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chapter 4 Ethnologists and the Politics of Folklore Festivals 93 In the later part of July each summer, the streets of Zagreb fill with hundreds of colorfully clad celebrants. Everywhere you turn on the public squares, in parks, sometimes even on streetcars, bright embroidery on stiff linen meets the eye and the rich tones of peasant song are heard. The residents of Zagreb tend to think of themselves as an urbane and cosmopolitan lot, but during the Međunarodna Smotra Folklora (International Folklore Festival) Zagreb belongs to the villagers . The quiet of the baroque-era streets of Zagreb’s old upper city is routinely shattered by a folk bagpiper or by the voices of apple-cheeked peasant women singing in an ancient mode. Groups of peasants from all over Croatia, from the other former Yugoslav republics, and from various European and overseas countries perform the folksongs and dances of their native villages. For many years, the smotra’s guidelines allowed only certain groups to participate , all of whom were pre-screened by experts to assure that only “authentic” lore be performed by “authentic” villagers. No urban revivalists were supposed to participate. Only villagers who performed the traditions of their own immediate region were to be included. In addition to the songs and dances, most groups still also perform instrumental music. There are various wooden flutes, one-stringed gusle, and bagpipes, but perhaps the most frequent instruments are the tambure. Tamburitza ensembles have come from Slavonia, Posavina, Brochure from the 1978 International Folklore Festival. (Richard March Collection) Medjimurje, indeed from most of inland Croatia from Bela Krajina in Slovenia and Bačka and Banat in Vojvodina. There have been samica players from Banija, Lika, Kordun, and Slavonia, šargijaši from Bosnia, and players of the ćitelija and šarkija from Kosova. The Zagreb smotra and smaller regional festivals continue to be very important events in the tamburitza tradition. In fact, folklore groups are one of the most common contexts in which tambure are played. Nearly every larger town in Croatia features a smotra at some time, usually during the warmer months of the year. These authentic folklore festivals and the performances of the participating groups differ markedly from the concerts of tamburitza orchestras and from the jam sessions and shows staged by small tamburitza music groups. The folklore groups comprise yet another distinct facet of the tamburitza tradition, a facet based on different aesthetics, different creative roles, and different musical and political ideas. Croatian ethnology scholars had a key role in the development of this component of the tamburitza tradition, in a conceptual, political, and practical hands-on manner. Authentic folklore groups, smotre, and the field of ethnology developed hand in hand in Croatia. Antun Radić, the founder of ethnology in Croatia, began his efforts just before the turn of the twentieth century. He developed an ideology that placed a high value on the traditional peasant way of life, including the artistic creations of their societies. His goal was to instigate the documentation of the totality of the village-specific peasant life in all villages. By the 1930s, ethnologists who followed Radić were advocating not only the documentation but also the continuation in active practice of that traditional peasant way of life (Sremac 1978, 102–4). Unlike the Gaj ideology, which sought to “ennoble” folklore through adopting elite conventions and aesthetics, the ethnological ideology sought to preserve what was understood as the original peasant ways, in every detail. The ethnologists’ concept often falls back on the term “izvorni folklor.” Though I translate it as “authentic folklore,” the word “izvor” means wellsprings in Croatian. By analogy then, “wellsprings folklore” implies a pure, unadulterated product, swelling from peasant culture like natural spring water. If it is as worthy and valuable as pure spring water, it must be guarded constantly against pollution, even from Ethnologists and the Politics of Folklore Festivals 95 so-called ennobling efforts, which might spoil the folklore and render it impure. This idea could not have gained acceptance without the development of the field of ethnology. Not only was it ethnologists who espoused the idea, but the data from their work; the documented inventory of peasant culture was needed to establish the canon of that authentic folklore to which the ethnologists would exhort villagers to adhere (Radić 1897, 1–88). Before World War I, ethnologists had exerted little influence upon the tamburitza tradition. A tradition of playing tambure had been established throughout most of inland Croatia, in sections of Serbia and...

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