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Macedonian Čalgija : A Musical Refashioning of National Identity

2012; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 21; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/17411912.2012.699768

1741-1920

Sonia Tamar Seeman,

Diverse Musicological Studies

Abstract What is the role of music in fashioning a national identity out of a cosmopolitan past? The Macedonian čalgija genre is an instructive case study of the process by which state agencies and historical communities engage in, and contest, identity construction. This article traces the effects of state cultural policies that shaped čalgija—an Ottoman urban genre—during the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (1945–91) and the processes by which čalgija was gradually recast as a distinctly Macedonian Christian and modern form of expression. This study contributes ethnomusicological rigour to an anthropology of nationalism per Turino in order to explicitly analyse the musical ground of national identity construction as proposed by Herzfeld and Danforth. This article uses an approach that I term critical semantics to analyse the ways in which boundaries of musical style become contested frames through which musicians, audiences and state representatives experience varied attachments to national ideology and historical communal identity. I focus on the discourses of folklore agencies, research institutions and musicians alongside musical practice in two formative periods: 1944–60, during which čalgija was highlighted as a symbol of Macedonia's cosmopolitan urban past; and 1960s–80s, when čalgija was subjected to increasingly homogenising stylistic features and loss of regional specificities in response to growing ethnic tensions in the region. I trace the impact of these political and social changes through a musical analysis of four versions of a heroic ballad ('The song of Gorgi Sugarev/Mariovo began to weep') that span 1928–79. I argue that studies of musical nationalism need to address musical silences, erasure and transformations as well as the incorporation of new elements. Keywords: MacedoniaSocialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia'Folk' MusicUrban MusicRomani ('Gypsy') Professional MusiciansCosmopolitanismNationalismTraditionCritical Semantics Acknowledgements I am grateful for permissions and support from Branko Prokopenko, Mate Gruevski, and RTS čalgija director [H]Ilmi Baki. I am particularly indebted to the families of Muamet Čun, Redžep and Ustrev Said, Nigar [H]adži-Kune, Hilmi and Raim Baki; Mefail Sakip; and Pece Atanovski. For discussions during and after fieldwork I am also indebted to discussions during and after fieldwork with Eran Frankel, Irene Markoff, Kathleen Oien, Lorraine Sakata, Carol Silverman, Jane Sugarman and Christopher Waterman. My additional thanks to Lauren Brody, Joe Graziosi, Jane Sugarman, Don Weeda, Martin Koenig and Larry Weiner for bibliographic and other information on the recordings analysed here, and to Jim Buhler, Ryan McCormack, Mary Neuberger and Gil Rappaport at UT-Austin. The overarching theoretical concerns of this work are influenced by conversations, seminar work and writings by Timothy Rice and Roger Savage, whose contributions I gratefully acknowledge here. I would also like to thank Victor Friedman and the anonymous readers for their careful and thoughtful comments; this work is much richer for their input. I am solely responsible for interpretations presented here. Notes 1This research is based on fieldwork conducted in 1985–97 with return visits in 1989 and 1999. Fieldwork in 1985–87 was funded by a Fulbright IIE grant, and was conducted under the supervision of Macedonia's Institute for Folklore (Institut za Folklor) and musicologist/mentor Borivoje Džimrevski. During this time period, I attended rehearsals and recording session of the Radio-Television Skopje čalgija ensemble, conducted interviews, and attended and recorded weddings in which professional čalgija ensembles performed, in informal and formal contexts in towns throughout Macedonia. 2Throughout this article I use Croatian orthography for Macedonian and Macedonian-Turkish terminology. 3I am using local self-designating terminology as preferred by my Romani consultants: Rom for singular, Roma for plural, and Romani for adjectival designations. Several Macedonian Romani intellectuals participated in the World Romani Congress meetings beginning in the 1970s, and this mobilised local Roma regarding control over self-designation. When speaking Macedonian, the majority of Romani professional musicians referred to themselves as Rom (singular), Romite (plural) and romski/romska/romsko (adjective) by the 1980s. In contrast, some Macedonians Slavs continued to use the derogatory terms Cigan (singular noun), Cigani (plural noun) and ciganski/ciganska/cigansko (adjective). The term Cigan derives from the Byzantine Greek label athinganoi that originally referred to a heretical sect of Christianity (see Soulis Citation1961). 4In this article, I use the term SFRY-Macedonia when referring to national identity issues prior to 1991, and The Republic of Macedonia when referring to post-1991 developments. 