Albanian Traditional Music
Albanian Traditional Music

Author: Spiro J. Shetuni

Publisher: McFarland

Published: 2014-01-10

Total Pages: 216

ISBN-13: 0786486309

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For most musicians and musicologists in the West, traditional Albanian music remains an obscure subject, even though Albania has produced a monumental cultural and corresponding musical heritage. This book examines the distinct musical culture of southeastern Europe, both monophonic and polyphonic, by delineating its four main musical dialects: Gheg, Tosk, Lab and Urban. The origins, fundamental features, musical styles and genres of the four dialects are discussed. Additional topics covered include an historical and demographic analysis of Albania, the history of Albanian ethnomusicology and the various classifications in Albanian music. Relying heavily on field research and recordings, this text introduces traditional Albanian music to both ethnomusicologists and curious readers.

Traditional Songs and Music of the Korçë Region of Albania
Traditional Songs and Music of the Korçë Region of Albania

Author: Eno Koço

Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing

Published: 2018-04-18

Total Pages: 220

ISBN-13: 1527510409

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This book is concerned with the repertory of traditional urban song and music of the Korçë area in general and more specifically the karakteristike (characteristic) or ‘distinctive’ song associated with Korçë city, Albania. The first half of the 20th century marked the climax of an evolution which started in the mid-19th century with the oral tradition of urban song in Korçë. While the translation of ‘Kënga Karakteristike Korçare’ into ‘Korçare Distinctive Song’ seems to be an odd name for a genre, it is, however, a translation as close as possible to the original Albanian, denoting the characteristic songs of Korçë. The term ‘characteristic’ implies peculiar or specific songs, different not only from the traditional urban song of Korçë, but also from any kind of song, whether folk, popular, traditional urban or art, composed and performed among the Korçë people. The book also introduces the Korçare urban song and urban lyric song, as well as the Saze music, which were introduced during the Ottoman domination of the Balkans.

Albanian Urban Lyric Song in the 1930s
Albanian Urban Lyric Song in the 1930s

Author: Eno Koço

Publisher: Scarecrow Press

Published: 2004

Total Pages: 436

ISBN-13: 9780810848900

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The author examines the indigenous diatonic and chromatic modes used in Albanian urban music and classifies them under traditional headings and as part of a newly established grouping, here termed south-western Balkan modes. The core of the work is the analysis of Albanian urban lyric songs, seen as an artistic version of the traditional Albanian urban songs.

Albanian Identity in History and Traditional Performance
Albanian Identity in History and Traditional Performance

Author: Eno Koço

Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing

Published: 2021-07-05

Total Pages: 283

ISBN-13: 1527571890

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This book represents a group of individual musical essays collected under common Albanian themes, with a particular focus on historical identities and traditional musical performance. It shows that, at the beginning of the 18th century, there was a growing interest in representing the Albanian hero Scanderbeg on the operatic stage, as some well-known composers of baroque music began to place a greater emphasis on music’s dramatic power to elicit emotional response. The book also notes that this sense of drama was also incorporated into the vocal forms such as opera.

Lament from Epirus: An Odyssey into Europe's Oldest Surviving Folk Music
Lament from Epirus: An Odyssey into Europe's Oldest Surviving Folk Music

Author: Christopher C. King

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

Published: 2018-05-29

Total Pages: 322

ISBN-13: 039324900X

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A Wall Street Journal Best Book of 2018 In the tradition of Patrick Leigh Fermor and Geoff Dyer, a Grammy-winning producer discovers a powerful and ancient folk music tradition. In a gramophone shop in Istanbul, renowned record collector Christopher C. King uncovered some of the strangest—and most hypnotic—sounds he had ever heard. The 78s were immensely moving, seeming to tap into a primal well of emotion inaccessible through contemporary music. The songs, King learned, were from Epirus, an area straddling southern Albania and northwestern Greece and boasting a folk tradition extending back to the pre-Homeric era. To hear this music is to hear the past. Lament from Epirus is an unforgettable journey into a musical obsession, which traces a unique genre back to the roots of song itself. As King hunts for two long-lost virtuosos—one of whom may have committed a murder—he also tells the story of the Roma people who pioneered Epirotic folk music and their descendants who continue the tradition today. King discovers clues to his most profound questions about the function of music in the history of humanity: What is the relationship between music and language? Why do we organize sound as music? Is music superfluous, a mere form of entertainment, or could it be a tool for survival? King’s journey becomes an investigation into song and dance’s role as a means of spiritual healing—and what that may reveal about music’s evolutionary origins.

Balkania
Balkania

Author: Rechberger, Herman

Publisher: Fennica Gehrman Ltd.

