Abstract:
The author describes her experience of creating a geographic atlas of folk melodies (song forms) of Ukrainians and neighbouring ethnic groups, published in 2020. More than 130 maps included in the atlas reveal a commonality of musical thinking in songs used in the rituals connected with the annual agricultural cycle and with mar- riage rites. This type of thinking links the Ukrainian, Belorussian and Polish people, at the same time separating their geographic region from the Russian folk culture. The Ukrainian name for the scientific discipline dealing with mapping musical forms is “melogeography” (a concept defined by Volodymyr Hoshovsky in 1971). At the dawn of typological studies, Filaret Kolessa described the emerging approach as “musical archaeology” (1925). The methodological basis for creating melogeographic maps is the rhythmic-typological method of classifying folk melodies which has been consistently developed in Ukrainian ethnomusicology since the beginning of the 20th century (the article presents a short overview of the emergence of struc- tural and cartographic approaches in East Slavonic science). These methods did not gain popularity in Polish ethnomusicology (though they prove useful in Polish ethnology), therefore the author covers the following issues: methodological and practical challenges in mapping musical phenomena (what mapping is for, what type of reflection and knowledge it develops); types of phenomena mapped and motivations behind their choice; types of sources used; crucial problems during field studies and their impact on mapping; role of musical analysis and transcription in mapping (whether these tools remain essential).
