BEYOND the EAST–WEST DIVIDE Balkan Music and Its Poles of Attraction
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BEYOND THE EAST–WEST DIVIDE Balkan music and its poles of attraction Edited by Ivana Medić and Katarina Tomašević Supported by the Ministry of Education, Science and Technological Development of the Republic of Serbia Project No. 177004: Serbian musical identities within local and global frameworks: traditions, changes, challenges BEYOND THE EAST-WEST DIVIDE Balkan music and its poles of attraction Edited by Ivana Medić and Katarina Tomašević Publishers Institute of Musicology, Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts (SASA) Department of Fine Arts and Music SASA Copy-editors: Ivana Medić and Jelena Janković-Beguš Technical editor: Ivana Medić Cover design: Dejan Medić Printed by: Sven d.o.o., Niš ISBN 978-86-80639-23-9 Institute of Musicology SASA Department of Fine Arts and Music Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts BEYOND THE EAST–WEST DIVIDE Balkan music and its poles of attraction Edited by Ivana Medić and Katarina Tomašević Belgrade, 2015 Cover image: An extract from A New Map of Turkey in Europe, Divided into its Provinces, from the Best Authorities by John Cary (1754–1835). Prepared in 1801. Source: John Cary, Cary's New Universal Atlas, containing distinct maps of all the principal states and kingdoms throughout the World. From the latest and best authorities extant. London: Printed for J. Cary, Engraver and Map-seller, No. 181, near Norfolk Street, Strand, 1808. TABLE OF CONTENTS Preface 7 Timothy Rice Musical practice and the experiential power of place 11 Danica Petrović Southeastern Europe through the centuries: paths of liturgical music 27 Ivan Moody Turning the compass 48 Jasmina Huber On the appropriation of Oriental music by the Sephardim in the western provinces of the Ottoman Empire 58 Katy Romanou The Greek community of Odessa and its role in the ‘Westernisation’ or ‘progress’ of Greek music 71 Melita Milin Images of Eastern Other in Serbian art music 82 Manolis Tseiragakis and Ioannis Tselikas Greek operetta between East and West: the case of Chalima 94 Ivana Vesić The role of Russian emigrants in the rise of popular culture and music in Belgrade between two world wars 103 Olga Otašević Musical life of Belgrade in the Russian language periodicals published by the first wave of Russian emigration 118 Sonja Zdravkova-Djeparoska The route Russia–Serbia–Macedonia: intercultural communications 135 Gergana Panova-Tekath On the ‘own’ and the ‘common’ and their representation: rethinking the Soviet model vis-à-vis Bulgarian professional folk choreography 152 Vesna Bajić-Stojiljković Links between the Moiseyev Dance Company and the Folk Dance Choreography production in Serbia 165 Valentina Sandu-Dediu Writing on music in postwar Romania: Soviet sources, nationalism, structuralism 186 Ana Petrov ‘A Representative of Western culture’, ‘a true Slavic artist’ or ‘a Yugoslav legend?’ Đorđe Marjanović between Yugoslavia and the USSR 195 Ivana Medić Zora D. and Isidora Ž. between East and West 207 Ivana Miladinović-Prica The background of Milimir Drašković’s communication with the cultural Other 222 Ersin Mihci The Gallipoli song: folk song and Turkish memorial culture 234 Dafni Tragaki Rebetiko cosmopolitanisms: questions for an ethnography of musical imagination 243 Iva Nenić World music in the Balkans and the politics of (un)belonging 259 Jelena Jovanović and Sanja Ranković Reception of Serbian traditional rural singing in ‘the West’, ‘the East’ and beyond: the experiences of neo-traditional ensembles from Belgrade 273 Contributors 286 PREFACE In its engagement with Balkan music, musicology has largely conformed to the dominant cultural historiographical model of a divide between ‘East’ and ‘West’. Marked by core binary concepts, under the spell initially of theories of modernity, and subsequently of critical theories that aimed to deconstruct these oppositions, musicology on Balkan music still remains within the confines of the ‘East-West’ paradigm. Theories such as Edward Said’s Orientalism and Maria Todorova’s Balkanism have served as key methodological tools in conceptualizing Balkan music and analysing the ways in which stereotypical and ideologically-charged images of ‘the West’ and ‘the East’ are reproduced in musical praxes. Powerful as they have been, analyses of the Balkans solely withreference to ‘East’ and ‘West’ surely do not do justice to the diversity of relationships that have shaped its variegated musical space, and have inevitably rendered a distorted image of its musical landscape. This book aims to contribute to a widening of our critical understanding of a historically and spatially diverse cultural network that embraces Balkan music, and therefore invites proposals for papers that challenge and/or move beyond the ‘East-West’ paradigm. An examination of a network that would not be restricted to the West-East perspective should lead to a richer and more complex understanding of the Balkans and its interconnectedness with other regions, such as the Mediterranean and Russia. By analysing these as well as other spheres of influences, we hope to reveal affinities that have rarely been explored, and will yield a richer understanding not only of Balkan music (‘art’, ‘traditional’ as well as ‘popular’) but also of music history in general. Contributions fall under the following subtopics: – Musical Relations between the Balkans and Russia Russia has acted as an influencing agent on the Balkans over several centuries and ties between these two regions were often highly charged politically. Importantly, Moscow was perceived as the ‘Third Rome’ by the Orthodox Balkans, while the Russian Empire was deeply involved in matters of the so-called ‘Eastern Question’. The great influx of Russian émigrés following the Russian revolution played a significant role in shaping the Balkan cultural elite. Last but not least, the Russian national school and the Soviet model of socialist realism had a profound impact on Balkan music over the last two centuries. – Interactions with the Mediterranean Both the Balkans and the Mediterranean figure more as imaginary cultural spaces than firm geographical entities. Yet the way these spaces correlate musically has barely been explored. How did the culture of the Mediterranean, with its shifting %7 empires and perpetual migrations, engage with the Balkans musically? What could be learned, for example, by exploring the great hub of Constantinople, which has been perceived both as a gateway to the Balkans and a symbol of the Eastern Mediterranean? Could a scrutiny of Balkan music’s interaction with Mediterranean music enrich our understanding of musical life of the broader area of South Eastern Europe? Jasmina Huber writes about the musical physiognomy of melodies that belong to the Sephardic vocal (liturgical and paraliturgical) heritage in the western Balkans. The author shows that the Jewish musical tradition in the Balkans was a symbiosis of Hebrew poetry and oriental(ised) melodies. Valentina Sandu-Dediu has contributed a very interesting, introspective and often self-deprecatory account on the past and present state of Romanian musicology, the discipline that has long been torn between shifting ideologies, the Riemann- inspired grandiose ambitions of music historians who singlehandedly wrote monumental but often error-laden books, and the long-standing focus on domestic output, caused both by ideological restrictions, language barrier and the fact of external i.e. foreign interest in Romanian music. The author concludes that the history of Romanian music must be rewritten from next prespectives, but also warns that a compromise must be reached between two opposing extremes - the unscrupulous political engagement on the one hand (which has influenced the boys written in communist times) and avoidance of any ideological involvement the other (which has been a recent tendency). Ivana Miladinović-Prica writes about Milimir Drašković who, in the later phase of his career, Drašković, seemingly surprisinglu, turned towards Byzantine heritage and Serbian orthodox church chants of the Octoechos as a source of inspiration and combined it with his already established avantgarde procedures, but also with popular music genres such as rock and jazz. Drašković and Miloš Petrović held workshops titled Byzantium and Today in Germany, where they brought the experiences of the cultural “Other” to German audiences, but also deliberately “invented” tradition in accordance with their artistic goals. Iva Nenić addresses the dichotomy of the East-West and its ideological implications using the example of the slowly expanding world music scene in the former Yugoslav region and, more specifically, with the specific (re)interpretation of the sevdalinka genre of popular folk song, as interpreted by the young Bosnian singer Damir Imamović, an heir to a well-known Bosnian musical “dynasty”, and his Sevdah Takht band. The author discusses the origins and development of the sevdalinka genre, its “politically correct” interpretations in the socialist Yugoslavia, mostly purified of overt Oriental influences, and compares it to Imamović’s contemporary interpretations, where remnants of its Oriental origin (such as: aksak rhythms, melismatic singing, oriental modes and instrumentation that resemble maqam practices etc.) have been reinstated and even emphasised. %8 Russian and other non-phonetic Slavic languages written in Cyrillic script have been transliterated using the simplified Library of Congress transliteration system, with some exceptions which have been duly explained in the footnotes. We must express our sincere gratitude