Landscapes of the Belarusian ethnic music of archaic layer: aspects of study (based on publications of ethnomusicological works of young musicologists BSC / BSAM 1991–2013)
Authors:   Belarusian State Academy of Music, Yakimenka Tamara 
Published: February 2021

Digests of articles by young musicologists of the Belarusian State Academy of Music, devoted to revealing the landscape panorama of the Belarusian ethnomusical culture of ritual genesis, are examined [1–5]. It’s shown that the considerations of young researchers published in the ethnomu- sicological editions of 1991–2013 aim at studying the autochthonous and historically deep phenomena of the Belarusian folklore fund, at revealing the features of ethnic song and instrumental melos in ritual complexes of calendar-farming and life cycles. A significant part of the research is devoted to the disclosure of typology, melo- geography, functional load, intonational, structural-rhythmic-compositional and eth- nophonic characteristics of song-ritual and instrumental practices of different regional and local traditions. In the subject spectrum of the articles the important issues are the sound world of ethno-song archaic layer considered in the aspect of mytho-sound-poetics [5], the pitch, articulation and ethnophony of the ancient melos, conditioning thereof by the signal-communicative sound activity as a factor of stability of ritual sound standards in the musical consciousness of carriers for many centuries. The ‘song territories’, which, as a result of placement on the borderland of his- torical-ethnographic and ethnocultural areas, are marked by a variety of linguistic in- fluences, the coexistence of diverse anthropological types in the autochthonous popu- lation (with the appropriate difference in beliefs, ritual practices and lifestyles) found their study in the issues of the ethnomusicological series. The ethno-song loci of various scales and levels – from their intraregional spe- cies (‘local’, ‘special’, ‘island’) [4] to status ones for ethnomusical cultures (the so- called ‘regional borderland’) [5] are studied. An ethnopsychological consideration is reflected in a number of articles [4]. Among the objects studied by young musicians there are significant ones in the ethnomusic culture of Belarusians song forms of the ‘Valachobny’ (Easter) and St George Day ancient rituals [1], congratulatory visiting rituals of the Carol period and the ‘Yashchar’ roundelay-game action assigned to the time of the Philippe post (Ad- vent) [2], childbirth and narrative (ballad) songs [4], groups of ‘Rajok’–‘Sparysh’– ‘Dazhynki’ (end of the Harvest) and ‘Aviasets’ (autumn) songs of Poozer’e (Lake district) [4], song traditions of the Maslenitsa (Shrovetide) ceremonies [4], the lead of the ‘Arrow’, ‘Rusal’, spring swings [5]. In the series of ethnomusicological collections of 1991–2013 landscapes of the ancient ethnomusic culture in its ‘Belarusian’ area on the territories of the Western Dvina basin, the upper course of the Dnieper, Dnieper–Druts–Berezina interfluve, Po- nemanje [1–5] were disclosed from the positions corresponding to the leading direc- tions of modern ethnomusicology. 187 The perspective of the researches carried out by young musicologists, their level and directly the potential of scientific problems were confirmed later in ethnomusico- logical dissertations [6–10], audio collections of the ‘Audio Atlas of the Traditional Musical Culture of Belarus’ and monographs [11–13].