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Children's folk singing competition as a performance of regional identity and heritage
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SYSNO ASEP 0579570 Document Type A - Abstract R&D Document Type The record was not marked in the RIV R&D Document Type Není vybrán druh dokumentu Title Children's folk singing competition as a performance of regional identity and heritage Author(s) Skořepová, Zita (UEF-S) ORCID Number of authors 1 Action Symposium of the ICTM Study Group on Music and Dance of the Slavic World /4./ Event date 05.10.2023 - 07.10.2023 VEvent location Praha Country CZ - Czech Republic Event type WRD Language eng - English Keywords folk singing competition ; children ; Czech Republic Subject RIV AC - Archeology, Anthropology, Ethnology OECD category Antropology, ethnology R&D Projects GF22-31474K GA ČR - Czech Science Foundation (CSF) Institutional support UEF-S - RVO:68378076 Annotation At the end of the 1970s in the former Czechoslovakia, a children’s folk singing competition with the original name “Děti a píseň” (Children and Song) was founded initially as a Moravian regional contest and at the same time a radio show of the Brno Radio Orchestra of Folk Instruments. During the postsocialist transformation in the first half of the 1990s, the competition – renamed to “Zpěváček” (Little Singer) – was organized by the then newly founded Folklore Association of the Czech Republic, becoming a nationwide event and featuring competing children from Bohemia and Silesia. Being connected with the political establishment both before and after the fall of communism, “Zpěváček” experienced its ups and downs. However, it continues, till the present day, to represent an important platform for the reproduction of regional folk singing style and the sustainability of the folk music and dance community. The objective of the competition, as declared by the organizers, is to strengthen children's knowledge and relationship with local folk songs, to learn about singing traditions from different regions, and to make it possible to establish cooperation among key musical ensembles and musicians from the field of folk music and dance. The paper explores the ways in which the children act as performers and representatives of the (micro)regional identity attributed to them according to the competition propositions. At the same time, the expected competition song repertoire, the style and method of its singing interpretation, and visual presentation in regional folk costumes can be regarded as a negotiated local cultural heritage. Its conceptualization has been implicitly defined by several generations of musicians and other influential personalities of the so-called folk revival movement in the given regions of the Czech Republic. Nevertheless, this heritage in each region is “rich” in different ways, and ethnonational selectivity is also applied. Taking account of both historical and contemporary contexts, the article draws from recent fieldwork including participant observation and autoethnography, interviews, and document analysis. Workplace Institute of Ethnology Contact Veronika Novotná, novotna@eu.cas.cz, Tel.: 532 290 277 Year of Publishing 2024
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