rom: Yearbook for Traditional Music 22/1990 MUSIC AND ETHNIC HISTORY AN ATTEMPT TO SUBSTANTIATE A EURASIAN HYPOTHESIS _ by Izaly Zemtsovsky Important goals of ethnomusicology are to arrive at an understanding of the relations between the musical traditions and their corresponding culture—these are often internal and very subtle connections—and to contribute to the study of ethnic histories. Only when we enter the realm of history do we become interesting to students of other humanistic subjects. The entry of ethnomusicology into history may be as complex and responsible an action as man’s entry into space. I shall not describe the theoretical and practical difficulties of such a study. They are immense. I have previously discussed the methods of the musicological study of ethnogenesis, to which I have attached great importance (Zemtsovsky 1988a,b). There is but one methodological circumstance I wish to bring to your attention. You recall that Alan Lomax ignored notational analysis in studying intercultural connections and concentrated on sound (Lomax 1968). Twenty years later I disregard phono-recordings and concentrate on the analysis of rhythmical figures. Is this a step back from the achievements of musical anthropology to the inadequacy of formal analysis? My answer is no, and not only because I connect specific elements of musical form with history. The principle is important, not the details. The important thing is that I have a concept. According to this concept, intercultural connections exist on many levels, in sounds and structures, though similarities often fail to go parallel. It even happens that some things prevent us from seeing others. It may be that, when we seek a similarity of sound, we may lose sight of a similarity in verse and its musical and rhythmical reading. Has anybody ever proved that these signs of resemblance are not substantial in themselves? The similarity of phonation, articulation and timbre indicates a resemblance other than that of rhythmic formulas. It does not matter that the ethnic cultures which I compare contrast greatly in sound and that they possess incomparably different ethnic styles. Let it be so! This enhances the effect of the similarities discovered in rhythm despite the difference of the ethnic idea of sound, texture, language etc. These connections may not be too “anthropological” but this does not detract from their historicity. I even undertake to date them in ethnic history. In any case, don’t we discover characteristically ethnic pulsations in the thythmicity of folk music? As for rhythmic stereotypes, crystallized into formulas, these do have exceedingly stable traditions. Ethnically characteristic rhythms have evolved into ethnic behavior stereotypes which are as much a part of the ethnos as its sounds and timbre ideals. The stereotypes reflect certain semantic tendencies. The rhythmics accepted as a form-shaping stimulus paint in a way the musical portrait of theZEMTSOVSKY EURASIAN HYPOTHESIS / 21 ethnos. I can say that rhythmic forms are exceedingly important in studying historic connections. I should like to illustrate the complexity of ethnomusicological research into ethnogenetic connections with one example, which I hope will clarify my point. It is similar to a detective story, even though scientific. Iam speaking of songs whose entire stanza is based on an eight-syllable line. The octosyllabic line is universal for the Indo-European family of languages and probably others, too. I must start out by limiting myself to one type. I have chosen the asymmetrically articulated 5+3 type, the one with a caesura after the fifth syllable. I emphasize: it is an 8-syllable line (sometimes doubled to 16-syllables) that forms the entire stanza without any supplements. But even such a limitation is insufficient because the 5+3 syllable line may be subjected to different musical and rhythmical interpretations, depending on which of the syllables are prolonged or accented, I shall restrict myself to the type with prolonged final syllables in both of its two segments—the fifth syllable in the first part and the third in the second part, according to the ..... JJ/ structure, that is a combination of the fourth pwon and the anapest. So we shall be concerned with melodies based entirely on this particular rhythmic formula (hereafter RF), which can be described as a