Jelena Jovanovic
Institute for Musicology of Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts, Department for Ethnomusicology, Senior Research Associate
Jelena Jovanović was born on 27th September 1964 in Belgrade. Upon finishing Mokranjac Secondary Music School (Music Theory and Piano Departments), she enrolled in the Ethnomusicology Department at Belgrade University, Faculty of Music. She graduated in 1991, with the subject Old Wedding Songs and Customs in Gornja Jasenica – "Wedding Melodic Model, its Forms and Development" (tutor Professor Dragoslav Dević). She acquired her master’s degree in 2001 with the thesis entitled "Vocal Heritage of the Serbs in Upper Banat Region in Romania in the Light of Authochthonous and Adopted Music Practices" as well as a Ph.D. degree in 2010 with the thesis "Vocal Tradition of Jasenica Region in the Light of Ethnogenetic Processes" (tutor Professor Dimitrije Golemović, Ph.D.).Employed in the Institute of Musicology since 1992, and since 2021 has been a Principal Research Fellow. All her research into Serbian vocal traditions is based mainly on her own field work, аs well as on older colleagues' research results. The main fields of her scholar work: elements of rural vocal and instrumental tradition of Šumadija region and of central Serbia from the aspect of geographical areas of Serbian musical dialects, layers of Serbs’ in Romania vocal tradition in cultural and historical context, the subjects from the field of applied ethnomusicology, of musical performance, as well as issues connected to the Yugoslav popular music of the 1970s. She published three monographs, co-edited several collections of papers, and arranged printed and sound editions of traditional, Orthodox Christian Church and electroacoustic music. She took part in a series of local and international conferences, in Serbia and abroad. Her papers have been published in various collections of papers and scientific journals. She had numerous lectures on different aspects of Serbian vocal practice. She is the member of ethnomusicological societies in Serbia and abroad (SED, ICTM).She is one of the leading authorities in the field of practical approach to traditional vocal heritage. Active as a singer of traditional songs from the Balkans. One of the founders and conductors of the Moba women’s vocal group (since 1993). In cooperation with Artship Initiatives (San Francisco) and Halka Gallery (Istanbul) she took part in several artistic performances as a vocal soloist for Serbian, North Macedonian, Roma, Turksih and Greek traditional songs. She was the lecturer and vocal pedagogue of the young vocal group of the Oplenac cultural-artistic society in Topola (2002-2015) and she also took part in a project initiated by Cultural and Educational Center Boljevac, for safeguarding Serbian traditional songs from the region of Crnorecje (2016-2021). In cooperation with Foundation Muzykakresow (Lublin, Poland) she took part in the work of several International Summer Schools for Traditional Music, as lecturer and instructor (since 2006). Since the 8th November 2018 she is the corresponding member of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts, Department for Arts.
Supervisors: Supervisors: Prof. Dr Dragoslav Dević, Prof. Dr Dimitrije O. Golemović. Advisors: Prof. Dr Danica Petrović.
Address: Institute of Musicology SASA
Knez Mihailova 36 / IV
11000 Belgrade
Serbia
Supervisors: Supervisors: Prof. Dr Dragoslav Dević, Prof. Dr Dimitrije O. Golemović. Advisors: Prof. Dr Danica Petrović.
Address: Institute of Musicology SASA
Knez Mihailova 36 / IV
11000 Belgrade
Serbia
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of Polish and Serbian vocal mediators through singing practices
in our times
The article presents the notion of the Living Voice (as discussed by Paul
Zumthor), which is closely related to the experience of teaching traditional
Serbian rural songs and to the exchange of this experience with
Polish colleagues and singers. The knowledge of Polish methods of
teaching songs in a neo-traditional way was gained during the International
Summer School of Traditional Music, organized by Fundacja
Muzyka Kresów in Lublin.
The growth of interest in rural songs in Serbia took place in
the 1990s. The female vocal group Moba had a remarkable role at the
time. Still, part of the audience in Serbia did not approve of the aesthetic
standards that Moba offered and stood for. Thus, acquaintance with
Polish colleagues and approaches was a great encouragement for Moba
members.