5For more scholarly perspectives on contemporary competing claims, see Danforth (Citation1993, Citation1995), Pettifer (Citation2000), Roudometof (Citation2000) and Zahariadis (Citation1994). For details on the historical context, see Lange-Akhund (Citation1998), Palmer and King (Citation1971), Slijepčević (Citation1958) and Troebst (Citation1983). 6In using this approach I avoid making claims of 'hybridity' and 'authenticity', which I see as ideological categories of legitimation and resistance as discussed by Stokes (Citation2004: 59–62). 7During the 1980s, čalgija referred to the genre, čalgi to the ensemble (singular) or ensemble musician, and čalgiite ensemble musicians (plural). For ease of reading in English, this article uses the term čalgija as a cover term for all of these senses. 8'Ala turka' is the term used in Macedonian for the French designation, 'à la turca' or 'in the Turkish style'. 9See Feldman (Citation1990/91) for the Ottoman historical basis for this performance format. Feldman claims that Ottoman music was the first in the Islamic world to systematise this practice. 10Unfortunately there are no extant recordings from the pre-1960s period. Until the mid-1950s all performances were broadcast live (živa emisija); wire recordings were used until the early 1960s, and a flood in 1962 destroyed all but a few of these. Some early 1960s recordings were transferred onto magnetic tape. 11During SFR-Yugoslavia, this town was called 'Titov Veles' (Tito's Veles), at present the town is called Veles. During Ottoman rule, the town was named for its famed bridge, [Kacute]uprija (from Turkish: köprülü). 12For background on Firfov, see Dimitrijevski (Citation2006) and Mitevska (Citation2006). See sound examples from holdings at the Institute for Researching and Archiving of Music, Skopje-Macedonia (IRAM) under the direction of Prof. Dr Dimitrije Buzarovski, 2008. 13There were two minor modifications with the addition of the tarabuka by the 1960s, and replacement of the džumbuš with the more prestigious and older ut in the 1980s. 14 Novokompanovana muzika (newly-composed music) is an urban popular genre that began in Serbia in the 1950s and became a significant commercial force by the 1980s in most of former Yugoslavia. This genre combined modern pop instruments (guitar, bass, drum set) with regional urban instruments (clarinet, accordion) to back up solo singers. Novokompanovana muzika song texts concerned love, views on urban and rural life, sung to melodies loosely based on regional folk songs using local dance meters and simple harmonic progressions (Forry Citation2000: 948–9; Vidić-Rasmussen Citation1996). 15I use this term following Pierre Bourdieu's theorisation of human agency as circumscribed by a socially learned set of dispositions, or habitus. According to Bourdieu, collective dispositions are conditioned by class, gender, ethnic and other circumscribed sets of possible actions, behaviours and inscriptions by which social categories are maintained. See, for example, Bourdieu (Citation1977, Citation1984). 16See Pennanen (Citation2008) for an overview of the musicological treatment of makams by South-eastern European scholars, particularly 'Segah'. 17For more information on Tale Ognenovski, see the biographical entry written by his son, Steven Ognenovski (Ognenovski Citation2009). 18In Macedonian, Vatrešna Makedonska-Revolutsiona Organizatsiya. 19See, for example, the recording of Vaska Ilieva at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Myw9rloYUDQ; and that of Petranka Kostadinova at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sULhBgPORns (both accessed 29 May 2012). There are also several Bulgarian versions with images of guerrilla fighters, minus the Macedonian flag. 21This singer pronounced 'Mariovo' as 'Moriovo' in this recording. 20This recording was made available due to the research efforts of Lauren Brody, who researched, collected and re-mastered pre-World War II 78-rpm records from Bulgaria. My transliteration depicts this song as sung on the 1928 recording, rather than conforming to standardised Macedonian or Bulgarian language forms. I do so to recognise pluralism and out of respect for regional and historical differences, and thus have made slight modifications in Brody's excellent transcription and translation to reflect this version as performed. See, for example, footnote 17. 22I confirmed the size of an enlarged half-step interval between the first and second degree with a Pythagorean microtone tuner and against my Turkish kanun, which has one-comma levers. 23I have transposed the 1940s and 1970s versions of this song to 'e' 'Segâh'/'c' 'Rast' as in the 1928 example for ease of comparison. Additional informationNotes on contributorsSonia Tamar Seeman Sonia Tamar Seeman is an assistant professor of ethnomusicology in the musicology/ethnomusicology division in the Sarah and Ernest Butler School of Music at the University of Texas with a joint appointment in the Center for Middle Eastern Studies. She has conducted fieldwork in Macedonia and Turkey, and her current work focuses on Rom ('Gypsy') communities and minorities at the intersection of political and aesthetic representation