Српско традиционално певање уз гусле: гусларска пракса као комуникациони процес

Abstract

Being an immensely important and complex part of Serbian culture, the epic tradition has attracted researchers from various disciplines. Almost all collectors and scholars, from Vuk Karadžić to Matija Murko, Milman Parry and Albert Lord, acknowledged that music was an essential part of the epic expression. Nevertheless, the study of this dimension of the epic tradition has remained neglected. The first musicological fieldwork was done in the period between the two world wars by Gustav Becking and Walther Wünsch, but a deeper understanding of the Serbian epic tradition from an (ethno)musicological perspective has remained elusive. In such circumstances, I have decided to investigate the singing of epic poems composed in unrhymed decasyllables accompanied by the gusle, being the key form within Serbian epic poetry as a specific genre system.