The Year's Work in Other SocietiesAuthor(s): Douglas KennedySource: Journal of the English Folk Dance and Song Society, Vol. 6, No. 3 (Dec., 1951), pp. 106-108Published by: English Folk Dance + Song SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4521372 .

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THE YEAR'S WORK IN OTHER SOCIETIES

THE INTERNATIONAL FOLK MUSIC COUNCIL'S CONFERENCE AT OPATIJE,

YUGOSLAVIA, SEPTEMBER, 1951.

The real lure to the International Folk Music Conference at Opatija was the National Song and Dance Festival represented by seven hundred performers from all sections of the six Yugoslav Republics. Some of the dance groups took four or five days to travel from the Greek border, for Opatija lies near the Italian frontier, beyond Fiume-or Rijeka, as it is now. A hundred folk-lorists, musicologists, musicians, dancers and laymen attended the conference. Roughly a third were from Yugoslavia and a third from Britain, the rest of the world accounting for the remaining third.

One or two Yugoslav papers entered the field of political controversy, but the visitors, recollecting the hospitality they were enjoying, carefully refrained from argumentation on anything but folk music, which itself offers ample chance of controversy. Among the Yugoslav delegates there was evidence of a cleavage into two schools. One regards folk music as just the raw material for com- posers and choreographers to arrange, refine and polish. The other relishes it according to its degree of rawness, sniffing suspiciously at anything that might have been tampered with. For them the magic of traditional song and dance depends on the roughage. I suppose there were some who took up an intermediate position, but I didn't encounter them. All were friendly and the happy atmosphere was largely due to the preliMiinary work put in by the Yugoslav leader, Mr. Devcic, and his devoted assistants, especially the English-speaking interpreter, Mira Hertzog.

The first performance represented the Republic of Serbia and included processions of the Jack in the Green (St. George in Yugoslavia). Palm Sunday customs and an ancient pagan fertility play acted by animal-men in a farmhouse scene. The farmer was shaved with a wooden sword and the play ended with a wild chain-dance or Kolo.

There were many Kolos by a variety of teams from different parts of Serbia. One which was rapturously received was danced by an elderly group with a dignity and stateliness quite regal.

The last Serbian dance group came from Subotica, on the Hungarian border. Costumes, dance steps and music played by a string band all showed strong Hungarian influence.

The next evening was devoted to Bosnia and Herzegovina and after the exciting Serbian dancing was somewhat of an anti-climax. But the songs were extraordinary and brought our musicologists to the edge of their chairs. Girls sang in natural seconds with the cutting edge to the voice that would go through Dalmatian rock. Resounding from the hilltops, as we heard them later on the Island of Rab, the voices seemed as normal as the cries of seagulls. In the concert hall they were a bit disconcerting. The musicologists, however, were thrilled by the skill of the performers, but to the inexpert it seemed as spontaneous as dogs howling. The singers in the audience determined in future to practise their folk songs out of doors.

Musical instruments of all kinds accompanied the songs and dances-bagpipes, shepherds' pipes, flutes and a primitive fiddle called the Gusle, with a single string of horsehair. Several Guslars sang, to their instruments, partisan songs composed during the German occupation and set to old ballad airs.

The bagpipes varied from what looked like a distended pig with its feet in the air to a neat little octopus blown up by a bellows.

The third performance was divided between the Republics of Montenegro and Slovenia, and started with a wedding so well presented that we all felt we were invited guests. Pistol shots shook the hotel chandeliers. This was so sudden that an American lady engaged in recording the music and listening idly through her earphones nearly lost her hearing. The bridegroom entertaining at his own house was a model of modesty and charm. He passed the food and drink handed to him by the standing women and saw that-all the men seated at the long refectory table had what they wanted, without touching meat or drink himself. He even helped them to wipe their mouths on the twenty-foot

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lonig napkin that stretched upon their laps the whole length of the table. At the bride's house she wept for her maidenhood and had a veil of paper which guarded her face burnt away. The Groom's party arrived, with more shooting, to proclaim the bride's chastity and all joined in a Kolo to lead the young couple to their new home.

Two children then performed a warlike dance showing that these dances are learned as the young learn to walk. They were followed by two men in a murderous pistol dance that made us shut our eyes and the American recording lady switch off her microphone. When we couldn't stand the strain any longer the pistol dancers were replaced by a rifleman who worshipped his weapon in an ecstasy of military enthusiasm, finishing, of course, with a terriffic explosion.

Slovenia in the second half opened with a May Day procession led by small boys loudly blowing birch bark horns, who were followed by a Maypole and St. George (Jack in the Green). A Kolo was danced, water thrown over the King of Spring (St. George) and the procession went on its way.

The programme ended with Christmas Mummers, representing Winter, resisting the heralds and demons of Spring. Hobby Horses, Jacks in the Green, tusked and horned bears hung with cow- bells, capered and danced through the audience. Six youths arrived drawing a plough. After making three furrows, the leader, carrying a great whip with a lash at least 15 ft. long, drove the invaders back into their winter fastnesses.

