Vocal Tradition of The Serbs in Upper Ba

Музикологија 20 – 2016 Musicology
Јелена Јовановић / Jelena Jovanović

ПЕВАЧКО НАСЛЕЂЕ СРБА У ГОРЊЕМ БАНAТУ
У РУМУНИЈИ: СВЕДОЧАНСТВА НА ИСТЕКУ XX
ВЕКА / VOCAL TRADITION OF SERBS IN UPPER
BANAT IN ROMANIA:TESTIMONIES AT THE END OF
THE 20thCENTURY
Београд – Темишвар: Музиколошки институт САНУ – Савез
Срба у Румунији / Belgrade – Timişoara: Institute of Musicology,
Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts – Union of Serbs in
Romania, 2015
Turbulent historical turmoil during the 19th and 20th centuries

has caused frequent shifting of the interior borders within the
geographical and historical region of Banat. After the First World
War this huge multiethnic and multicultural region of the Austro-
Hungarian Empire was inally politically divided between Serbia,
Romania and Hungary which directly inluenced the establishment
of the minority or majority social and political status of the
many ethnicities who had lived there for centuries. Similar to the
Romanians in Serbia, the Serbian population in Romania thus
became a minority. This fact had a direct impact on their traditional
culture and relationship towards their vocal heritage. The book Vocal
tradition of Serbs in Upper Banat in Romania: Testimonies at the
end of the 20thcentury by the ethnomusicologist Jelena Jovanović
comprehensively and carefully tries to present to the wider public not
only the huge richness and variety of many particular songs of the
Serbs from the northern Banat in Romania, the so-called Upper Banat
(a total of 92 musical transcriptions are enclosed in this publication),
but also to analyse and explain the variety of processes which have
inluenced its heterogeneity.
The exploration of the vocal tradition of the Serbs in Upper
Banat has been based on Jelena Jovanović’s ield research in this area
undertaken in 1993, 1996 and 1997. The immediate reason for starting
this devoted ieldwork was the exceptional manuscript collection
of traditional songs of the Serbs in Romania made by the musical
theoretician, conductor and composer, Sava Ilić (1935–1989). This
material was given to the Institute of Musicology of the Serbian
Academy of Sciences and Arts in 1991 and more than a decade later
was prepared for print by Jelena Jovanović. (This collection, which
was printed in 2006 under the title Musical heritage of Serbs, Šokci
and Karaševci, contains in total 555 musical notations as well as a
scholarly Introduction in Serbian, Romanian and English). In her
master’s thesis, that she successfully defended in 2001, Jovanović
228
Reviews Прикази
used analytical indings from Ilić’s inscriptions and networked these

