Kënga e Halit Gashit: Performansat paralele të interpretimit në zhanrin e muzikës popullore dhe popullarizuese
The Song of Halit Gashi: Its Parallel Performances in Folk and Pop Musical Genres

Summary/Abstract: In Albanian-language folk tradition, “The Ballad of Halit Gashi” is categorized as a historical ballad because of its historical figure and the historical event that it presents. This song is part of the repertoire of folk music singers, where accompanied with folk stringed instruments such as çiftelia, but at the same time it has a public life in mass culture, performed as genre of urban music. Both its version, the folk and the urban music style version, continue to exist in parallel. They continue to have their fans, but also at the same time represent different social and cultural levels that echo the different social and cultural communities of Albanianspeaking society in Kosovo and Albania. Is it the theme of the song, the text, sensitivity, music, singer, or the taste of the public that continues to keep alive “The Ballad of Halit Gashi”? Why this song continues to have two parallel performances of music: the folk and the pop one? Is it the matter of any genre in between or the new one? What are the conditions that recreated a modern version of interpretation, approaching urban type of musical performance? Parallel existence of both musical types of Albanian ballad signifies coexistence of cultural poles, tradition and modernity in Albanian speaking society, in the same time. While comparing song versions and characteristic elements of them, we will try to decompose the society’s social and cultural features.

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