Folklor
In all its elements folk music has ever been a companion to life and its changes, and so it was that a folk singer therefore assumed the role of both an interpreter and commentator of his times and of people's experience. Diversities which developed in Croatian folk music are very telling, revealing as they do our past to all people with open hearts and minds, to the musical listener who hears a melody and who listens to the words being sung. The regional characteristics in melody, rhythm and ornamentics, and particularly in the text sung, which today represent the immeasurable spiritual wealth of the Croatian people, resulted from the greatly fragmented corpus of the Croatian national being, such fragmentation being caused by the wars that raged through these parts, and to the migrations to which the Croatian nation has been exposed in its past.
Written by: Bozo Potočnik and Ivica Ivanković
Despite that, however, a deep Slavic root is readily identifiable in a large part of Croatian singing heritage, especially of upper Croatia, while the mutual permeation with traditions of neighbouring peoples led to the emergence of new folklore creations, to changes and adjustments, or indeed to a total disappearance of older forms. In some areas older texts have been preserved, texts to which a melody from the heritage of another people were linked in more recent centuries. In other cases it is the melody retained by folk practice. But with the passing of time it became tied with other, more contemporary lyrics adopted from another people. In the border areas, where traditional cultures meet, there frequently emerged material the beauty and catchiness of which surpassed the older models, but at the same time have, due to linguistic reasons, frequently lost the accentual ties between text and melody (Međimurje).
These phenomena are most obvious in the older, ethnic communities of the Croatian Diaspora, which is quite understandable. The surroundings of other cultures in the process of adjustments bore a crucial influence on the spiritual development of Croats outside their homeland. The fundamental quality of Croatian folk singing of ancient times is collectivity. Here, an important role belonged to the person starting the song, thus defining the words, tonal pitch, the moment that the group joins in, tempo, and to a degree the mode of singing. There are examples of solo singing in special circumstances, or in the function of popular customs.
Collectivity in performing with musical instruments appeared relatively late, towards the end of the 18th century, when guci (fiddlers) appeared - a group comprising two violins and a double bass. With time, the group expanded and combined with the tamburitza, an instrument which assumed a dominant role in Slavonia and Baranja in the mid-19th century and somewhat later in all other parts of upper Croatia.
After bagpipes (gajde) and flutes (svirale) of older times, the music-making practice of eastern Croatia, to which Croatian villages in Bačka are closely linked, a tamboura tuned to equal temperament became the predominant instrument, and with it singing - in the 20th century also of equal temperament - to the accompaniment of a tamboura. Slavonia and Baranja still preserve the older style of duet singing with a strongly emphasised role of the leading singer, and the later date folklore groups are bringing back the bagpipes (tuned to equal temperament), dual flute (dvojnice) and the twin-reed shepherd's flute (diplice).
In northern Croatia, in the regions of Međimurje and Podravina, and particularly in the Pomurje -along the upper bank of the River Mura, where 7 to 8,000 Croats live in some ten villages, the older folk music is characterized by the pentatonic scale. In our times, however, this scale is rapidly being squeezed out by the wilderness of commercially oriented music. There is little left of traditional instruments also, only a few wind and string instruments (bagpipe, bellows-bagpipe (gajde, dude, trontule)), but more recent practice has resulted in an identifiable sound in bands comprising cimbalon and violins.
In the north-west part of Croatia, in Hrvatsko Zagorje, along the border with Slovenia, vocal tradition has for centuries been influenced by the wider Alpine region. Those influences can be recognized in the part-singing tuned to pure temperament. Music-making instruments include, in addition to the fiddle (gosle, violine) and accordion, a range of flutes: puhaljke žvegalice, strančice, and others made of wood or clay. In more recent time brass instruments have become increasingly popular.
The old, untempered type of singing accompanied by violin and šargija (a type of tamboura with 7-8 strings) is still practiced among Croats in Bosanska Posavina (an area along the River Sava, in Bosnia) although in Slavonian Posavina it has completely disappeared. With the appearance of the tamboura as a collective music making instrument, the ancient style of rustic singing (ojkanje, orcanje, rozganje - accompanying one's singing with a drawn-out o-o-y!) in Lika, and to a degree in Kordun, but here, singing is accompanied by a kuterevka (solo tamboura).
The truly ancient heritage is borne witness to by the untempered type of singing still practiced throughout the hinterland of the Adriatic coast, the Istrian peninsula and the Croatian Littoral, together with the islands of the upper Adriatic, where singing - in pairs - is accompanied by the sopile (Istrian long flute), and it is important to pay attention to the specific timbre of voice imitating that instrument. This style is also found in the Dalmatian hinterland - in particular the town of Sinj, in the Cetina and Imotski regions, through Konavle and Western Herzegovina.
These mountainous areas remain the home of the old style singing: men's and women's rere, gange, putničke, istresalice. Today, folk music is exposed to the pressures of commercialization which are threatening its regional characteristics. This is why each preserved song or piece of traditional music, snatched from oblivion and artistically interpreted with love and performed in the traditional spirit and style, is a precious contribution to the preservation of the centuries-old identity of its creators and guardians in all Croatian regions. And all of them together, just like a bouquet of colourful wild flowers, carry forth the sense and essence of the Croatian art of folk music.
In their selection of pieces of music the authors were guided by the need to present all the regions, but also by the times in which the pieces were created. Consequently, these CDs contain indigenous material of exceptional documentary value and which have been recorded in daily life. Recordings from the field and from the International Folklore Festival, that has been taking place in Zagreb since 1966, have for the most part been preserved in the archives of Croatian Radio and Television, are of exceptional value for Croatian national culture.
As the passage of time was changing living conditions of all layers of the nation, so too did folk music change - this inseparable companion of man in his fight for survival. This prompted us to make room in this selection for a more contemporary experience of Croatian folk music, with artistic interventions within the process of adjustments to the times - all the way to numbers composed on the basis of tradition.
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