) for the preservation of their mother tongue, national identity and cultural heritage.

Beautiful and Useful: Life and Existence in the Ukrainians’ Traditional Folk Culture (Reflections Apropos of the Book Rostislav Rybalchenko and His Rural World)

The specific character of unification of taditional folk culture of utilitarianism and aestheticism in the worldview and everyday life of people, indivisibility of life and existence, perceived well by Rostyslav Rybalchenko (1932 – 2019), the outstanding local historian of Slobozhanshchyna, creator of his own skansen and author of a number of books with the detailed description of material world of rural people of Ukraine in the 20th century, are analyzed in the article. Pragmatic and aesthetic unity of rural everyday tasks is described on the specific examples from the book Rostyslav Rybalchenko and His Rural World. For example, white-washing in a Ukrainian house even in the second half of the 20th century has been not only a forced sanitary-hygienic procedure but also a sacral action with a spiritual context. It has been done at least three times a year: before the Feast Day of the Protection of the Mother of God, Christmas and Easter. In such a way the routine task has become the festive one as a holiday starts psychologically not on the very day of the holiday but from the preparation for it. Besides, tidiness inside the house is not only useful, but also beautiful from the aesthetic point of view. Moreover, it has been filled with religious sense and become the equivalent of the Christian’s state of soul before celebrating-commemorating the most significant evangelical events. In the 1950s it has been easy to do the white-washing because there is little furniture in the houses. According to Rybalchenko’s accurate observation, “the fact that the chamber is not cluttered” has also the following sense: “<…> nothing superfluous can press the consciousness, nothing steals the space”, which is usually scarce as poor people’s houses are rather small. The house is the mirror of the soul, which should not be cluttered. The yard, the orchard, the vegetable garden are all space signs which require a special sense in traditional folk culture of Ukrainians. According to R. Rybalchenko, in peasants’ opinion the homestead space has to be clean, tidy, beautiful as well as uncluttered not because otherwise neighbours would gossip but because of the inner necessity of the majority of the owners. Some attributes of the rural space and domestic equipment, the pragmatics of which is inseparable from the aesthetic component, especially those connected with water: the well, the beam, the anchor, etc., are also analyzed in the article.

Hungarian cultural and linguistic borrowings in the folk tradition of Burgenland Croats in Hungary and Slovakia

Abstract The work which forms the bulk of the present study was carried out on the basis of numerous pieces of field material collected by means of an ethnolinguistic questionnaire in villages inhabited by Burgenland Croats in Western Hungary and Southern Slovakia (where part of the Hungarian territory was annexed after World War II). The field data contain a number of latent and obvious borrowings from Hungarian folk culture. By latent borrowings we mean cultural phenomena that were initially feebly expressed in a particular tradition (and tended to be lost), but during long coexistence with a neighboring heterogeneous tradition they were eventually maintained due to the developed state of the similar phenomena in the neighboring population. We also include here cultural phenomena that are typical of both traditions and have deep roots in the universal model of the naive world view. Analyzing the popular culture and dialects of enclave villages of Burgenland Croats in Hungary and Slovakia, we show that traditional folk culture with the corresponding vocabulary nevertheless acts as an important marker of identity for the population living in a foreign language environment.

ЕТНОЛИНГВИСТИЧЕН ПОГЛЕД КЪМ ЛЕКСИКАТА НА ТРАДИЦИОННАТА НАРОДНА КУЛТУРА НА БЪЛГАРИТЕ МЮСЮЛМАНИ ОТ КСАНТИЙСКО/AN ETHNOLINGUISTIC VIEW OF THE LEXIS OF THE TRADITIONAL FOLK CULTURE OF THE MUSLIM BULGARIANS FROM XANTHI

The article examines individual fragments of the traditional folk culture and the corresponding dialect vocabulary of Muslim Bulgarians from Northern Greece, Xanthi, through the prism of ethnolinguistics. The author, who is a representative of the Moscow Ethnolinguistic School founded by academician N. I. Tolstoy, explores culture as an overall picture of the world in the unity of all its forms – verbal (dictionary and folk-lore texts), actional (rituals) and mental (beliefs). On the basis of expedition materials collected personally in 2018–2019, the author sketches the current cultural and linguistic situation in the region, which is characterized by multilingualism. Special attention is paid to the terminology belonging to the sphere of calendar customs and folk mythology. So far, the author has come to the conclusion that the analyzed customs and beliefs, as well as their vocabulary, are a multi-layered and multicultural phenomenon including archaic linguistic relics and Christian and Muslim representations and symbols, which interact with each other, creating the unique cultural mosaic of the Southern Rhodopes. Keywords: ethnolinguistics, dialect vocabulary, folk culture, Muslim Bulgarians, Northern Greece

Nomination of extramarital relations in the language of traditional folk culture (based on the material of Slavic languages and cultures in comparison with English)

Nomination of extramarital relations in the language of traditional folk culture (based on the material of Slavic languages and cultures in comparison with English)