The repertoire taught relies mostly on lyrical songs of various
content, because this kind of songs easily satisfies contemporary
musical taste and songs regain their original function. Ritual songs are
also discussed here due to their hermetic communicational sphere, in
accordance with which all the musical parameters are organized.
What is more, the article discusses sources for learning, the
notion of the song itself, work with individual singers and with the
group, the context of singing, style, and aesthetic aspect. The roles of
the “master“, the “teacher“, and “students“ are analyzed, as well as the
place of traditional singing within the academic discourse in Serbia.
The paper has been founded on the new approach to the data about renewed kaval repertoire in Serbia and on the narratives about it. In the text the following aspects will be studied comparatively: 1) common musical components of Macedonian bourdon kaval play, of neo-Byzantine Church Chant and of kaval and ney practices on the Near East, and 2) semantics of playing and the sound of revived kaval in Serbia in comparison to the symbolic of kaval and ney in Sufi tradition on the Near East.
Harvest song (that belong to the old folk musical layer) in Central Serbia have been observed within the three main groups, according to their melopoetic and texture characteristics. The first group is present in the Western (mountain and hilly) parts of the region, the second one is present in central and Northern (hilly and plain) parts, and the third is present in central and Eastern (plain) parts. The results of the musical analyses and identifying of "morphological dominants", according to the model presented by Ihor Maciewskii (2002), followed to the conclusion that there is a regularity in appearance of certain musical elements, depending on geographical position of places in which they have been recorded (mountain, hilly, or plain regions), as well as on origin of the groups of the population in Central Serbia.
War and destruction were devastating for the traditional musical heritage in the regions where it occurred. In the new conditions and new surroundings, it was renewed in some cases, while in others it was denied and got fused with other music genres. It may be observed that refugees from the western parts of the former Yugoslavia in their musical practice in Belgrade rely considerably on their traditional rural idiom. Settlers from the south parts of Serbia, on the other hand, keep standard features of the town songs.
There are also the two main tendencies in music-making in the new settings: the one - to keep and renew the features of the musical idioms of the home counties, and the other - towards the "new-composed" genre, including acceptance of the new elements of group identity.
of Polish and Serbian vocal mediators through singing practices
in our times
The article presents the notion of the Living Voice (as discussed by Paul
Zumthor), which is closely related to the experience of teaching traditional
Serbian rural songs and to the exchange of this experience with
Polish colleagues and singers. The knowledge of Polish methods of
teaching songs in a neo-traditional way was gained during the International
Summer School of Traditional Music, organized by Fundacja
Muzyka Kresów in Lublin.
The growth of interest in rural songs in Serbia took place in
the 1990s. The female vocal group Moba had a remarkable role at the
time. Still, part of the audience in Serbia did not approve of the aesthetic
standards that Moba offered and stood for. Thus, acquaintance with
Polish colleagues and approaches was a great encouragement for Moba
members.
The repertoire taught relies mostly on lyrical songs of various
content, because this kind of songs easily satisfies contemporary
musical taste and songs regain their original function. Ritual songs are
also discussed here due to their hermetic communicational sphere, in
accordance with which all the musical parameters are organized.
What is more, the article discusses sources for learning, the
notion of the song itself, work with individual singers and with the
group, the context of singing, style, and aesthetic aspect. The roles of
the “master“, the “teacher“, and “students“ are analyzed, as well as the
place of traditional singing within the academic discourse in Serbia.
The paper has been founded on the new approach to the data about renewed kaval repertoire in Serbia and on the narratives about it. In the text the following aspects will be studied comparatively: 1) common musical components of Macedonian bourdon kaval play, of neo-Byzantine Church Chant and of kaval and ney practices on the Near East, and 2) semantics of playing and the sound of revived kaval in Serbia in comparison to the symbolic of kaval and ney in Sufi tradition on the Near East.
