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The Tamburitza Tradition is a study of a folk music idiom that has evolved in the context of a cultural and political movement to affirm the national identity and to validate the cultural autonomy and worth of South Slavic peoples, particularly Croatians. The musical tradition is practiced in its original homeland and in Croatian and Serbian ethnic communities around the world. The tamburitza tradition has been a self-conscious expression of national heritage for more than 150 years, and perhaps coincidentally, the efforts of the scholars who established the discipline of folklore studies also occurred during the same historical period. My scholarship for this study was shaped and informed by my graduate training in the Folklore Institute at Indiana University and especially by my thesis adviser Richard M. Dorson. I began graduate school in 1973 and completed my dissertation in 1983; the scholarly trends that were current at that time in the field of folklore and related disciplines were influential on this work. In updating the work for publication, I had the good fortune to have the assistance of the ethnomusicologist Naila Ceribašić of the Institut za etnologiju i folkloristiku in Zagreb, Croatia, a specialist in closely related topics, who critiqued my work and acquainted me with newer scholarship on the subject matter. General Orientation and Methodology Richard Dorson’s works shaped my basic concept of folklore itself and of how to do the historically oriented aspect of this study: Richard M. Dorson, “Folklore ,” in American Folklore and the Historian, ed. Richard M. Dorson (Chicago, 1971); and Richard M. Dorson, “Concepts of Folklore and Folklife Studies,” in Folklore and Folklife, ed. Richard M. Dorson (Chicago, 1972). Moreover, my Essay on Sources 279 fieldwork for this study began in team research efforts directed by Dr. Dorson in the Calumet Region of northern Indiana from 1975 to 1977. Dorson’s Land of the Millrats (Cambridge, MA, 1981) is a compendium of results from that team research effort. I derived notions of how folklore functions in a culture and society from such works as: William Bascom, “Four Functions of Folklore,” in The Study of Folklore, ed. Alan Dundes (Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1965); Warren L. d’Azevedo, ed., The Traditional Artist in African Society (Bloomington, IN, 1973); and Linda Degh, Folktales and Society: Storytelling in a Hungarian Peasant Community (Bloomington, IN, 1969). The practice of studying folklore in its performance context began as an innovative approach in the early 1970s. The writings of the performanceoriented scholars influenced my approach to field research. A few influential articles were: Dan Ben-Amos, “Toward a Definition of Folklore in Context,” Journal of American Folklore 84 (1971); Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, “A Parable in Context,” and Dell Hymes, “Breakthrough into Performance,” both in Folklore: Performance and Communication, ed. Kenneth Goldstein and Dan Ben-Amos (The Hague, 1975); and Richard Bauman, “Verbal Art as Performance ,” American Anthropologist 77 (1975). Henry Glassie was another professor whose seminars were crucial to my graduate training. Aside from challenging me to study the theoretical works of scholars like Jean Piaget, Kenneth Burke, Noam Chomsky, Del Hymes, Erving Goffman, and Clifford Geertz, the conceptual aspects of his own works influenced this study: Henry Glassie, Folk Housing in Middle Virginia: A Structural Analysis of Historic Artifacts (Knoxville, 1975); and Henry Glassie, Passing the Time in Ballymenome: Culture and History of an Ulster Community (Philadelphia , 1982). I had the opportunity to conduct field and library research in 1977–78, based at the Institut za etnologiju i folkloristiku in Zagreb, Croatia. The institute’s scholarswereinvaluabletofurtheringmyeducationandhelpingshapethiswork. Maja Bošković-Stulli and especially Dunja Rihtman-Auguštin acquainted me with their own and other European scholars’ work on folklore, especially on the issue of folklorism or “second-existence” folklore: Maja Bošković-Stulli, “O folklorizmu,” Zbornik za narodni život i običaje 45 (1971); Maja Bošković-Stulli, “O pojmovima usmena i pučka književnost i njihovim nazivima,” Umjetnost riječi 17 (1973); Dunja Rihtman-Auguštin, “Pretpostavke suvremenog etnološkog iztrazivanja,” Narodna umjetnost 15 (1976); and Dunja Rihtman-Auguštin, “Folklor, folklorizam i suvremena publika,” Etnološka tribina 7–8 (1978). They encouraged me to read the works of German scholars like Hans Moser and Hermann Bausinger: Hans Moser, “Vom Folklorismus in unserer Zeit,” 280 Essay on Sources Zeitschrift fur Volkskunde 58 (1962); Hermann Bausinger, Formen der Volkspoesie (Berlin: 1961); Hermann Bausinger “Zur Kritik der Folklorismus–Kritik,” Populus revisus (1966); Hermann Bausinger, “Folklorismus in Europa (Eine Umfrage),” Zeitschrift fur Volkskunde 65 (1969). General History Sources The politics...

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