rhythmic cliché. This limitation is sufficient for the initial selection and comparison of material. Slavists are well-acquainted with this rhythm which is frequently found in wedding songs among the East Slavs of the Russian-Byelorussian border and among the South Slavs in Bulgaria. The rhythm is also present in the calendar ritual and round-dance songs of these peoples. The double 8-syllable line of this type is so popular in the indicated areas that it is accepted as their musical symbol. Restricting ourselves to the Slavic world, we get an interesting picture of the geographical distribution and functionality of the rhythm. We can even draw conclusions of an ethnogenetic nature by comparing our melocartograms with the maps showing the settlements of ancient Slavic tribes. A major effort was undertaken by Kliment Kvitka (1941) and Feodosy Rubtsov (1962) and was continued by Nikolai Kaufman (1968, 1976), Izaly Zemtsovsky (1975), Zinaida Mozheiko (1985) and recently Tamara Varfolomeyeva (1988) as well as others. The following is the Smolensk-Byelorussian version!: bps 25] The type is exceedingly stable. It has characteristic sound, but it cannot be called entirely Russian because it is not spread wide enough. It occurs in Byelorussia and the Smolensk region as well as, strangely, in the wedding songs of the regions along the southern Russian rivers, Seversky Donets, and the lower reaches of the Don. There is an enormous distance between the Western and the South Russian areas. The type of rhythm is well represented in the Ukraine, especially its eastern part. It is widespread in Bulgaria where it prevails in the Rhodope mountains, the least agricultural region of Bulgaria, and is also found in Thrace. It is22 / 1990 YEARBOOK FOR TRADITIONAL MUSIC curious that the 5+3 line is used in the epic genre of songs sung in Eastern Bulgaria while the 4+6 prevails in the rest of the country. Here is a Bulgarian version of our RF.? 63 SS a = pl J=1s2 One question follows another. Why is it that among other South Slavs (such as in modern Yugoslavia) this RF is so infrequent that it is more of an exception than a rule? Why is it rare among the West Slavs? Why is it absent from the Russian north? It would probably be a mistake to describe it as generally Slavic or as generally Russian. Could it be that a Smolensk type was brought to the Balkans by historical Smolensk dwellers who had participated in the ethnogenesis of the Bulgarians? But why then is the rhythm so popular in the Ukraine and along the Don River, where the tribe never set foot? It may possibly be due to the initial settlement of the historic territory by the Krivichi tribe. The history of this Baltic-Slav tribe explains many things concerning East European elements contained in Bulgarian folklore, but it fails to give an explanation for this particular rhythm, its absence in Lithuania and its presence in the Don area. There are other questions, too. Why is the rhythm found in districts separated by considerable distances and is absent in neighboring districts? There arises the first cautious supposition that one and the same particular ethnic component is involved in the ethnogenesis of the aforementioned peoples and in the ethnic history of their dialects. What component is it? Here it is where the investigation starts. The detective story begins. There is much evidence and no clarity. I suppose that, at this stage of investigation, it would be methodologically correct to abandon the limits of the Slav world and assume that the ethnic component sought is not Slavic in origin, that it came to the Slavs from the outside, but soon took root. Comparative studies should not be subject to a priori ethnographic restrictions. Facts come first and hypotheses may come later. The scientific identification of the exclusiveness of a national phenomenon requires that we abandon the limits of a specific culture and make certain that nobody else possesses it too. You cannot define a phenomenon unless you step outside its limits. I am leaving out the details of the years I spent in search. I have been watching the rhythm like a detective following the tracks of a suspected criminal. Here are my first results. I discovered RF 5+3 not only among Slavs but, on USSR territory, in ritual songs and laments of the Kazakh in Central Asia and the Georgians in the Caucasus. Individual