Balkan Refrain: Form and Tradition in European Folk Song (Volume 9) (Europea: Ethnomusicologies and Modernities, 9) - Hardcover

Golemovic, Dimitrije O.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0810867370 ISBN 13: 9780810867376

Publisher: Scarecrow Press, 2010

Synopsis

While the refrain is a frequent and important feature of folk singing, little has been written on it and what it can achieve. Balkan Refrain: Form and Tradition in European Folk Song attempts to establish what refrain actually is and how it can be defined in folk and scholarly practice based on musical examples from Serbia, Montenegro, and the Republic of Srpska, with the aim of finding general rules applicable to refrains in the songs of other nations. The refrain is observed from musical and linguistic perspectives, as well as its religious, social, and economical uses. As refrain is so important in songs, special attention is devoted to its role in the development of singing.

Dimitrije O. Golemovic examines various forms of refrains and their constructive role in singing, and he establishes a terminology based on several characteristics of refrains, such as their role in the song and its place within the melopoetic unit. Golemovic also takes the view that refrain can be a specific "code" in the song that marks its melody, and he supports this with a number of examples, both ancient and more recent. Also discussed is the relationship between refrain and movement in songs accompanying dance and the role of refrain in commercializing newly-composed folk music. The book includes notes, a bibliography, 190 musical examples, and an audio CD of traditional folk songs as well as some examples of newly composed folk songs.

About this title

About the Author:

Dimitrije O. Golemovic is professor of ethnomusicology at the Faculty of Music in Belgrade and author of Folk Music of the Podrinje Region (1987).

Review:

Whatever its contents, this book would be worthy of note simply because it has been published in English...Dimitrije Golemovic's study opens up a world that, while it will have fascinated many, will also have frustrated many who have no access to publications in Serbian and related languages. It is a greatly revised translation of the author’s study published in Serbian in 2000. But the book is much more than merely worthy of note:Golemovic“s many years of research enable him to deal with a hugely important topic—the meaning, context and realization of the refrain in Balkan song—in magisterial fashion....This extremely valuable contribution to the field of Balkan song is accompanied by a very useful compact disc containing no fewer than sixty-three excerpts, all of which are indicated in the text, and which, in conjunction with the extensive selection of music examples, make this book a seminal contribution to the field. The author’s writing style is fluid and engaging; the few examples of “translationese” merely serve to emphasize the remarkably high quality of the translation by Milos Zlatkalik of the Serbian first edition. (Notes: Quarterly Journal of the Music Library Association 2011-09-01)

About this edition

• Publisher: Scarecrow Press
• Publication date: 2010
• ISBN 10: 0810867370
• ISBN 13: 9780810867376
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 236