Abstract:
Ethnomusicology and the movement to revitalize traditional music in Ukraine and Poland: comparative observations
Since the beginning of Russia’s military aggression against Ukraine, we have seen a growing interest in Ukrainian culture. During my long stay in Poland in 2022–2023, I found that there was a great interest in Ukrainian traditional songs, a desire to listen to them performed by Ukrainian ensembles, and to learn from Ukrainian singing instruc- tors. Cooperation in the scientific field as well as methodological and financial assistance used to preserve archives of audiovisual recordings of folklore is also measurable. The roots of cooperation between Ukrainians and Poles lie partly in the elements of common song heritage identified in the ethnomusicological maps clearly visible in the folklore of ritual songs of Ukraine and the eastern regions of Poland. The maps are included in the atlas that is part of my monograph (Iryna Klymenko. Ritual Melodies of Ukrainians in the Context of the Slavic-Baltic Early Traditional Melody Array: Typology and Geography. Kyiv, 2022 [in Ukrainian]).
In this article, I will briefly compare the trends that distinguish contemporary Ukrainian-Polish contacts in academic ethnomusicology and focus on a specific perspective, namely the cultural movement of folklore revitalization, which makes only limited use of academic research.