traces were also discovered abroad—in Central Europe, among the wedding songs of the Hungarians and the Romanians in Bihor. I found only one instanceZEMTSOVSKY EURASIAN HYPOTHESIS / 23 in the extreme of East of Europe in a publication of Bashkir wedding laments (Suleymanov 1983). One version of the octosyllabic line, similar to that of the East and South Slavs, was found among the wedding laments of the Mishar Tatars and the Mordovians (Sherfedinov 1978). And that is all there is. There are few published musical facts and no confidence that oral tradition does not retain secrets that are important to us. But I am forced to limit myself to the data obtained from publications because they allow me to set forth ethnogenetic hypotheses, though, alas, I will not be able to do all the necessary international fieldwork myself. The most important thing now is to find some historically justifiable connection between regions where the rhythm is known, regions that contrast and are remote geographically, ethnically, in language and religion. But I must start with a few illustrations. I shall give an example of the bride's farewell song synsu and funeral laments zhoktau in Kazakhstan):3 syns zhoktau eee sf = SF SS 5 ————= Pe Who has eyes, hears! There is an astounding similarity with the structure of the Slav wedding songs.‘ I am calling attention to such a characteristic of the rhythmic type as the invariable division of the octosyllabic line. This structural stereotype is similar to the principal RF of the Kazakh and Kirgiz epos, where the second part is also configured as two eighths and a fourth. But the 4+3 RF of the verse line with a possible division to 5+3 according to the J../3 *.J, pattern is prevalent in the epos. This means that the last syllable of the first part is not prolonged. Even so, the second part represents an impressive and exceedingly stable stereotype, which could be described as a kind of generative model for the musical reading of the 4 or 5 + 3 syllabic line. Considering the fact that the Kazakh have a predilection for the epos, the model could have influenced the structure of other song genres. In general, the folk music of the modern Kazakh, who had but recently been nomads, consists mainly of Turkic verses—seven and eleven-syllabic lines. The purely 5+3 verse is found only in female ritual songs—wedding and funeral laments. It is so far an open question whether the verse evolved in the course of Kazakh folk creativity, which is comparatively young, or descended from ancient tribal cultures contributing to the ethnic history of the Kazakh people. We shall now leave the steppes of Kazakhstan and hurry to the Caucasus, which is regrettably largely ignored by our Slavists. We shall overlook traces of our rhythm in the Northern Caucasus—among the epic songs called adyg pshinatli—and in Azerbaijan—among the ritual songs of women and children—in order to ascend to Tushetia on the Georgian24 / 1990 YEARBOOK FOR TRADITIONAL MUSIC border with Chechen-Ingushetia, Dagestan, Kabardino-Balkaria and Azerbaijan. The inhabitants of Tushetia are mainly sheep breeders. Even today these people are known as “the nation of nomads”. According to Shalva Aslanishvili (1956) and others, it is here that we find numerous songs in various genres, based on the same 5+3 RF. In Georgian it is called dabali shairi, or a low shairi, which prevails in Eastern Georgia, although the symmetrical octameter, called the magali (high) shairi, is popular among most Georgians. I shall quote two examples: the shepherd’s song and the lament of a Tushetia woman.5 Sa == == SS SSS The affinity to the Slavic and especially to the Kazakh musical intonatsia that was found in the mountains of Eastern Georgia, represents a sensation. It cannot be explained by contacts between Georgians and the Slavs and Kazakh. The Georgian explanation for the Tushetia dialect is the proximity of people belonging to a foreign ethnic group, but no traces of our rhythm have been discovered among the immediate neighbors of the Tushetians. All that remains is to seek some historic evidence of an ethnogenetic nature. Slavic influence is excluded in the Caucasus. The only plausible explanation that I see is that the rhythm is a reflection of the ancient Caucasian assimilation of the so-called Kipchak or Polovtsy, who were the historic ancestors of the modern