Процеси на развитие и промяна във фолклорната музика от Югозападна България
Processes of Development and Change in Bulgaria’s Southwest Folk Music

Summary/Abstract: Regional specifics of traditional music are formed as a result of the processual action of a number of factors. Some of these are determined by purely musical development within the local culture of a village, town, etc. Others are a product of the interaction between different forms of musical thinking conditioned by the impact of historical and sociological prerequisites which get modified in an original manner within the folk music dialect. The advent of professional music interpretation through the idea of contemporary presentation of regional folk music in the context of a well-defined national cultural model contributes to the development of and dynamic change in the stylistic system of traditional music. This article deals with the processes of development and change relating to the influence of urban music tradition at the turn of the twentieth century. As a result, phenomena are added to the old folk music with a structure different from the traditional models of musical thinking. A particular specificity is both the coexistence of various stages and their integration, which is a prerequisite for development and change in folk music. Art production brings novel, different elements into the intonation processes. Creative activities develop in parallel interrelation with ethnomusicological studies. The theoretical results achieved in these studies with regard to melodic and metro-rhythmic organisation, the studies on vocal and instrumental music, the analyses of folk polyphony, and the specifics of the folk music dialect in general underlie all the creative pursuits. The attempts at an in-depth study of the development and change might be an avenue for familiarisation with the mechanisms originating from the cohesion of musical elements of various historical periods and musical cultures in the system of local and regional traditional styles. The models of musical thinking spontaneously combine in some instances or are the product of specifically set creative goals in others. The conducted analyses infer that the processes mentioned above trigger off a wide range of phenomena. Their unusual combinations build up the original (but at the same time dynamic and ever-changing) modern physiognomy of folk culture.

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