UNDERSTANDING PARALLEL WORLDS: THE MOCKING SONG ABOUT THE KAMNIK BURGHERS
UNDERSTANDING PARALLEL WORLDS: THE MOCKING SONG ABOUT THE KAMNIK BURGHERS

Author(s): Marija Klobčar
Subject(s): Music, Regional Geography, Social history, WW II and following years (1940 - 1949), Sociology of Art
Published by: Instituti Albanologjik i Prishtinës
Keywords: Mocking Songs; Social Oppositions; Steierisch; Identity; Stereotype;
Summary/Abstract: The main topic of this article is the question how folk songs can help us understand social oppositions. The research is based on a case study in the central part of Slovenia, north-east from Ljubljana, in the Kamnik area. By analyzing major conflicts of the Slovene Civil War, which took place during the Second World War, the author tries to find the reasons for these oppositions. She points to the pre-War oppositions between the remote Tuhinj valley and between Kamnik, revealing the town versus countryside opposition. By studying mocking songs, many images of difference, of parallel worlds, and even of big social tensions, come to the foreground. Seeking parallel worlds in folk songs was an attempt to get an emic view. The most important key to revealing social processes was the mocking song about the Kamnik burghers. In the study of life practices in the Kamnik area, this mocking song provided an extremely informative testimony of the perception of the ‘other’. It explained oppositions not only during the time in which it was created, but also during the period when it has already become a part of tradition.

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