Folklore Revival.Indb

Folklore Revival Movements in Europe post 1950 Shifting Contexts and Perspectives Edited by Daniela Stavělová and Theresa Jill Buckland 1 2 Folklore Revival Movements in Europe post 1950 Shifting Contexts and Perspectives Edited by Daniela Stavělová and Theresa Jill Buckland Institute of Ethnology of the Czech Academy of Sciences Prague 2018 3 Published as a part of the project „Tíha a beztíže folkloru. Folklorní hnutí druhé poloviny 20. století v českých zemích / Weight and Weightlessness of the Folklore. The Folklore Movement of the Second Half of the 20th Century in Czech Lands,“ supported by Czech Science Foundation GA17-26672S. Edited volume based on the results of the International Symposium Folklore revival movement of the second half of the 20th century in shifting cultural, social and political contexts organized by the Institute of Ethnology in cooperation with the Academy of Performing Arts, Prague, October 18.-19., 2017. Peer review: Prof. PaedDr. Bernard Garaj, CSc. Prof. Andriy Nahachewsky, PhD. Editorial Board: PhDr. Barbora Gergelová PhDr. Jana Pospíšilová, Ph.D. PhDr. Jarmila Procházková, Ph.D. Doc. Mgr. Daniela Stavělová, CSc. PhDr. Jiří Woitsch, Ph.D. (Chair) Translations: David Mraček, Ph.D. Proofreading: Zita Skořepová, Ph.D. © Institute of Ethnology of the Czech Academy of Sciences, 2018 ISBN 978-80-88081-22-7 (Etnologický ústav AV ČR, v. v. i., Praha) 4 Table of contents: Preface . 7 Part 1 Politicizing Folklore On the Legal and Political Framework of the Folk Dance Revival Movement in Hungary in the Second Half of the Twentieth Century Lázsló Felföldi . 21 The Power of Tradition(?): Folk Revival Groups as Bearers of Folk Culture Martina Pavlicová. 47 Reviving Folklore, Moving Ideology: Social(istic) Dance in the German Democratic Republic Hanna Walsdorf . 57 The Estonian Folklore Revival Movement and its Politically Correct Format in the Second Half of the Twentieth Century. Iivi Zájedová . 75 The Norwegian Folk Dance Movement in Political Perspective Egil Bakka . 87 Part 2 Czech Histories Folklore in the Era of Socialism: Display Window of Offi cial Culture or a Little Island of Freedom? Folklore movement in Contemporary Historical Research and Oral Historical Studies Miroslav Vaněk . 103 The Folklore Revival Movement in Former Czechoslovakia: Dichotomy of the Term Daniela Stavělová . 113 Literature on the Folklore Revival Movement in the Czech Journal Taneční listy 1963: A Critical Analysis Dorota Gremlicová . 129 Radio Broadcasting as Role Model, Authority and Norm in Czech Musical Folklorism in the Second Half of the Twentieth Century Zdeněk Vejvoda . 143 Politically Committed Songs: A Distinctive Product of the Czech Folk Revival Movement of the 1950s Lucie Uhlíková . 151 Formal or Informal? Folk Music, Folklore Revival and Music Education Matěj Kratochvíl . 165 5 Part 3 Folklore as Performance Folklore, Stage and Politics in the Croatian Context Tvrtko Zebec . 183 At the “Crossroads”: The Transformation of Dance Folklore into a Professional Stage Art in Bulgaria in the Second Half of the Twentieth Century Gergana Panova . 197 Institutional Developments of Sorbian Folk Dance post 1945 Theresa Jacobs . 223 Theoretical Concepts in Ethnomusicology and Study of the Folklore Revival Movement: the Case of the Prague Ensemble Gaudeamus Zita Skořepová . 243 Leaders and Followers. Artistic Leaderships and Stage Presentations of Folk Dances in a Slovenian Folklore Ensemble Rebeka Kunej . 257 Part 4 Shifting Orthodoxies Set Dancing, Orthodoxy, Heterodoxy: Changing Cultural and Political Landscapes in Ireland Catherine E. Foley . 281 Folklorní mejdlo: Music Revival the Prague Way Anežka Hrbáčková . 293 Liberating Tradition: Gender Politics in Late Twentieth Century English Revivalist Morris Dancing Theresa Jill Buckland . 311 A Neo-Traditional Post-folklore Revival Movement? The Case of Greece through the Lens of a Folk Dance Club on the Ionian Island of Lefkada Maria Koutsouba . 331 Dance and Revival – from a Swedish Perspective Mats Nilsson . 345 Participatory and Presentational Folk-Revival in Capitalist and Socialist Formations: The United States and Hungary in the 1970s Colin Quigley . 351 ‘We All Know That, Don’t We?’: Situating Scholarly Knowledge about the Czech ‘Folklore Movement’ Vít Zdrálek . 369 List of contributors . 