Kazakh. Indeed, according to Georgian chronicles and other historical sources, vassal nomadic associations did exist in 12th century Georgia. No less than 225 thousand Kipchak migrated and settled in Georgia between the years of 1118 and 1120. Another ten thousand arrived in the middle of the 12th century. More Kipchak came later, during the reign of Queen Tamara (12th century). The Kipchak had provided forty thousand warriors and five thousand select fighting men for the personal guard of Georgian King David IV the Builder (11th century). Khan Atrak Sharaganovich, the ruler of Kipchakia, became his father-in-law when he gave him his daughter Gurandukht in marriage. She was to become the lawful queen of Georgia. It is surmised, with a measure of validity, that the 11-12th century Kipchak were neither Mongols, nor were they Moslems. The Georgians maintained good-neighborly relations with them and were well informed of Kipchak customs and way of life. So it is perfectly likely that the phenomenally talented Georgian people borrowed and made creative use of some of the musical instruments and more widespread rhythmic formulas of Kipchak music, which survived to our day only in the high mountains of Tushetia.ZEMTSOVSKY EURASIAN HYPOTHESIS / 25 This seems to be a convincing hypothesis, though the problem is not entirely solved. Quite a few questions remain. Georgian music is closer to Kazakh than to Slavic music. Why so? It seems that the media for Kipchak influence were totally different in Georgia and Russia, but the autochthonous type of intonatsia, either Georgian or Russian, always took the upper hand. We are forced to compare the results of long historical processes in which the national intonatsia prevailed. According to my hypothesis, even if the Kipchak did not create the rhythm, they spread it throughout Europe. At least traces of 5-+3 RF are found wherever the Kipchak existed historically—in Central Asia, in Russia, the Ukraine, and the Caucasus. No traces of it have been found in places that the Kipchak did not visit. The history and ethnography of the Kipchak have not yet been sufficiently studied which prevents the full discussion of our hypothesis. The convincingly reconstructed history of the Kipchak could be the main argument for Kipchak hypothesis of the asymmetrical 8-syllabic line. At any rate the Kipchak hypothesis of our RF’s spread, at least throughout Central and Eastern Europe, Central Asia and the Caucasus, seems to me to be the most acceptable today. There is no space in this paper for a list of the historical facts confirming the close and regular contacts between the Kipchak and the Georgians, or the Slavs, or the Hungarians or the Romanians. To put it briefly: the 10th to 12th centuries A.D. were the period of what might be called the joint history of these peoples. It was full of battles and marriages— including the most highly-placed unions between princes and khans, weddings that were attended by crowds and were rich in music. It was a period of coexistence and even joint residence in the cities, of a mutual offering of asylum to refugees, of Russification and Christianization of the nomads, who often came to live in Russia. As for the banks of the Seversky Donets I had mentioned earlier, in the 11th century the Polovtsy were settled there. Numerous Krivichi and the Polyans of Kievan Rus were in contact with the Kipchak, whom the Russians called Polovtsy (lit. “yellow-haired"), while the Western Europeans called them Kumans. “Burials of Turkic nomads have been excavated in large numbers in the Ukraine” (Debets 1948: 261). Traces of Polovets epics have been discovered in Russian chronicles. The rhythm of the Polovets epics with their separated 3-syllabic second part and the similar rhythm of the Polovets bridal farewell songs were heard for two and a half centuries in Russia and other areas inhabited by the Kipchak. The ethnonym “Kazakh” evolved in the midst of the Kipchak, and the Kipchak became the nucleus for the evolution of the Kazakh people. That is why similarities in modern Kazakh and Georgian rhythms can be explained as a trace of the early medieval influence of the Kipchak in the Caucasus. There are complexities with the Bulgarians and I do not think we should limit ourselves to Kipchak hypothesis in regard to this area, although the Kipchak did participate in the contacts maintained