Józef Jasek z Milówki jako wybitny śpiewak i depozytariusz lokalnej religijnej tradycji muzycznej
Józef Jasek of Milówka as an Outstanding Singer and a Depositary of the Local Religious-Musical Tradition

Summary/Abstract: This article concerns the life and activity of Józef Jasek of Milówka (1910–82), an eminent personality in the traditional culture of the Żywiec region. Born into a family with musical traditions, he learned to sing from his father, a folk singer, and his mother, who knew many religious songs from a rosary group. Józef had six highly musical children (including his daughter Irena, mother of contemporary popular Polish musicians Paweł and Łukasz Golec). Jasek was a funeral singer as well as he led singing during pilgrimages to sanctuaries, including Kalwaria Zebrzydowska, where he was performing Calvarian songs. As depositary of the local religious-musical tradition, he developed his own individual performance style. During field studies carried out in Milówka in 1973 by staff and students of the Institute of Musicology of the John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin (KUL), as many as 92 pieces sung by Jasek were recorded. Deposited in the Archive of Music Religious Folklore of KUL (AMFR KUL), attached to the KUL’s Department of Ethnomusicology and Hymnology, they constitute an extremely valuable audio document of intangible cultural heritage, as well as interesting material for ethnomusicological studies. The repertoire performed by Józef Jasek comprises numerous vocal religious genres belonging to the living tradition: songs for Advent, Christmas carols and pastoral Christmas songs, songs for Lent, Passiontide and Easter, Marian songs, songs for use in everyday life, songs to the saints, repertoire for funerals, Calvarian songs, wandering beggars songs, and songs to Divine Providence. All of them had their place in the rich local annual and family ritual cycles as described by Jasek himself.

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