with her own ield research indings on the vocal tradition of the
Serbs in Romania. This comprehensive and scientiically grounded
study has been inally made available to the wider public through
this publication thanks to the inancial support of two ministries:
the Serbian Ministry of Education, Science and Technological
Development and the Romanian Department for Interethnic
Relations of the Government of Romania. Consistently to its theme
and research subject, this book has two publishers: the Musicological
Institute of the Serbian Academy of Science and Arts, where Jelena
Jovanović has worked from the early 1990s, and the Union of the
Serbs in Romania, who enabled this publication to appear in a hard
backed version.
Starting from available historical sources such as song-books,
both in manuscript and print, consulting relevant ethnomusicologi-
cal, ethnological, historical, linguistic and sociological literature ded-
icated to the wide area of Central Europe and nowadays Vojvodina
and analysing her own ield research experience and post-ield ex-
plorations, the author carefully and meticulously builds her scientiic
narrative, that is at the same time in a readable and appealing writing
style. She points out the importance and relevance of the inluences
of the central and western European cultural models to the (re)shap-
ing of the rural culture of the Serbs of this part of the Austro-Hun-
garian Empire during the 19th century. The cultural trends in this pe-
riod and later on, as Jelena Jovanović notes, were under the strong
impact of wider social movements which led to the shattering of old
social patterns and to the establishment of the city culture based on
instigating public events such as concerts of newly founded choral
societies, balls and theatre performances. This inevitable shift of the
prevailing cultural model, which irst developed in Timișoara as the
leading cultural center in this part of Banat and then spread into the
surrounding villages, caused transformation in the vocal practice of
the inhabitants. That is the main reason why Jelena Jovanović de-
votes the irst part of her book to the historical and contextual dimen-
sions of traditional singing, and divides it into chapters and subchap-
ters focused on the particularities of the cultural circumstances in
Timișoara, and, subsequently, those in villages. Her ield research in-
cluded both the city of Timișoara and three major groups of villages
situated in regions northwest, southwest, and east from this town;
inally, she decided to focus her attention on nine villages situated in
the north western region: Variaş, Sânnicolau Mare, Sâmpetru Mare,
Gelu, Mănăştur, Satu Mare, Saravale, Felnac and Cenad.
The impact of the city culture and “western“ cultural aesthet-
ics were most evident in the singing events during village rituals and
229
Музикологија 20 – 2016 Musicology
customs connected with the annual and life cycles. Contrary to the
primary ethnomusicological expectation which preceded the author’s
ield research, ritual forms of the vocal tradition of the Serbs in Upper
Banat at the end of the 20th century were saved only sporadically and
fragmentarily in the memories of the oldest singers. It could be said
that they were replaced by various songs of different origins. During
the 19th and early decades of the 20th centuries, changes in the indig-
enous vocal tradition appeared not only in the repertoire, but also
in the melo-poetic structure and form of the songs, as well as in the
singing style. The central ethnomusicological chapter of this book
is devoted to the identiication and careful and systematic analytical
exploration of all of the poetic and musical parameters of both the
songs published in Sava Ilić’s collection and those collected during
ieldwork. The author’s paradigmatic conclusions relate to the ver-
siication, tonal structure, ways of cadencing melo-poetic phrases,
metrical-rhythmical organisation, melo-poetic form and speciicity
of vocal performing. In all of those parameters Jelena Jovanović rec-
ognises ambivalent characteristics: those which primarily originate
from the archaic rural tradition and those connected to urban cultural
aesthetics.
Considering the songs’ versiication, those based on one or two
verses as well as multi-verse forms could be linked with the indig-
enous Serb vocal tradition. On the other hand, the poetic structures
of the songs of city origin are based on stanzas and rhymed verses
of different length. A large group of songs are based on indigenous
South-Slav and Balkan tonal bases, while at the same time it could
be said that a vast group of songs has deined classical European to-
nality. Along with monothematic form (such is, for example, A, Av,
Avv), bithematic forms of AB type can be considered not only as the
most frequent, but also indigenous, while newer songs of city origin
often have polythematic forms of mutually contrasting parts (for ex-
ample, AABC, ABA1C, ABBCCv etc.). In the songs based on indig-
enous South-Slav (Balkan) tonal base, cadences always gravitate to
the so-called second degree of the basic scale which can be diatonic
or chromatic. On the other hand, for the melodies in classical tonali-
ties cadences in most cases are linked to the tones of tonic function.
The metric-rhythmical organization is, contrary to other musical pa-
rameters, equal both in rural and city songs: it could be based both in
distributional rhythm and rubato; while 2/4 is very common and the
most frequent, three-part meter can appear in the songs of the Central
European origin. As is the case in other parts of the region, the so-
called aksak rhythm of uneven beats is extremely rare for the vocal
tradition of the Serbs in Upper Banat and could be considered as the
inluence of Romanian folklore. All of those paradigmatic features of
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Reviews Прикази
rural and/or city vocal idioms can appear separately, but also can be
interlinked in a particular song.
Vocal performance can be both solo or in a group. In her
devoted and careful observation of the performance style of the many
individuals with whom she worked “in the ield”, the author notes
the prevailing inluences of urban musical culture. While aesthetical
aspiration to dynamic and agogic shading could be noted in the
individual singing, in two-part or multi-part performances a tendency
toward uniformity prevails even though this was seldom reached.
Taking into account all the criteria that were considered which
include both contextual and textual aspects of the vocal tradition
that she observed, Jelena Jovanović pointed out that in the musical
tradition of the Serbs in Upper Banat during the 20th century two
aesthetic criteria interlink: one originating from the indigenous
rural cultural heritage, and the other penetrating from the urban
cultural settings of the Central European cities. Considering the fact
that most of the singers that Jovanović interviewed are not among
us anymore and that singing in choirs is not so popular among
the current younger generations, it could be said that this book is
a very signiicant, scholarly based testimony that comprehensively
covers the cultural heritage of the Serbs in Upper Banat in Romania.
The music transcriptions of the songs collected are of particular
signiicance because they can be used for their further preservation
and transmission.
Last, but not least, this book has comprehensive summaries in
Serbian, Romanian and English, which increases its signiicance both
in scholarly circles and among interested readers. Finally, thanks to
the publishers, 16 vivid colour photos of singers are also included as
a form of testimony of their early village life.
Selena Rakočević
231

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Музикологија 20 – 2016 Musicology

Јелена Јовановић / Jelena Jovanović

Turbulent historical turmoil during the 19th and 20th centuries

used analytical indings from Ilić’s inscriptions and networked these

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