“Dictionary-Encyclopedia” as a Type of Amateur Dialect Dictionary (Dictionary of Bakal Town Dialect by B. P. Plaksin)

A comprehensive description of one of the types of amateur dialect dictionaries, namely the “dictionary-encyclopedia”, is carried out. As a material for the analysis, a dictionary of the dialect of the Bakal town of the Chelyabinsk region, compiled by Boris Petrovich Plaksin (the volume of the dictionary is about 4000 words) was selected. The results of the analysis of the thematic, stylistic belonging of the vocabulary constituting the vocabulary of Plaksin’s dictionary are presented. It is shown that a significant part of the dictionary is made up of dialectal linguistic facts (as well as common and colloquial vocabulary and phraseology, which the author qualifies as local) of the thematic groups “Rural life”, “Economy”, “Human characteristics”, “Professional activities”, etc. It is emphasized that a vast layer of dialectal and national facts given in the dictionary is the vocabulary and phraseology of traditional folk culture, church terminology and vocabulary of the Old Believers, as well as designations of the realities of various historical eras. It is concluded that B. P. Plaksin chooses a strategy of value-historical selection of vocabulary and includes in his dictionary the vocabulary of various cultural and historical layers, focusing on the various sources available to him on Russian history, traditional rituals, historical facts, etc.

Understanding and Thinking of Contemporary Chinese Folk Art

Objectives: The development of computer technology has changed the way of traditional folk culture, which provides a positive impetus for the restoration of the whole folk culture. In order to protect and restore the folk fine arts culture in our country, the author analyzes the present situation of the development of folk art culture in our country, and then the author verifies the superiority of the Folk art culture restoration of computer technology, and the result shows that The construction of Folk art cultural works of computer technology can be more easily accepted by students. Therefore, computer technology can improve our national understanding of folk art and thinking. Research aimed to provide reference for the restoration of traditional culture in China.

Application and Analysis of Folk Culture in Huaihe River Basin in the Construction of Cultural Wall in Beautiful Countryside

Under the background of “rural revitalization strategy”, people have paid more attention to the application of folk culture to the construction of beautiful countryside cultural wall, deeply explored and excavated the folk cultural elements in Huaihe River Basin, and met the actual requirements of building a new socialist countryside. Combined with the excellent traditional folk culture in Huaihe River Basin, people explored the rich resources in Huaihe River Basin by excavating the folk culture with profound inside information. Applying folk art elements, such as flower drum lantern art, Sizhou opera, Lingbi bell jar painting, Fengyang phoenix painting, which are popular among the people, to the construction of folk culture wall in Huaihe River Basin can once again inspire folk culture and art in Huaihe River Basin and lay a solid foundation for the construction of rural charm culture wall.

USING THE ELEMENTS OF TRADITIONAL CULTURE IN THE TEACHING PROCESS FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF ETHNOPEDAGOGY AND ETHNOLOGY

Aim. The presented study aims to briefly present the possibilities of using and implementing elements of traditional culture in the teaching processat primary and secondary schools in Slovakia. It points out all the aspects and factors that enter the educational process when using these elements. Concept. Regional education is beingappliedin the educational environment of schools in order to develop the children with the right stimuli. The aim of including knowledge and partial topics of traditional folk culture in teaching is mainly to motivate students and arouse their interest in the cultural heritage of their ancestorsand country. We use comparative methods to clarify the relationships between ethnology, pedagogy, ethnopedagogy, and their interconnection in the pedagogical process. We define the primary goals of regional education, methods, and forms of teaching regional education, focusing on interactive forms of teaching. Results and conclusion. The values and the importance of traditional culture should be assessed in terms of the functions of education and training ina broader societal perspective.Regional education should make a significant contribution to the transmission of culture in education. The research results indicate the need to implement ethnopedagogy into the current educational process at all levels of education and scientifically verify its success. Research restrictions. The main research problems or limitations are related to the factthat this subdiscipline has not yet received attention in Slovakia. Originality. The paper presents an original view of ethnopedagogy and regional education issues through the lens of ethnology and pedagogy and defines key subjects of interest focusing on Slovak/Central European needs and contexts.

ORNAMENT AS A LANGUAGE OF CULTURE: TRADITION AND MODERNITY

The Kazakh folk art clearly reflected the distinctive features of the applied national culture. Its origins go far back centuries, and it is nourished by the same inexhaustible source of folk art, which gives rise to any kind of art. This long-standing and eternally young art is brought to life by various kinds of people's desire to figuratively reflect their aesthetic perception of reality. From generation to generation, unnamed artists passed on their rich experience, contributing to the formation of a national style, national artistic traditions, which determines the unique originality of any folk art. Traditional folk culture in the past is universal, defining and regulating all aspects of community life: lifestyle, forms of economic activity, customs, rituals, adaptation of social relations of community members and attitudes towards nature, the world, beliefs, beliefs, knowledge, language and folklore, in the traditional symbolic expression. In folk art, we most often think that decoration is the carrier of the main ideas of the artistic form and the basis of tradition. When adornments are most often used as fine adornments in professional art, they play a special role in traditional art, especially as a language. The ornament is directly called "specific folklore", which is extremely important for revealing its meaning. We will not consider the artistic and spiritual integrity of the decoration itself, because this is impossible in this article, so we will dwell only on some of its aspects. The research was carried out within the framework of the project of the Ministry of Education and Science of the Republic of Kazakhstan AR09259280 "Languages ​​of Kazakh culture as the basis of ethnic identity: semiotics and semantics".