by the East and South Slavs till at least the beginning of the 12th century. The Slavs came to the Balkans 500 years before the Kipchak appeared in Europe. Our rhythm26 / 1990 YEARBOOK FOR TRADITIONAL MUSIC must have been spread by the Kipchak, though they were not the exclusive creators of it. We will recall that the first Slav colonists arrived in the Balkans in the middle of the fifth century. It was also the time of the first Bolgars. There is every reason to think that this ethnos played an important part in the history of the Eurasian musical culture. Ethnomusicology regrettably does not give it sufficient attention. The Bolgars migrated to the Caucasus in the 1-3rd centuries A.D. Danube Bolgaria emerged in the last quarter of the 7th century and existed for two hundred years. Volga Bolgaria and Ancient Russia started to establish their statehood almost simultaneously—in the 9th and 10th centuries. They actively maintained contacts along the waterways and caravan routes. Russia and Bolgaria lived in peace for 250 years, until the time of Khan Batyi (early 13th century).© There were Bolgarian settlements in Russian cities, especially in northeastern Russia, already in the 10th-11th centuries. There were Bolgarian merchants, craftsmen and builders living in Russian cities during the 12th century. Mixed marriages were not uncommon, It is also significant that the Bolgars and Kipchak had the same origins and spoke of kindred languages. Both peoples were defeated by the Mongols in the 13th century. Both peoples found asylum in Slav lands and in Hungary, becoming part of agricultural society. Ethnically the Bolgars were mainly Turks, though there was no homo- geneity among them. Some scholars define the Bolgars as an amalgamation of three groups—Finnish, Turkic and Slav. Personally I believe it possible that there was a closeness of Bolgar-Kipchak musical and speech intonatsia and that they knew the rhythmo-pulsation based on the «sos Jd4 RF. It was “in their blood”. This rhythm could have migrated across Europe to the Caucasus, and especially to the Balkans, together with the Bolgars. This is an important supplement to my Kipchak hypothesis. It also explains the traces of rhythm along the Volga and on the European side of the Urals—again expressed in wedding laments, which is no accidental thing. I feel that I have offered you quite a detective story, though I was unable to provide all the answers. It is easier to expose a murderer than a musical rhythm. The Bolgar-Kipchak hypothesis explains only the existence of the specific RF among a specified number of peoples. I have not discussed here in detail the microlocalization of the rhythm in modern times. The correlation of its speech and motor components has not yet been studied. I have also given little attention here to the ethnographic correlation of the musical versions of the 5+3 line, where differences are concentrated in the rhythmic configuration of the first part while the second part remains constant. Finally, little is known about the older (Siberian) history of this RF. The Bolgars and Kipchak came from Siberia and their origins are to be sought in Asia, so the search for rhythmical analogies should be continued throughout the vast space of Eurasia.ZEMTSOVSKY EURASIAN HYPOTHESIS / 27 NOTES From Rubtsov 1971. No. 9. From Stoin 1973. No. 939. From Bekkhozhina 1972, No. 34 (synsu); and from Kokumbaeva 1988, No. 2 b (zhoktau) 4. first wrote this in a critical article about a book compiled by T. Bekkhozhina (Zemtsovsky 1974). 5. From Aslanishvili 1956, pp. 170-171, No. 13; and from Kokeladze 1984, p. 129, No. 35. 6. The millenary of the Russo-Bulgarian treaty was celebrated in Kazan, USSR, in 1985. ene REFERENCES CITED Anchabadze, Z.V. 1960 Kipchaki Severnogo Kavkaza po dannym gruzinskikh letopisey XI-XIV vekov. [The Kipchak of the Northern Caucasus on the basis of Georgian manuscripts of the 11th-14th Centuries.] Materialy nauchnoy sessii po probleme proiskhozhdeniya balkarskogo i karachayevskogo narodov. Nal ‘chick. Pp. 113-126. Aslanishvili, Shalva 1956 Ocherki o gruzinskoy narodnoy pesne. [Essays on Georgian folk songs.] Tom 2. Tbilisi. {In Georgian]. Bartol'd, Vasiliy 1968 Sochineniya v 9 tomakh. Tom V: Raboty po istorii i filologii tyurkskikh i mongolskikh narodov. [Works in 9 Volumes. Vol. 5: Studies on the history and philology of Turkish and Mongol peoples.] Moskva: Akademija Nauk SSSR. Bekkhozhina, Taliga 1972 200 kazakhskikh pesen: Muzyka'no-etnograficheskiy sbornik. [200 Kazakh songs: Musical-ethnographic collection.] Alma-Ata: Oner. Debets, G.F. 1948 Paleoantropologiya. Leningrad. Karimullin, Abrar 1988 Tatary: etnos i etnonim. [The Tatars: Ethnos and ethnonym.] Kazan’: Tatarskoye knizhnoye izdatel'stvo. Kaufman, Nikolay 1968 Nyakoy obshchi cherti mezhdu narodnata pesen na bulgarite i iztochnite slavyani. [Certain common traits between folk songs of Bulgars and early Slavs.] Sofia: Akademiya na naukite. 