TITLE:
Forerunners and Pioneers: Research of Traditional Rural Singing in North Macedonia from 1861 till 1967
AUTHORS:
Jakša Primorac
KEYWORDS:
Traditional Rural Singing, North Macedonia, Late Ottoman Period, Interwar Period, Early Socialist Period
JOURNAL NAME:
Advances in Historical Studies,
Vol.13 No.3,
September
14,
2024
ABSTRACT: From the very beginnings of music collecting by aural transcriptions during the Ottoman rule in 1890s until 1967, when a generational shift opened a new phase of study in Yugoslav Macedonia, traditional rural singing was the main topic of research for music collectors and professional ethnomusicologists in North Macedonia. Its specific melody structures and performance contexts made it a strong marker of ethnic Macedonian identity. From 1890s until the Ottoman retreat in 1912, there were only a few music-collecting fieldworks conducted and several short note collections were published. In the interwar period, Serbian and Bulgarian ethnomusicologists conducted most of the research in North Macedonia. Aural transcribing and publishing of note collections was much more intensive than in the Ottoman times. Research was mostly focused on analyses of melody structures. Also, there was a discourse about high aesthetic value of traditional North Macedonian songs. After the Second World War, ethnomusicology rapidly developed in Yugoslav Macedonia. The Institute for Folklore in Skopje was founded in 1950. Two pioneers of North Macedonian ethnomusicology, Živko Firfov and Vasil Hadžimanov, made the first fieldwork expeditions and established the systematic research of traditional rural singing. They intensively promoted North Macedonian music on the Yugoslav and world ethnomusicological scene.