A pencil, a piece of paper and a 19th-century peasant as an informant – this in short can describe how Oskar Kolberg, the most distinguished discoverer of Polish folk culture, worked. Chopin’s younger colleague abandoned the spheres of higher society and devoted almost 50 years of his life to collect and document examples of Polish folklore. His monumental lifework entitled “Lud. Jego zwyczaje, sposób życia, mowa, podania, przysłowia, obrzędy, gusła, zabawy, pieśni, muzyka i tańce” (a 33-volume compilation of folk songs, tales, fairy tales, proverbs, riddles, folk spectacles and many other ethnographic documents) cannot be compared to anything that has been published in Europe or anywhere else in the world. Although Oskar Kolberg was a great ethnographer, his works are only known in small cultural and academic circles. The Kolberg Year Resolution passed by the Polish parliament aims at changing this. It includes a series of events commemorating the life and works of the famous Polish ethnographer.
Dr Łukasz Smoluch from the Oskar Kolberg Institute in Poznań, which has been publishing and promoting academic achievements of the father of Polish ethnography, is telling us about Kolberg, the condition of Polish folk art and much more.
Yesterday we saw a concert opening the Kolberg Year, which took place in Przysucha, Oskar Kolberg’s hometown, and today we are celebrating the bicentenary of his birth. Soon we will witness the inauguration of the Kolberg Year in Warsaw, followed by hundreds of other events. The patrons of these celebrations include UNESCO and the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage. It looks like it’s going to be an eventful year with lots of folklore in the background. What exactly can we expect during the Kolberg Year?
On this occasion, the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage announced a competition for institutions and organisations that wanted to participate in the celebration of Kolberg’s bicentenary, in which they could get additional funds. There were plenty applications sent and a lot of projects that finally received the funds are really interesting. It’s difficult to describe them in a few words. They will include making Kolberg’s materials available online and promoting his life and works among young people. There will be conferences organised and various publications prepared. There will also be concerts and workshops enabling real contact with living folklore. Information about the Kolberg Year and all the events can be found on www.kolberg2014.org.pl and www.oskarkolberg.pl, as well as on the website of the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage and the Institute of Music and Dance and.
What role will the Oskar Kolberg Institute play in these events?
As the only institution involved in working on Kolberg’s legacy in Poland we have participated in preparing his bicentenary since the beginning. We take full or split responsibility for carrying out seven large projects that aim at making materials collected by Kolberg available to general public and promoting his life and work. Four of these projects are closely connected with the world of Internet. First of all, we are developing our website to present all Kolberg’s achievements by using every possible format, especially sound and image. Secondly, together with Adam Mickiewicz University Library in Poznań, the Polish Academy of Sciences and the Polish Academy of Arts and Sciences in Kraków we digitalise the archives consisting of 76 volumes of Kolberg’s manuscripts that will be available online. Moreover, together with the Fryderyk Chopin Institute, we are preparing a mobile application which will present Oskar Kolberg’s travels. It will present about 70 out of nearly 300 towns which he visited or collected materials from. Selected places will have ethnographic descriptions, folk texts, illustrations and contemporary field records. Finally, together with the Polish Academy of Sciences Institute of Art, we are developing an online database of melodies found in Kolberg’s collection, which will include a special tool to search notations depending on different music criteria. Moreover, in the Kolberg Year we will offer two paper publications: an illustrated popular-scientific biography of Kolberg (including an audiobook) and a selection of children’s stories that Kolberg collected (also with an audiobook). Furthermore, an international conference titled “The work of Oskar Kolberg as national and European heritage” with the honorary patronage of Poland’s president, Bronisław Komorowski, will take place on 22-23 May in Poznań.
As an ethnomusicologist and cultural anthropologist you are involved in academic works on the compilation of his work entitled “Dzieła Wszystkie Oskara Kolberga”, including the analysis of his unpublished works. Working with Kolberg’s manuscripts must be fascinating…
Indeed! Especially working with what we call “field manuscripts” – notes from his meetings with informants. Sometimes we imagine what they looked like and how they behaved. These manuscripts say a lot about Kolberg’s methods of work. For example, we can see that he was very patient and tried to note down every detail. He often asked people to repeat important fragments. And those singers and violinists changed or added something every time. We can see the process of noting these variations down on paper. Kolberg had a perfect pitch and extraordinary memory that he developed during his field studies. This, as well as his hard work, allowed him to create such a huge archive.
The Kolberg Year is an excellent opportunity to think about Polish folklore. How do you see the condition of Polish folk culture? Is saying that the post-war era of radio and television impeded the development of folklore while globalisation finished today’s folk culture off a fact or a fit of hysteria?
