Artists

NARODNYJ PRAZDNIK (Russia)

Pesen zemli (Songs of Earth)

Performers:
Aliavina Ekaterina Aleksandrovna
Bukatova Antonina Vladimirovna
Efremov Borys Sefafimovich
Zhulanova Nadiezhda Ilinichna
Zernova Natalia Fedorovna
Zimenkova Tatiana Maratovna
Kluchnikova Olga Aleksandrovna
Kostina Evgeniya Semenovna
Tretiakova Alena Arkadevna
Yakimova Natalia Viktorovna

70 min.

The group presents songs from the South of Russia, more specifically the Beograd region, which is near the Russian-Ukrainian boarder. Narodnyj Prazdnik is the only performing group, which in the nineties had the opportunity to hear this tradition in a direct relay from the last generation of song masters.

Hailing from Moscow, this folklorist-ethnographic band came into existence in 1982 and sine has been finding new roads of preserving and teaching tradition. Each of the female singers had a master in a folk group, which was selected not only to meet the vocal skills standards, but also based on a mutual appreciation of the master and student’s personalities. This approach to the passing of tradition provided a welcoming setting to the process of discovering and developing proximity with the spiritual content of tradition. As Jekaterina Dorohowa, the director of the group, as well as a professor of ethnomusicology and a member of Russian Folklorist Association, notes, in terms of their sound, one of the groups secrets is their care and attentiveness to the quality of performance. Although the emotional experience of the songs is clear, it is also important to recognize that the performers also have received strong foundations and possess the skills to share this emotional event with their audience.

On the Russian-Ukrainian boarder, the Beograd region is an example of the so-called late settling tradition, where the Russian settlers moved no earlier than XVI and XVII centuries. The majority of the song masters of this region, recorded since the 1960s by Russian researchers, passed away. Therefore, the singing of young peasant groups from Beograd, a region famous for the diversity of vocal genres in the living tradition, is often characterized by the disappearance of each particular singer’s mastership and texture of intonation.

For over two years, Narodnyj Prazdnik performed only in the Linovo village, where the singers had a chance to spend time and engage thoroughly in singing with local women. This method is in agreement with one of the founding rules of the folk art movement, namely the songs ought to be learned by ear, directly from the folk artists, who have access to the cultural heritage of their ancestors.

13.07 (Friday) 5:00pm,
St. Katherina Church

14.07 (Saturday) 7:00pm,
Arsenal

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