The fourth performance was the climax, for the teams were from Macedonia. During that even- ing those present had the good fortune to see the greatest men's dancing in the world. We were all tired and slightly blas6 at the beginning of the evening and inclined to take the excellent performances as a matter of course. Suddenly the whole room was in an uproar. A group of young men from Stip, which is on the Bulgarian border, started a high-stepping Bulgarian-style Kolo. With a grow- ing rhythmical strength they bounded and capered. Abruptly they flung themselves flat on their faces, then turned and bumped their buttocks in perfect rhythm before they were back in their close chain. The crowd roared at this feat. They were followed by another fine set of athletes dancing to a great drum played by a tiny boy. This drummer was the best we heard. He played in such detail to the dance leader's steps that I feel sure neither could have functioned without the other. Someone whispered a question in my ear: ' How could he learn to do that in his short life ? I muttered over my shoulder: 'He was drumming before he was born.'

We rested, gasping, while a bagpipe played tremulous music such as none of us had ever heard before. Then we were off again. This time the Russalia, with their kilts and scimitars and bar- barous music. Perched on one toe like a ballet dancer, they slowly cut the air with foot and blade while the drum throbbed and thundered.

Clearing away the devils with ponderous ceremony they gradually closed the Circle on the ever- dwindling ' room ' until it was clear. Then they were off in the close-knit Kolo with the girls of the village. When the men from Skopje came next with their Teskoto we were so hoarse we could only croak. Superbly, disdainfully, they slowly pawed their way across the stage while drummer and clarinetist played themselves into a frenzy of sound. Just when our ears and hearts must burst with the tension they joined in a brilliant Kolo swapping head to tail in a series of pas seail par excellence.

The final programme from Croatia left no such vivid impression. We had been overwhelmed by NMacedonia, but there were much lovely music and singing and beautiful costumes from the islands and coastline of Dalmatia. By this time the Istrian or Phrygian mode sounded almost homely.

How lucky we were to have seen and heard the real peasant folk dances and songs ! Even in Yugoslavia there is a gap between the ' traditional ' and the ' taught.' The teams we have seen in England have been superb, but they cannot compete with the peasants. I came away more than ever convinced that we ourselves must cling to every shred of our country traditions and strive to hand on their living element to our dancers. As in Yugoslavia, there will always be plenty of muLsicians and artists to develop the art forms and to polish the raw material, but the raw material will always need its own understanding interpreters.

DOUGLAS KENNEDY.

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THE STANDING CONFERENCE FOR LOCAL HISTORY

(NATIONAL COUNCIL OF SOCIAL SERVICE)

In 1948 the National Council of Social Service convened a meeting of representatives from existing Local History Committees and sympathetic bodies (of which the English Folk Dance and Song Society was one) from which grew the Standing Conference for Local History. Since that time the number of County Committees has greatly increased and a series of publications has been issued to point out the way to those interested in field-work and its classification, in preparing county bibliographies, in writing parish guides or in other schemes already known to readers of the Journal.*

A correspondent writes: ' The need is now to foster in the local historian an understanding of the place of traditional dance and song in the life and thought of the village community, and in the dancer, whose pleasure hitherto may be only in " learning folk-dances " the ability to see the dances against their background of village life '.

A recent example of the complementary knowledge and interests of the L.H.C.'s and the E.F.D. & S.S. is an article An Oak Apple Day Celebration in which the author, a member of the Standing Conference, describes the Castleton Garland ceremony as it is today, and, in pointing out that changes have taken place and are still going on, remarks that there are a number of particularst ' which have never been recorded ', and which either body might well exert themselves to discover before it is too late.

The author draws attention to the ' Cavalier ' style of dress now worn by the ' King', and to the association between the ceremony on May 29 (Oak Apple Day) and Charles II whose Restoration on May 29 1660 might never have been fulfilled but for his escape in the Boscobel Oak ; and he describes a curious monument in Wolverhampton Church in which the Garland ' King' appears, symbolizing, it is believed, this escape of the king after the defeat at Worcester.

Coming to the elements of the ceremony, the garland itself, and the topknot or ' quane ' which surmounts it, the author recalls the poem of Sir Gawaine and the Green Knight, in which the descrip- tion of the knight corresponds with the Garland ' King', a Jack-in-the-Green on horseback, and proposes a parallel between the beheading of the Green Knight and the removal of the quane from t 1e Gerland.

Those acquainted intimately with the traditional dance may feel a certain scepticism about con- necting a folk-ceremonial and an historical event comparatively recent-but they should be stimu- lated to consider the parallel with the Green Knight, and to search their memories and discover whether they know the answers to the questions put, and whether or no they can assure the Local Historian that the answers are, after all, both known and recorded.

*Local History Publications: 1, A Plan for the Study of Local History ; 2, The Compilation of County Bibliographies; 3, A Selection of Books on Local History ; 4, A Directory of Authorities andi Organizations ; 5, Notes on the Recording of Local History ; 6, Local History Exhibitions ; 7, How to Write a Parish Guide ; 8, Discovering the Past. Prices range from 6d. to 2s.

tSome of these particulars were recorded by S. 0. Addy fifty years ago in Folk Lore 1901. Others. recently communicated, will be found in this Journal on page 101.

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