UDMURT FOLK SONG

UDMURT FOLK SONG of Bashkortostan are divided into 2 main groups: family-ceremonial and calendar. The family-ceremonial group can be divided into wedding (a song to meet and farewell the groom’s party in the house of a bride and groom, table songs of bride’s party and groom’s party, a song of the bride to bid farewell to her house and parents, girls’ songs during the ritual called “drinking girls wine” and man’s song during the ritual called “drinking man’s wine”), guest (are sung at the celebrations), funeral-commemorational (see lamentations) songs. Calendar songs are sung during the ceremonies of a year cycle. At the Great day people sing giving-a-name clan moyi kuy songs/chants, playful oshokor/oshorog and shylyik songs. Men’s songs are sung during the ceremony called ur vos. Chastushki are very popular among Udmurts. Children’s folklore is represented by lullabies. The collection of Udmurt folklore began in the late 19th century. Hungarian linguist B. Munkacsi registered 2 wedding songs in 1885 in Mozhga village, Birskiy district (Yanaulskiy district, RB) and published them in “Oral traditional ethnic Udmurt poetry” book (1887, in Hungarian). Several songs that he noted were included into the 1st volume of “Songs of Russian prisoners of war” collection (1926, in German). “Spring games and round dances of votyak youth” (1915) bu M.I. Ilyin shows the samples of Udmurt songs for round dances from Kupcheneyevo   village,   Belebeyevskiy   district   (Yermekeyevskiy district, RB). Hungarian researchers L.Vikar and G.Bereczki were collecting the lyrics of Udmurt songs in 1974–75 and published the “Votyak songs” book (1989, in English). It included the samples of Udmurt folklore songs with notes from Bashkortostan. Vikar released records of Udmurt songs from the Ural-Volga region in 1984. One of the records contains the songs of Udmurts from the republic. T.G. Minniyakhmetova, R.S. Nasibullin, historians V.D. Farshatov and A.V. Gilmayev made a great contribution to the collection and publication of folklore. Udmurt ethnomusicologics I.M. Nuriyeva was studying peculiarities of song culture and noticed the domination of the pentatonic borrowed from Tatar folklore songs.

T.G. Minniyakhmetova, R.R. Sadikov