1976 Bulgarska svatbena pesen. [The Bulgarian wedding song.] Sofia: Muzika. Khalikov, A. Kh. 1986 Volzhskaya Bulgariya i Rus’: K 1000-letiyu russko-bulgarskogo dogovora. [Volga-Bulgaria and the Rus: On the millinary of the Russian-Bulgarian treaty.] Kazan’. Otvetstvennyy redaktor Khalikov. Kokeladze, Grigol 1984 Sto gruzinskikh narodnykh pesen. [100 Georgian folk songs.] Tbilisi: Khelovneba. [In Georgian]. Kokumbaeva, B.D. 1988 Tipologiya zhoktau i ego pretvoreniya v drugikh zhanrakh kazakhskogo folklora. [The typology of zhoktau and his creation in other genres of Kazakh folklore.) Izvestiya Akademii nauk Kazakhskoy SSR. Seriya filologicheskaya. No. 4. S. 53. No. 26. Kvitka, Kliment 1941 Ob oblastyakh rasprostraneniya nekotorykh tipov belorusskikh kalendarnykh i svadebnykh pesen.—Belorusskiye narodnyye pesni. [On the regions of diffusion of some types of Belorussian calendar and wedding songs. Belorussian folk songs.] Sostavitel’ Zinaida Ewal'd. Moskva. Leningrad: Gosudarstvennoye muzykal'noye izdatel'stvo.28 / 1990 YEARBOOK FOR TRADITIONAL MUSIC Lomax, Alan 1968 Folk Song Style and Culture. Washington, D.C.: American Association for the Advancement of Science. Mozheyko, Zinaida 1985, Kalendarno-pesennaya kul'tura Belorussii: Opyt sistemno-tipologicheskogo issledovaniya. [Calendar song culture of Belorussia: An experiment of system-typological inquiry.] Minsk: Nauka i tekhnika. Parkhomenko, V.A. 1940 Sledy polovetskogo eposa v letopisyakh. [Vestiges of Polovetsy epics in old manuscripts.] Problemy istochnikovedeniya: Sbornik statey. Moskva, Leningrad: Tom 3: 391-93. Peretyatkovich, G.I. 1877 Povolzh’e v XV i XVI vekakh: Ocherki iz istorii kraya i ego kolonizatsii. [Povolzh’e in the 15th and 16th Centuries: Glimpes into the history of the region and its colonization.] Moskva. Pletneva, Svetlana 1975 Polovetskaya zemlya.—Drevnerusskiye knyazhestva X - XIII vekov. [The land of the Polovetsy. Old Russian principalities in the 10th-13th Centuries.) Moskva. Rubtsov, Feodosiy 1962 _Intonatsionnyye svyazi v pesennom tvorchestve slavyanskikh narodov. [ntonational relationships in the song creation of Slavic peoples.] Leningrad: Sovetskiy Kompozitor. 1971 __Ol'shanskiye pesni. [Songs from the Olsha region.] Leningrad: Sovetskiy Kompozitor. Samoylovich, Aleksandr 1927 Oslove kazakh. [On the word kazakh.]—Kazakhi: Antropologicheskiye ocherki. Moskva. Sherfedinov, Yag’ya 1978 ‘Zvuchit Kaytarma. [The Kaytarma sounds.] Tashkent. [In Krim-Tatar and Russian]. Stoin, Vasil 1973 _Narodni pesni ot Severoiztochna Bulgariya. [Folk songs from Northeastern Bulgaria.) Tom 2. Sustavil i redaktiroval Ivan Kachulev. Sofia. Suleymanov, Rif 1983 | Bashkirskoye narodnoye tvorchestvo: Pesni i naigryshi. [Bashkir folk creativity: Songs and playing. Ufa. [In Bashkir]. Varfolomeyeva, Tamara 1988 Severobelorusskaya svad’ba: Obryad, pessenno-melodicheskiye tipy. [Northbyelorussian wedding: Rite, song-melodic types.] Minsk: Nauka i tekhnika. Vdovin, Gavriil 1972 Ustno-poeticheskoye tvorchestvo mordovskogo_naroda. [Oral-poetic creation of the Mordvinian people.| Tom 6. Chast’ I. Erzyanskaya svadebnaya poezija. Zapis' melodiy G.G. Vdovina. Saransk. Zemtsovsky, Izaly 1974 _Retsensiya na sbornik pesen T. Bekkhozhinoy. [Review of the song collection of T. Bekkhozhina]. Sovetskaya Muzyka 3: 96-7. 1975 Melodika kalendarnykh pesen. [The melody of calendar songs.] Leningrad: Muzyka. 1988 Muzyka i etnogenez: issledovatel'skiye predposylki, zadachi, puti. [Music and ethnogenesis: Research and assumptions, problems, and. ways.] Soveiskaya etnografiya 2: 15-23. [with English summary]. 1988 Epos v istorii mezhzhanrovykh i mezhetnicheskikh svyazey. [The epos in the history of intergenre and interethnic connections.] Problemy izucheniya muzyki eposa: Tezisy dokladov. Klaypeda. Litovskaya SSR. Pp. 6-8.