Harvest song (that belong to the old folk musical layer) in Central Serbia have been observed within the three main groups, according to their melopoetic and texture characteristics. The first group is present in the Western (mountain and hilly) parts of the region, the second one is present in central and Northern (hilly and plain) parts, and the third is present in central and Eastern (plain) parts. The results of the musical analyses and identifying of "morphological dominants", according to the model presented by Ihor Maciewskii (2002), followed to the conclusion that there is a regularity in appearance of certain musical elements, depending on geographical position of places in which they have been recorded (mountain, hilly, or plain regions), as well as on origin of the groups of the population in Central Serbia.
War and destruction were devastating for the traditional musical heritage in the regions where it occurred. In the new conditions and new surroundings, it was renewed in some cases, while in others it was denied and got fused with other music genres. It may be observed that refugees from the western parts of the former Yugoslavia in their musical practice in Belgrade rely considerably on their traditional rural idiom. Settlers from the south parts of Serbia, on the other hand, keep standard features of the town songs.
There are also the two main tendencies in music-making in the new settings: the one - to keep and renew the features of the musical idioms of the home counties, and the other - towards the "new-composed" genre, including acceptance of the new elements of group identity.
Since the 18th century, the area of Banat has been under strong cultural, political, and social influence of Central Europe. Its towns, as Timisoara, cherished their culture after the model of Vienna and Budapest, while the nearby villages followed their example. They adopted and implemented the urban cultural model, which resulted in an encounter (maybe even conflict) of the two cultural forms: rural, patriarchal, and urban, liberal form. Serb culture of the region was under the strong influence of Enlightenment and romantic national movement. General changes in traditional culture were also reflected in musical phenomena. Elements of the old, indigenous vocal Serb tradition were iether modified, or replaced by new ones, iether coming from other surroundings, or "invented" (Shils 1981: 21; Hobsbawm 1983: 263). In numerous musical examples, these elements may be regarded as clearly separated, but there are others in which they are mutually interlinked. Such connections make forms which "result from syncretism in a perypheral society, generated by mixture of own traditions and those that are accepted, or requested from the metropolitan centre" (Shils 1981: 251).
Musical material collected in Romanian Upper Banat at the end of the 20th century is a precious testimony on the reertoire, musical taste, and also partly ideological beliefs of the the oldest generation of carriers of the musical tradition at the time of recording.
The monograph sheds light on extremely complex ethnic composition of this region and, hence, on complexity of musical traditions in it. In the book has been presented the picture of musical elements recorded in the area of Jasenica in the second half of the 20th century, based on their genre determination, and their geographic dissemination has been observed in diachrony, within the period from the early 19th century (and earlier, from the period before migrations in front of the Turkish invasion), up to the contemporary times. The work has been conducted through the experiences of empiric, analytical research and also through the approaches with leaning on the knowledge from the area of ethnomusicology, history, ethnology, anthropology and linguistics. The elements of different vocal idioms have been recognized and for the first time in Serbian ethnomusicology have been identified elements of musical (vocal) indigenous tradition, as well as of the traditions of different groups of migrants to this area and also the elements which have been developed here, as it has been supposed, by communication of these different idioms.
The book is in Serbian, with a Summary in English.
The first to think, quite rightly and with foresight, that Serbia was in need of a
phonograph for the purpose of making field recordings of national folk music was the
great Serbian composer, folk tunes collector and the author of the first
ethnomusicological study in Serbia published in 1902 (though at the end of 19th century
some attempts in this direction were made by Tihomir Ostojić, 1865-1921), Stevan
Stojanović Mokranjac (1856-1914). As an associate of the Ethnographic Board of the
Royal Academy of Serbia, and someone highly experienced in collecting folk tunes,
Mokranjac submitted a detailed proposal for the purchase of the phonograph to the
Ethnographic Board. He was aware of unreliability of numerous transcriptions sent to the
Academy by untrained laymen from villages and small towns around Serbia. Had there
been a positive response to his proposal, Serbia would now be in possession of
phonographic recordings of its national folk music from the very beginning of the 20th
century. At the time he was the only musician in the Ethnographic Board of the Academy
and unfortunately his proposal was not accepted.