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chapter 9 Tamburitza Orchestras 226 As an “uplifted” form of peasant culture, the large tamburitza orchestras are the most direct descendants of the musical ideas of Ljudevit Gaj and the Illyrian movement. When I did my field research in the 1970s, tamburitza orchestral ensembles were most numerous in Croatia while Subotica in Vojvodina and Ruma in northern Serbia had important orchestras. The sphere of large tamburitza orchestrasincludesprofessionalorchestras,schoolorchestras,andadult as well as youth amateur tamburitza societies. Professional tamburitza orchestras have been a component of the musical staff of government-sponsored radio and television stations. In Vojvodina and Bosnia, respectively, Radio-Televizija (RTV) Novi Sad and RTV Sarajevo maintained such orchestras. The strongest such ensemble was established in Croatia in 1941 at RTV Zagreb, now called Hrvatska Radio-Televizija (HRT). Many of the tambura musicians also played other instruments in popular or classical ensembles. They rehearsed and performed pieces for broadcast as the featured attraction, as on Radio Zagreb’s longtime Friday morning broadcast Sitne žice tamburica, or to accompany vocalists, generally professional popular or operatic singers. Such singers required the accompaniment of an orchestra for radio broadcasts, on recordings or at live performances, whichhavebeenheldsincethe1960sinvariouscitiesandtownsaround the country. Today, most festival performers are the best-known urban popular recording artists. At the festivals they debut performances of compositions by songwriters who endeavor to compose new popular songs using elements of the host location’s regional folk music. Those festivals in regions where the tamburitza is common regularly call upon atamburitzaorchestratoaccompanythesingers.Forexample,theHRT tamburitza orchestra has performed at festivals in Krapina, Slavonska Požega, Slavonski Brod, and Zagreb (Njikos 1978). In Novi Sad and Sarajevo the majority of the musicians in the radio orchestras were of Romani ethnicity. Many of them began to play as aural musicians who became musically literate through working in the orchestra. As mentioned earlier, in addition to their full-time orchestra jobs, many of the Romani musicians play in smaller ensembles at taverns or restaurants (ibid.). In Zagreb, in addition to the HRT orchestra, the national folk dance ensemble Lado employs an orchestra of about fifteen musicians to accompany the dancing-singing troupe. Although the Lado musicians play several types of Croatian traditional instruments, tambure are most frequent in their performances. Božo Potočnik, born in Zagreb in 1932, served as the ensemble’s director for more than thirty years beginning in 1955. Božo Potočnik is an important composer of the core repertoire of Lado (suites of folk songs and dance tunes in a style that remains close to the village original). His music has been popularized throughtheperformancesandrecordingsofLado.Amateurgroupsboth in Europe and America have long been performing Lado-originated music and dance routines. The spread of Lado material has been aided by former Lado dancers and musicians who teach school orchestras or local amateur cultural and artistic societies (KUDs). Though numerically few, the professional orchestral tamburaši have played an influential role. Many of the directors of the prominent orchestras also tend to be composers and arrangers of the music. Their compositions have been published and the sheet music distributed by the Prosvjetni Sabor Hrvatske (Department of Education of Croatia). Orchestras throughout former Yugoslavia and, to some extent, junior orchestras in North America, use these orchestral arrangements. A few of the most important composer/arrangers are Julije Njikoš, Sava Vukosavljev, Željko Bradić, Siniša Leopold, and Božo Potočnik. Tamburitza Orchestras 227 Julije Njikoš (Osijek, 1924—Zagreb, 2010) began to play as a young memberofthegraphicsworkers’amateurtamburitzaorchestraTipograf (typographer). He became the director of the tamburitza orchestra in KUD Kraš and, in 1951, the director of the Radio Osijek tamburitza orchestra. He was an initiator and the first conductor of the Pajo Kolarić tamburitza orchestra, a still-active amateur group. In 1961 he was a founder and a driving force behind the ongoing Međunarodni festival hrvatske tamburaške glazbe (International Festival of Tamburitza Music) held annually in Osijek. In the mid-1960s Njikoš and his wife, Vera Svoboda, a renowned singer, began a decades-long career of producing recordings of Slavonian and other Croatian folk songs on Jugoton Records (later Croatia Records). Some of the songs were arranged by Njikoš himself, and he directed the accompanying orchestra. Njikoš proved to be one of the most prolific composers for tamburitza orchestra. He gained a deep knowledge of the music of Slavonian villagers, and as a result his compositions draw upon and remain close to the spirit of folk music. The titles of his compositions such as...

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