383 6 Preface This collection of papers emerges from a symposium on the folklore revival movement of the second half of the twentieth century which was held in Prague in October 2017. Organized by the Institute of Ethnology of the Czech Acade- my of Sciences, in co-operation with the Institute for Choreology, Music and Dance Faculty of the Academy of Performing Arts, the aim of the symposium was to open a window on the folklore revival, as predominantly experienced in the Czech Republic, but with a preliminary view towards similar phenomena in eastern and, to a more limited extent, in western Europe. The topic brought together ethnochoreologists, anthropologists of dance, eth- nomusicologists, folk music scholars and educators, oral historians and anthropologists, some indeed combining these disciplinary fi elds. What the contributors share in common here is scholarly examination of the folklore revival within their own country of residence. Some indeed have been, and may continue to be, active practitioners in the folklore revival fi eld, combining their role as scholars or educators with those of musicians, dancers, composers and choreographers. This insiders’ perspective undoubtedly results in privileged access and insights, but there may also be risks of selection and interpretation; the fi nal paper in the volume addresses such issues of critical distance and offers caveats for future work from a position of refl exive ethnography. The 2017 conference was itself part of a large research project, undertaken from 2017 to 2019 in the Department of Ethnomusicology of the Institute for Ethnology of the Czech Academy of Sciences. Entitled ‘Weight and Weightless- ness of Folklore: The Folklore Movement of the Second Half of the Twentieth Century in the Czech Lands’, it was funded by the Czech Science Foundation. Czech understanding of the concept of the folklore revival movement refers pri- marily to the activities of the folklore ensembles active within a Communist regime in the second half of last century. As consequence, the focus of the conference tended towards consideration of music and dance within political contexts of that period and, to a certain degree, its legacies. The majority of articles pres- ented here were formulated as part of that research initiative which brought to light, as principal investigator Daniela Stavelova discusses in her contribution, lived experiences either of the burden or of the opportunity for a kind of inner freedom that the phenomenon of the folklore revival brought. The present collection by no means aims for systematic comparison between the folklore revival movement in the Czech lands and other examples both within and beyond the soviet block; rather, it suggests a pathway for future scholars to tread when in- 7 vestigating the folklore revival phenomenon and the role of politics at national, regional, institutional and individual levels. Although the notion of the folklore movement, or folklorism and revivalism, is an international phenomenon, it is increasingly obvious that there is enormous variation in associations of the term, and indeed, there may be different labels for similar practices even within Europe itself. In some European countries, the same term has two meanings, but which are actually dichotomous; and seeming- ly alternative labels, such as folklorism and revivalism, may also signal distinctive and, often subtly discrete, connotations according to context. For the Prague symposium, the principal term selected proved to provoke varied interpretation. The rationale behind the international symposium was to launch a debate that would take into consideration this diversity and various ways of understanding the phenomenon in different social, cultural and political contexts. The primary purpose was to use this contextualisation to reveal the role and power of folklore practices, whereby traditional folk culture, more specifi cally music and dance, play a key role in a multiplicity of social and ideological processes. The folklore revival movement, in its current meaning in the Czech Repub- lic, has its origin in the period after the Second World War when the communist party became the dominant power (after 1948) in the political system of former Czechoslovakia. The term folklore movement encompassed festivals, perform- ances and competitions of staged forms of folk music and dance. On the one hand, the folklore movement was an activity promoted and controlled by the political regime; on the other, considering the lack of opportunities for other similar activities, the folklore movement brought together people of diverse ways of thinking, creating conditions for the development of alternative ideas. As a re- sult, the movement was both a part of offi cial culture and a place for potential in- dependent activities. The political situation in other European countries, both within the so-called socialist block and outside, also had an impact on folklore movements. The symposium’s aim to discuss study in a wider European framework, was expected to provide various perspectives for considering to what extent the folklore revival movement was an instrument of power, and to what extent it was an opportunity to implement

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