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Plenary Session: Ethnomusicology and Ethnochoreology at Home in Croatia during the 1990s and Early 200s: War, Revitalization, Applied Work

In introduction, Naila Ceribašić (the organizer of the panel) points out that the intention of the panel is to highlight the interests, approaches and accomplishments of a small, nationally-oriented scholarly discipline which has remained mainly at home in Croatia. Nevertheless, in recent fifteen years - urged by the war, and a need for post-war reconstruction and reconciliation - it has mostly dealt with issues related exactly to the three themes of this conference. In this panel, the emphasis will be to reflect after a distance of time upon writings coming out of the 1990s war, to evaluate the effects of applied projects, to address national versus transnational concepts, and to question if and how a discipline which is oriented to home issues can participate in a general scholarly knowledge. // Elsie Ivancich Dunin addresses a role of a dance researcher related to the revitalization of a dance linked strongly to changing national identities within a Diaspora community. The context is with several thousand emigrants, and their descendants, from the coastal area of Croatia beginning in the late 19th century (during the Austrian political administration), settled in Antofagasta (a port city) in northern Chile. Within this Diaspora, a dance, "Salonsko Kolo" happens to have a history linked to national allegiances following each of the major wars involving Croatia in the 20th century, the earliest being a conflict between "Austriaco" and "Yugoslavo" identities during World War One when this urban Slavic dance form was introduced into the community, followed by a revitalization of the dance during World War Two for fund-raising activities to assist the war effort in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia ; the next revitalization of this dance came when the community was expected to represent itself with a dance performance in a festival program outside of their "Yugoslavo" community then identified to the Communist- Socialist state of Yugoslavia. The latest continuity of this dance is marked with a Croatian identity after the 1990s war and establishment of an independent state. In this latest form, a Chilean Croatian group was invited to Zagreb to perform their "old" dance in a festival program whose theme focused on Croatian populations outside of Croatia. This was the first visit by any of these Chilean-Croatian performers to their "homeland". The knowledge about "their" dance was unknown when Ivancich Dunin as a researcher came into the midst of this Antofagasta community in 1985 and 1986 during the Yugoslav identity period, followed by 1996 during the Croatian identity period. During the research encounter, there was a nagging question of methodology, related to the role of an "outside" researcher in a community that happened to embody a dance form expressing their sense of identity to the "homeland" of their ancestors. However, the community had no knowledge of its history nor sense of importance of "their" dance that was no longer extant in the "homeland". And the community of dancers in the 1980s became more interested in dances, music, and costumes that represented other areas of "former" Yugoslavia as seen on films and videotapes, and willingness to put aside "their" dance that seemed so simple, except for the intervention of an "outside" researcher. // Grozdana Marošević provides a cross-section of research studies initiated by political changes in Croatia and the reality of war at the beginning of the 1990s. Considerable changes occurred in musical repertoire, arising from the resistance to the Yugoslav period of Croatian history and the desire for pointing out more clearly the specifics and the particularities of Croatian culture, especially those which affirmed Croatia as a part of Mediterranean and Central Europe. At that time, there was a real boom in the composing of new songs (of the most varied genres of popular music), by which writers and musicians reacted and expressed their opposition to the war. Everyday life was filled with music and songs thematically related to the war and presented through the mass media, and at benefit concerts and concerts for soldiers. Croatian ethnomusicologists and ethnochoreologists documented musical and dance events and explicated how the political changes had been reflected in musical and dance repertoire ; they commented music as an incentive and provocation in wartime and compared the musical production of the opposing sides ; they analyzed music and the personal stories of the refugees and investigated the possibilities of using music to overcome the mental and identity crises of people coming from war-torn areas. Postmodern touch of the 1990s is perceivable in their works - we can recognize this in self- reflexive questions of their positions as researches, the influences to which they are subject, and how they themselves contribute to the creation of a particular discourse ; we can further identify this in the consideration of the relationship between cultural policy and musical practice, concept and implementation, power and resistance, and in attempt to deconstruct national, transnational, cultural and gender stereotypes ; we can also find this noticeable in critical consideration of earlier research and new interpretations of music from the past. Such an deconstructive approach coincided with the war in Croatia and the destruction of many ideas we had held about our lives. // Tvrtko Zebec focuses on the range of experts' involvement in contemporary public practice of folklore - preparation of festivals (local, regional, national) and evaluation of festival performances, consultations with the amateur folklorists, choreographers and the leaders of folk dance groups (e.g. about how to conduct a field research or how to prepare collections of local music and dance traditions), contributions to media representations of folk culture, and direct work with amateur or professional ensembles. It also includes membership in different commissions in the Ministry of Culture where experts are involved in setting up and implementing criteria of national cultural policy. This broad range of applied work will be mostly analyzed in regards to town ensembles and native-region folklore groups. The processes of change in political and social life in the last fifteen years have also had an impact on the changes in the repertoire of folk dance groups. Town ensembles mostly fitted into the ideology of unity and the brotherhood of Yugoslav nations and nationalities during the half-century of socialism, and represented ideas of socialist progress. In that framework, a few influential Croatian experts (ethnochoreologists) created the so- called Zagreb school of folklore, with the idea of keeping the close ties to traditional contents and forms. Today's town ensembles nurture that kind of stylized presentation of regional Croatian traditions inside and outside of Croatian borders, strengthening the expressions of national identity as a reaction to the war reality, the aggression onto our country, and the half of century long socialist repression. The native-region associations, founded mostly in early 1990s by refugees from occupied regions in Croatia who migrated to the capital (Zagreb), are the main promoters of the revival of native-region heritage. They promote it in the metropolis using media, but also in their old native-region, living here and there. Similar processes occur among Croats who, due to the war and ethnic cleansing, came to their matrix country as refugees from Vojvodina, Kosovo or Bosnia and Herzegovina. Immediately after securing an economic minimum they wanted to express their old regional identities publicly (composing in the same time their new multiple, nested identities), as that helps them in the integration into everyday life and society. National minorities' heritage goes through the similar processes. Experts are therefore invited to help in reconstruction and presentation.

ethnomusicology and ethnochoreology; Croatia; war; revitalization; applied work

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