We must remember that the rural culture of the 19th century, which folk researchers miss most often, doesn’t exist and will never exist in Poland. Thus, rural folklore, because of the media and such factors as changes in social relations or intensified migration, has to face a new social reality. It doesn’t mean that it has been doomed to sink into oblivion. It doesn’t play such strong ritual functions as it used to but it is still strongly connected with shaping regional identity. Tradition is a living power. Taking the right steps to promote folklore not as a relic of the past but as a universal value is conducive to finding it a new place. It works well in the contacts between urban musicians interested in folklore and country performers. For them traditional songs and dances are something more than simply “folk material”. It means getting to know a different, intriguing but also comfortable and friendly world. We shouldn’t forget that folklore is not only rural culture. It’s also a certain type of social exercise. We have urban folklore, occupational folklore, fan folklore, prison folklore and Internet folklore, lately demonstrated by popular memes, which comment on recent events and public moods with words and images…
Jolly dances, traditional songs, provincialism and old fashion – these are the most common associations with folklore. Majority of Poles treat folk culture with dislike or indulgence. In your opinion, what could be done to make folklore an attractive product for an average receiver of culture?
The thing is not to change folklore into something one can buy, consume and forget about. Folklore has huge potential and there is a lot of timeless actuality in it – there is joy and sadness, loyalty and betrayal, harmony and distance to the world. Some people can see and use this potential, while others reduce folk music and literature to cheap entertainment. It doesn’t matter if it’s a country accordionist, folk musician or hip hop artist. In my opinion the most important thing is what their work says about them, their emotions and their relation with tradition.
Timeless aspects of folklore have made it survive throughout centuries and it still doesn’t make an impression on average Poles. The latest statistics show that over 90% of Poles don’t know who Oskar Kolberg was. Where does this lack of interest in folklore among Polish people come from?
This is the question of cultivating your own traditions. In some countries traditional culture, including traditional music, is respected. I’m talking about our Eastern neighbours, Scandinavia or Hungary, to give just European examples. Unfortunately, People’s Republic of Poland did a lot of harm to the image of folklore by trivialising it and reducing folklore to a cliché and something common. Therefore, many Poles think about it as something to be ashamed of. There’s still a lot to be done in this area.
On the one hand it’s something people are ashamed of but on the other hand we can see “ethno boom” in some circles. Making home bread, folk motives on clothes or folk music in the pop charts slowly become Polish reality.
I agree that people from certain circles are very interested in the “ethno brand”. Similarly to other countries, people in Poland are tired with commercial aspects of life and overwhelming information chaos. They look for naturalness, simplicity and harmony. They go back to their roots. It is manifested in various areas, including mental exercise, clothes or music. Sometimes it’s a mixture of different cultures – Slavic, Asian, Caribbean – so characteristic for our times… Of course, the market can see all this and it starts offering us a whole range of ethno products.
You mentioned ethnographic research and cultural contacts between the city and rural areas. Can you give any other examples of bringing Polish folk culture back to life?
We can observe many good practices. I’m thinking about numerous foundations and societies that try to promote folklore in its deeper, valuable form connected with a specific way of looking at the world. They organise workshops where people can learn songs, dances and playing folk instruments, as well as meetings with folk musicians. They include Muzyka Kresów Foundation from Lublin, Dance Houses from Warsaw, Poznań and Kraków, Traditional Music Centre from Wrocław and many others. I hope that the events planned for the Kolberg Year will change a lot in the matter of people’s interest in folklore and knowledge of folk culture. Many of these events use electronic media and present new and unique aspects of folklore.
Let’s go back to the Kolberg Year. Various events will be organised in Poland but also in the neighbouring countries, which in Kolberg’s times were part of historic Polish territory. What, in your opinion, will these activities bring?
The Oskar Kolberg Institute maintains regular contacts with folklore researchers in Ukraine and Belarus. Kolberg is valued there but only a small group of specialists know who he was. I hope that events organised during the Kolberg Year will enlarge this group and will demonstrate a certain universality of folklore, including its timeless and global values. In this context it is symbolic that Kolberg, having German and French roots, being born in Poland and raised among Polish people, was devoted to documenting Polish culture but also the culture of Ruthenia or Lusatia, and that we – no matter where we come from – can draw from this immense spring of knowledge.
Less than 9% of Poles know who Oskar Kolberg was. Others don’t even recognise his name or they connect it with Krzysztof Kolberger or a Nobel Prize laureate with unspecified achievements. Who is Oskar Kolberg for you – a young academic who deals with the works of this great Pole every day?
Kolberg was lucky to find a real passion in his life. The passion he could devote himself to unreservedly. He was also lucky to have friends ready to support everything he did, although he never started a family. Kolberg’s letters (Volumes 64-66 of “Wszystkie Dzieła Oskara Kolberga”) is a great reading. They show an average person, a devoted companion, a man who doesn’t avoid jokes or complains, someone who has his joys and fears. Personally I like to demythologize great people like this!
Dr Łukasz Smoluch – an ethnomusicologist, a cultural anthropologist and an assistant professor at the Oskar Kolberg Institute in Poznań as well as the Department of Musicology at Adam Mickiewicz University.