Needles in the ritual of cattle-breeding magic of the Volyn inhabitants

Purpose: based on field ethnographic materials collected by the author, to describe the cattle-breeding rites associated with the use of needles (“strain milk on needles”, “cook a strainer with needles”) on the historical and ethnographic territory of Volyn, and to find out their regional peculiarity. Research methodology is based on the comparative historical and descriptive methods, principles of historicism and objectivity. The main material for this study was collected by the author during the field historical and ethnographic expeditions on the territory of Volyn using the pre-compiled thematic program questionnaire. Scientific novelty. For the first time, one of the important fragments of the spiritual culture of Volyn inhabitants has been substantially described in detail. The rite of “straining milk on needles” was considered in some professional scientific studies that deal with the traditional folk culture of the Slavs, so far in passing. Moreover, even sporadic mentions of it usually do not apply to Volyn as a historical and ethnographic region of Ukraine. The new archival sources put into scientific circulation will promote further study of demonological, calendar-household and cattle-breeding features of the folk culture of Ukrainians. Conclusions. A needle is the main object in the cattle-breeding magic of Volyn inhabitants, it helps not only to recognize a witch but to get rid of her harmful influence on cattle and milk. The rite of “straining milk on needles” (to cook a strainer with needles) was practiced on the territory of historical ethnographic Volyn everywhere. However, it was marked by a variety of options, which are more a consequence of the personification of respondents than a reflection of local specificity. The action with needles was rarely dedicated to one of the holidays of the folklore calendar; it was mostly an occasional phenomenon. The needle was in the past and is still the main object (sporadically, a sickle and a knife were also used), owing to which the Ukrainians of historical and ethnographic Volyn not only recognized the witch, but also made her vulnerable. The rite with needles, fire and a strainer gave the possibility to get rid of the harmful influence of the witch under some favourable circumstances. This process was quite painful for her, people believed that after the rite of staining milk on needles the witch should be burned and stabbed inside. Moreover, the witch (as an extremely unwanted guest) had every chance to feel the wrath of the man of the house - the owner of the injured cow and to suffer physically.

On the Industrialization of Folk Culture in Yimeng Area

Folk traditional culture is the soul of the development of a country and a nation. Yimeng has a long history and rich folk culture resources, which has long been famous in China. It is not only the need of Linyi's economic and social development under the new historical conditions, but also the need of the development of social and cultural undertakings to deeply excavate, study, collate and carry forward the unique and colorful Yimeng folk culture. It is of great significance to promote the overall progress of Yimeng culture, promote the coordinated development of the two cultures, improve the tourism investment environment and attract foreign investment, It is of great significance to establish the prominent position of Yimeng culture in the construction of Shandong Cultural Province.

THE SUCCESSION OF TRADITIONS: THE SNAKE IN THE BELIEFS AND CUSTOMS OF THE HUTSULS OF RAKHIV REGION (ACCORDING TO MATERIALS GATHERED IN THE FIELDS)

The article is based on the materials recorded by the author in Rakhiv district of the Zakarpattya region in 2017. It has been systematized and analyzes the beliefs and customs of residents regarding the actions against snakes. These records are compared with a regional, an all-Ukrainian, and an all-Slavic context. Observing an extreme prevalence of ancient beliefs and rituals associated with snakes, the author sees the reasons for the establishment of this tradition in the region first and foremost in connection to the people (even the residents of small urban settlements) who live here and in the previous centuries had been in constant contact with the local natural environment. At the same time, they used their natural resources for life (gardens, orchards, forests, mountains, meadows, etc.) and came across reptiles. Secondly, despite the modernization impacts in the Zakarpattya region, the traditional folk culture is preserved as a whole that is it is kept in the minds of the majority of the population (at least of middle-aged and older ages) calendar holidays stay relevant with their complex beliefs and rituals, archaic and pagan, but strictly adapted to Christian realities (a phenomenon of the so-called «folk Christianity»). The author draws attention to apotropaic magical actions and disallowance of specific actions during holidays (primarily Christmas, Annunciation, Exaltation holidays) aimed at avoiding contact with snakes and the use of purely physical factors (including the garlic smell) to scare away reptiles. The proper attention is also paid to the beliefs about the Queen of snakes (with a crown on her head) and the algorithm of actions of those who want to become rich. Folk conceptions of a «magic wand» that becomes as such if a person manages to save a frog from the jaws of a snake have also been analyzed. The article also throws light on a domestic adder snake – the «owner of a house» which in no case can be killed even if it sucks milk from a cow. The range of meanings of the image of a snake considering the folk dream interpretation tradition has also been given in the article.