page_title: Krišjānis Barons
section_title: Background and importance
hierarchical_section_title: Krišjānis Barons / Latvju dainas / Background and importance
caption_attribution_description: Latviešu: Dainja skapja oriģināls Latvijas Nacionālajā bibliotēkā English: Original Cabinet of Folksongs at the National Library of Latvia This photo has been taken in the country: Latvia
context_page_description: Krišjānis Barons was a Latvian writer who is known as the "father of the dainas" thanks largely to his systematization of the Latvian folk songs and his labour in preparing their texts for publication in Latvju dainas. His portrait appeared on the 100-lat banknote prior to the Lat being replaced by the Euro in 2014, his being the only human face of an actual person on modern Latvian currency. Barons was very prominent among the Young Latvians, and also an important writer and editor.
context_section_description: Barons is well known as the creator of Latvju dainas (LD), published between 1894 and 1915 in six volumes, and including 217 996 folk songs. But Barons was not the author of the original idea, neither did he collect the texts, nor rewrite all of the received texts on the tiny paper slips of the famous Cabinet of Folksongs (Dainu skapis), though there is a significant number of the slips displaying Barons' own handwriting, as some may believe. Still, his contribution is of no less importance. He elaborated the classification system of LD, arranging the texts and introducing the notion of song type or bush (choosing a text as the main one among a number of similar ones, and grouping the rest around it – this allows for easier perception of variation and saves space in the published edition, as only the differences are indicated in print). Barons had also edited some texts, in order to restore their possible older and better form. In recognition of the Barons' labors and the historical value of the Cabinet of Folksongs, the work was inscribed on UNESCO's Memory of the World Register in 2001.
  Already at the time when Barons was working on the edition, the traditional singing had been lost to a great extent; Barons in his introduction to LD mentions that "the sources of nation's memory, as it seemed, filled up and having run dry long ago, started to flow amazingly." He also warns that "the old ladies, our purest source of folk songs, become rarer and rarer with each day". Barons also points at the Latvians themselves turning away from the singing of traditional songs when accepting Christianity for example.
caption: The original Cabinet of Folksongs at the National Library of Latvia
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