Published: 2018-02-01

Total Pages: 168

ISBN-13: 9525489272

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A Dictionary of Albanian Religion, Mythology, and Folk Culture
A Dictionary of Albanian Religion, Mythology, and Folk Culture

Author: Robert Elsie

Publisher: NYU Press

Published: 2001

Total Pages: 384

ISBN-13: 9780814722145

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In some senses, Albania is a living museum of the past. Originally a small herding community in the most inaccessible reaches of the Balkans, the presence of Albanians in southeastern Europe has been documented for over a thousand years. Albanian traditional folk culture, which evolved over centuries of relative isolation, is surprisingly rich. Yet despite recent events this culture remains little known to the Western world. Due to the lasting effects of a half century of Stalinist dictatorship, very few individuals even in Albania know much about their own popular traditions. The Dictionary of Albanian Religion, Mythology, and Folk Culture makes available for the first time a wealth of knowledge about Albanian popular belief and folk customs. Alphabetical entries shed light on blood feuding, figures of Albanian mythology, religious beliefs, communities, and sects, calendar feasts and rituals, and popular superstitions, as well as birth, marriage, and funeral customs, and sexual mores. This unique volume will stand as the standard reference work on the subject for years to come.

Audible States
Audible States

Author: Nicholas Tochka

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2016

Total Pages: 281

ISBN-13: 0190467819

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During the Cold War, state-sponsored musical performances were central to the diplomatic agendas of the United States and the Soviet Union. But states on the periphery of the conflict also used state-funded performances to articulate their positions in the polarized global network. In Albania in particular, the postwar government invested heavily in public performances at home, effectively creating a new genre of popular music: the wildly popular light music. In Audible States: Socialist Politics and Popular Music in Albania, author Nicholas Tochka traces an aural history of Albania's government through a close examination of the development and reception of light music at Radio-Television Albania's Festival of Song. Drawing on a wide range of archival resources and over forty interviews with composers, lyricists, singers, and bureaucrats, Tochka describes how popular music became integral to governmental projects to improve society--and a major concern for both state-socialist and postsocialist regimes between 1945 and the present. Tochka's narrative begins in the immediate postwar period, arguing that state officials saw light music as a means to cultivate a modern population under socialism. As the Cold War ended, postsocialist officials turned again to light music, now hoping that these musicians could help shape Albania into a capitalist, "European" state. Interweaving archival research with ethnographic interviews, Audible States demonstrates that modern political orders do not simply render social life visible, but also audible. Incorporating insights from ethnomusicology, governmentality studies, and post-socialist studies, Audible States presents an original perspective on music and government that reveals the fluid, pervasive, but ultimately limited nature of state power in the modern world. A remarkably researched and engagingly written study, Audible States is a foundational text in the growing literature on popular music and culture in post-socialist Europe and will be of great interest for readers interested in popular music, sound studies, and the politics of the Cold War.

Engendering Song
Engendering Song

Author: Jane C. Sugarman

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 1997-10-27

Total Pages: 442

ISBN-13: 9780226779737

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For Prespa Albanians, both at home in Macedonia and in the diaspora, the most opulent, extravagant, and socially significant events of any year are wedding celebrations. Combining photographs, song texts, and vibrant recordings of the music with her own evocative descriptions, ethnomusicologist Jane C. Sugarman focuses her account of Prespa weddings on notions of gendered identity, demonstrating the capacity of singing to generate and transform relations of power within Prespa society.

Balkan Popular Culture and the Ottoman Ecumene
Balkan Popular Culture and the Ottoman Ecumene

Author: Donna A. Buchanan

Publisher: Scarecrow Press

Published: 2007-10-01

Total Pages: 462

ISBN-13: 0810866773

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Since the early twentieth century, 'balkanization' has signified the often militant fracturing of territories, states, or groups along ethnic, religious, and linguistic divides. Yet the remarkable similarities found among contemporary Balkan popular music reveal the region as the site of a thriving creative dialogue and interchange. The eclectic interweaving of stylistic features evidenced by Albanian commercial folk music, Anatolian pop, Bosnian sevdah-rock, Bulgarian pop-folk, Greek ethniki mousike, Romanian muzica orientala, Serbian turbo folk, and Turkish arabesk, to name a few, points to an emergent regional popular culture circuit extending from southeastern Europe through Greece and Turkey. While this circuit is predicated upon older cultural confluences from a shared Ottoman heritage, it also has taken shape in active counterpoint with a variety of regional political discourses. Containing eleven ethnographic case studies, Balkan Popular Culture and the Ottoman Ecumene: Music, Image, and Regional Political Discourse examines the interplay between the musicians and popular music styles of the Balkan states during the late 1990s. These case studies, each written by an established regional expert, encompass a geographical scope that includes Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, the Republic of Macedonia, Croatia, Slovenia, Romania, Greece, Turkey, Serbia, and Montenegro. The book is accompanied by a VCD that contains a photo gallery, sound files, and music video excerpts.