AFA “RUGOVA” - VATËR E MADHE E RUAJTJES SË EPOSIT TË KRESHNIKËVE
AFA "RUGOVA" - GREAT HEARTH OF PRESERVATION OF THE LEGENDARY EPOS

Summary/Abstract: AFA "Rugova" is an artistic symbol of this region and a rare ethnocultural institution that has popularized the lute and lute players in our area, Europe and beyond for 74 years. Therefore, in this paper I briefly present an overview of the lute players in the Rugova area, from the beginning of the establishment of AFA "Rugova" to the present generation at the beginning of this century. In this overview will be described and given many details from my work in the research project "The Legendary Epos of Rugova" (1979-1988). There were about 100 lute players in the Rugova area after the Second World War, and many of them were or are still are members of AFA "Rugova". I have been working with 45 Rugova’s lute players. When I started the research project "The Legendary Epos of Rugova" in 1979, there were collected about 20 thousand verses of the legendary epos, while when I finished it in 1988, the amount of recorded verses was over 100 thousand verses of about 300 songs and of over 40 units in prose, in 15 volumes. In addition to the lyrical and epic historical repertoire, these lute players have had many verses of legendary songs, perhaps as much as a quarter of the number of verses of the national fund, with about 400 thousand verses. This was the largest amount collected in an Albanian ethno-geographical area, since the time of G. Mayer onwards (1987). With the E5 Project in the Balkans (2012-2016), which includes Rugova as well and where there are about 100 thousand verses of the legendary epos, currently the national fund has about 600 thousand verses.

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