Anda Beitāne, CD:
Notes from Latvia. Multipart Music in the Field.
European Voices: Audiovisuals 1.
Published with the support of the State Culture Capital Foundation of Latvia, the Jāzeps Vītols Latvian Academy of Music, and the Department for Folk Music Research and Ethnomusicology of the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna
European Voices: Audiovisuals is a new series of the Department for Folk Music Research and Ethnomusicology of the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna. An essential element of it is the partnership with institutions in which members of the Research Centre for European Multipart Music (EMM), based in this Department, are engaged. EMM members will present here unknown audio and video recordings of multipart music and dance practices, primarily from fieldwork, with comprehensive explanations drawn up in close cooperation with music and dance makers.
Ardian Ahmedaja
The focus of this publication is on the music and the people who make it. The concept of notes arose quite naturally during the selection of the recordings from more than 20 years of fieldwork. They contain primarily female singing, since multipart music practices in Latvia are basically in the hands of women. These “hands” are also meant physically, because the singing has often been a part of or associated with women’s work outdoors, in the field. This is also the case among the third generation of Latvian emigrants in Siberia.
Significantly, singing together is praised in widespread songs in all these practices as a celebration of the moment of “being together”, evoking at the same time the absent ones, since “only God knows where some other year / we will be singing…” Such inside views, expressed in words and music, also lead to a better identification and recognition of the particular space of music-making in the life of these communities.
Anda Beitāne
Institute of Folk Music Research and Ethnosmusicology
at the Universtity of Music and Performing Arts Vienna
Anton von Webern-Platz 1 (Ungargasse 14), 1030 Vienna
Tel: 71155-4201
Fax: 71155-4299
e-mail: ive-versand@mdw.ac.at.