YEFREMOVA, Liudmyla, compiler. Recordings of Folk Songs of Everyday Life Themes from Kharkiv Region in the Mid-20th Century (From the Archival Scientific Funds of Manuscripts and Audio-Recordings of M. Rylskyi Institute of Art Studies, Folkloristics and Ethnology of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine)

YEFREMOVA, Liudmyla, compiler. Recordings of Folk Songs of Everyday Life Themes from Kharkiv Region in the Mid-20th Century (From the Archival Scientific Funds of Manuscripts and Audio-Recordings of M. Rylskyi Institute of Art Studies, Folkloristics and Ethnology of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine)

Abstract

A huge amount of manuscript materials collected by the Institute’s research fellows and correspondents from various regions of Ukraine and abroad is preserved at the Archival Scientific Funds of Manuscripts and Audio-Recordings of M. Rylskyi Institute of Art Studies, Folkloristics and Ethnology of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine (ASFMAR IASFE). The recordings of folk songs with melodies, in particular, from the territory of Slobidska Ukraine and its heartland – the Kharkiv region – with its unique slow-type polyphony are of considerable scientific value.

The research fellows of the Institute and its historical predecessors, in particular the Cabinet of Musical Ethnography of All-Ukrainian Academy of Sciences prevail among the recorders. Klyment Kvitka, Mykhailo Haidai and Volodymyr Kharkiv are among them. Notations of Mykhailo Petrovych Haidai have been preserved at the ASFMAR from these unpublished recordings. These are folk songs recorded by individual singers from the northern districts of Kharkiv region, but, unfortunately, without full texts, but with numerous singing of the subtext syllables, which indicates a typical Slobozhanshchyna type of polyphony (Fund 8-3. Unit of Issue 200. Folios 21, 60).

Melodies and lyrics of songs on family and everyday topics have been recorded in 1929 by Volodymyr Kharkiv in the village of Kostiv of Valky (now it is Bohodukhiv) district of Kharkiv region (no. 1–3). It should be noted that the recordings had to be reconstructed from drafts. They have significant artistic and scientific value due to the close attention of the folklorist, in particular, to the dialectal features of the lyrics.

Records of folk lyrics and lyric-epic poetry from the territory of the Kharkiv region are also found in the archives of the Poltava folklorist Volodymyr Shchepotiev (Fund 6-4. Unit of Issue 115b. Folios 12 reverse – 13, no. 14), former researc fellows of the IASE O. Stiozhka (Fund 14-5. Unit of Issue 166. Folios 26 reverse, no. 8), R. Vereshchaha and P. Pavlii (Fund 936. Unit of Issue 236. Folios 29 [text]. Folios 269 [melodies]).

The largest number of folk songs with the original Slobozhanshchyna slow (protracted) polyphony have been recorded by the Doctor of Philology Ivan Berezovskyi (texts) and musicologist Andrii Omelchenko (melodies), which are still well remembered by the older generation of IASFE research fellows. In May 1973, folklorists have carried out an expedition to the settlements of the current Berestyn district of the Kharkiv region. On March 19, they have recorded several songs in the city of Krasnohrad (now it is the city of Berestyn) by a male duet accompanied by banduras (no. 4). On March 20, a round dance song “Pareniochok” (A Little Boy) (no. 5) has been recorded from a women’s group from the village of Berestovenka in the same district.

The next day, a recording session has taken place in the village of Mykolo-Komyshuvata. A series of lyrical songs in a slow style with word breaks in the text and replacing concatenation with the repetition of the last line of a three-segment stanza (no. 6, no. 7) has been recorded from a group of women. But the largest number of recordings has been made on the last day of the expedition from a group from the village of Lebedivka. They are characterized by a two-part slow-paced style with abundant chanting of the text’s syllables (no. 8–11), mostly six-segment stanzas.

Concluding, we’ll note that the value of the recordings lies in recording the state of folk song heritage in the region in the middle of the last century, which represent a unique type of slow polyphony of the Slobozhanshchyna region.

Keywords

archival recordings, folk songs of everyday life themes, Slobozhanshchyna, extended polyphony.