Shentalinskaia, Tatyana

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New Materials on Russian Folklore From An American ArchiveTatyana Shentalinskaia. Moscow, RussiaFolkloristic discoveries relating to the old stratum of traditional culture continue to bemade in Russia on the threshold of the new millennium. This time new facts have come fromAmerica, from the archival materials of the Jesup North Pacific Expedition.When in 1897 the American Museum of Natural History conceived of the expedition forthe comparative study of the culture and genesis of the peoples in north-eastern Siberia andnorth-western America and began work, Russian scholars were brought in to take part. VladimirBogoraz (1865-1936) and Vladimir Jochelson (1855-1937) headed the Siberian north-easternsection of the expedition. Both had had experience living on the Kolyma River as politicalexiles and experience in ethnographic research in this region.Despite its peripheral position among the main scholarly tasks of the expedition thesescholars did not overlook the phenomenon of the enclave of Russian culture on the KolymaRiver (Yakutia) and the Anadyr River (Chukotka), and its preservation of an old stratum offolklore.As is generally known, ethnic groups distinguished by a mixture of the blood of Russiannewcomers and aborigines has been formed since the middle of the seventeenth century on theKolyma and Anadyr Rivers, as a result of the discovery and colonization of this Siberian outlyingarea,. First of all, this included the Yukagirs, Chuvans (one of the Yukagir tribes), Yakuts, andabsorbed Russianized families from these and several other tribes. The Russian language,Orthodoxy, and Russian folklore remained the cultural milieu that nourished the non-materialmanifestations of these groups.Bogoraz made transcriptions of Russian folklore on the Anadyr River in 1901 andJochelson on the Kolyma River in 1902. These scholars had phonographs at their disposa1.( 1)The texts of the Russian songs taken down by Bogoraz in the 1890s during his Kolymaexile have for the most part been published and have attracted the attention of philologists longago. The texts of the bylinas transcribed by him during the American expedition have also beendiscovered in the Archives of the Academy of Sciences in Petersburg. In particular, this concernsthe notebook "Phonograph. Texts for the recordings in Markovo in 1901." (Markovo is aRussian village on the Anadyr River.) G. L. Venediktov, who published these materials,established the following facts: "Obviously the notebook on the whole does not representdecipherings of the photo-recordings -- the fate of the cylinders with the recordings isunknown."(2) This means that the music and melodies recorded on the phonograph wereunknown and were not listened to.The fate of the cylinders can be conjectured. Since the president of the AmericanMuseum of Natural History, the banker and philanthropist Morris Jesup, subsidized theexpedition, it would be natural to expect that the whole collection had been sent to America.SEEFA Journal page 18SEEFA Journal 1998, Vol. III No. 2Now, after an exchange of archival materials became possible, I have received the soughtfor recordings. This was not at all simple because even though the phonograph collections ofBogoraz and Jochelson belong to the Museum in New York, they are preserved in the Archives ofTraditional Music, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana. I wish to express my appreciationto the Archive of Traditional Music at Indiana University for making the materials available andalso to David Anderson who pointed out the location of the phonograph cylinders, to ProfessorCarol Scott Leonard, and to the archivist Marilyn Graf, all of whom arranged to send copies ofthe recordings to me.lt is difficult to overestimate the significance of the recordings for the study of Russianfolklore. Eighty two specimens appear in the copies sent to us. Of course the quality of thesound vastly complicates not only their deciphering and notation, but also their identification.Nevertheless we have identified the majority of the specimens. These are the bylinas: "AlyoshaPopovich," "Dyuk Stepanovich," "Dobrynya and Marinka," "Ivan Kulakov," " lIya Muromets onthe Falcon Ship," seven historical songs about events of the seventeenth and eighteenthcenturies, one ballad, three Christmas "vinograde" and six canonic carol hymns, six lyric songs,two wedding songs, eighteen round dance and game songs, and twenty five dance songs andinstrumental tunes (for violin and balalaika).Preliminary knowledge of the material is a big help. The author herself happened torecord and publish the folklore of the Russian speaking Kolymians and Anadyrians in the 1960sand 1980s.(3)The recordings of the Jesup expedition have significantly expanded the geography of thelocation of Russian epic melodies, having moved it almost to the very north-eastern border ofour country.The recordings of the unique Kolyma genre of love improvisation called the"andylyshchina" are especially interesting. The name itself is noteworthy -- a word with aYukagir root and Russian suffix. The genre emerged from the contact and blending of twocultures. On the one hand, the endemic Kolyma culture includes features characteristic of theso-called "personal songs" of the Siberian aborigines; on the other hand, features of severalRussian genres have been absorbed. Recordings of the "andylyshchina" amount to only a hand fulland the melodies were published for the first time only two years ago.(4) I think that this genreas a phenomenon must be taken into account by contemporary ethnographers in theirconclusions about the way in which the Kolymians have formed a special ethnos with its ownself-consciousness and its own name.(5) I would add that they have done so with aself-consciousness capable of generating a new folklore genre.And finally the specimens of violin tunes from the sound collection of the Jesupexpedition will become an important contribution to Russian ethnomusicology. Until now onlyverbal descriptions of the playing of the Kolymian and Anadyrian musicians and their homemadeinstruments were known. These recordings have also expanded the boundaries of the location ofpage 19 Fall 1998SEEFA Journal 1998, Vol. III No. 2Russian violin tunes that until now have been known to exist only in Western Siberia.We now have much work ahead of us: continuing the deciphering and notation of thespecimens. analyzing new material originating a century ago. and introducing them into thecontext of facts already known to the study of folklore.NOTESI. "The Jesup North Pacific Expedition." The American Museum Journal. Vol. 3. no. 5(October. 1903): 109. I 15.2. Russkii folklor. Vol. 24 (1987): 148.3. See. for example: T. S. Shentalinskaia. "Russkaia pesnia an Chukotke" [The Russian song inChukotka]. Sovetskaia muzyka. no. 11 (1972); "Markovskie vecherki: Russkie narodnyepesni" [Markovo evenings: Russian folk songs]. Magadan, 1983. (A collection of songsrecorded in the village of Markovo on the River Anadyr.); "Russkaia epicheskaia poeziiaSibiri i Dalnego Vostoka" [Russian epic poetry of Siberia and the Far East]. Novosibirsk,1991. (The article "Napevy russkikh epicheskikh pesen Sibiri i Dalnego Vostoka" [Melodiesof Russian the epic songs of Siberia and the Far East], the musical texts, commentaries tothem, and an attached recording.)4. T. S. Shentalinskaia. "Andylyshchina (zhanr-endemik)" [The andylyshchina (an endemicgenre)]. In Ekspeditsionnye otkrytiia poslednikh let. SPb., 1996. 107-14.5. 1. Erunov. "Russkie starozhily nizovev Kolymy: Istoriia formirovaniia" [The Russianold-timers on the lower reaches of the Kolyma: History of their formation]. Rossiiskiietnograf. no. 12 (1993): 108-25.SEEF A Journal page 20SEEFA Journal 1998, Vol. III No. 2

New Materials on Russian Folklore from an American Archive

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New Materials on Russian Folklore from an American Archive

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