Making Music in the Polish Tatras: Tourists, Ethnographers, and Mountain Musicians

2 Making History

2 Making History Ja myśle ˛, że dla nas generalnie , muzycznie bliżsi sa ˛ Słowacy. Słowacy sa ˛ bardziej bliżsi niż polskie regiony leża ˛ce na północ od Podhala. No na przykład z Liptowem , zaraz po drugiej stronie Tatr mamy przynajmniej pie ˛tnaście wspólnych melodii. Ja jestem, moje serce jest . . . , generalnie mnie zawsze cia ˛gne ˛ło na południe, na tamta ˛ strone ˛, zawsze to robiło na mnie wrażenie, czy jak słucha- łem rumuńskiej muzyki, czy mołdawskiej , czy ukraińskiej czy huculskiej, czy Słowaków słucha- łem czy We ˛grów—to zawsze mnie cia ˛gne ˛ło w tamta ˛ strone ˛. Nie wiem dlaczego. I think that for us generally the Slovaks are musically the closest . Slovaks are much closer than are the Polish regions lying on the northern side of Podhale. Well, for example, with Liptów, immediately on the other side of the Tatras we have at least fifteen common melodies. I am, my heart is . . . , generally always pulled to the south. On that side, it always impressed me, or when I heard Romanian music, or Moldavian, or Ukrainian or Hucuł,1 or listened to Slovaks or Hungarians— that always pulled me to that side. I don’t know why. [ . . . ] Somewhere in the sub- Making History 59 [ . . . ] Gdzieś w podświadomos ́ci tkwi w góralach to, ze jednak nie jesteśmy już wszyscy czysto polskiego pochodzenia. Zreszta ˛ cala Polska nie jest czysto polska, bo Polska jest dla Europy jak “hall” gdzie sie ˛ wszyscy przechodza ˛, a Podhale szczególnie, przecież tutaj przyszli Rumuni— pasterze wołoscy, tu byli Niemcy blisko, różne narodowości sie ˛ przewijały, i Słowaków jest dużo i we ˛gierskie sa ˛ ślady. Tak wie ˛c w podświadomości górali było przekonanie , że oni 100 procentów Polakami nie byli, chociaż byli patriotami polskimi zawsze . . . —Jan Karpiel-Bułecka consciousness of Górale resides the idea that we are not of entirely pure Polish origins. After all, all of Poland is not pure Polish , because Poland is for Europe like a “hall” where everyone passes through, and especially Podhale. After all, here came Romanians —Wallachian2 shepherds, close to here were Germans, different nationalities came and went, and Slovaks are many and there are Hungarian traces. Yes, therefore in the subconsciousness of Górale was the conviction that they were not 100 percent Polish, although they were always Polish patriots . . . —Jan Karpiel-Bułecka3 One way or another people create the social realities and fictions that they inhabit. The popular notion that Poland is a relatively homogeneous nation-state results, at least in part, from ethnic genocides and expulsions during World War II, followed by a government policy and ideology of social integration after the war. The wartime genocide was real; the policy of social integration was legislated fiction that, over the years, did create a conceptual reality (Kenney 1997, 144).4 Yet, as Jan Karpiel-Bułecka suggests, in Podhale the myth of homogeneity meets challenges. The history and geography of Podhale make it a special case, however. In general, the borders of Poland have been indefensible and highly malleable (“Poland is like a ‘hall’ or corridor through which Europe passes,” to paraphrase Karpiel-Bułecka), but the alpine ridges of the Tatras form one of Poland’s few natural borders. Did this unique characteristic result in the inhospitable Tatras becoming a harbor for something essentially (genetically) Polish? Polish nationalism was in full flower during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries when Poland was still partitioned, an era when nationalisms throughout Europe tended to imagine that the essence of a nation resided in the folkways of presumably isolated peasants. The rugged mountaineers of Podhale have filled this role on occasion, bolstered by the most persistent ethnographic trope 60 Making Music in the Polish Tatras that Górale life-ways are the results of centuries of mountain isolation (for versions of the isolation trope, see Gutt-Mostowy 1998, 16; Ćwiżewicz and Ćwiżewicz 1995; Czekanowska 1990, 84; and Benet 1979 [1951], 130). Yet almost from the beginning of the ethnographic study of Podhale a more complex theory emerged that challenges the notion of isolation. My interpretation of Podhalan history begins with the premise that mountains are mysterious places. On the one hand, they form borders that divide; on...