Serb Traditional Music Instruments

Since time immemorial, shepherds and peasants all over the world have, under propitious circumstances, made their own instruments, shaping them in accordance with their material. They strove to improve them just as others in those communities made efforts to improve the songs and lyrics of their vocal folk music. It’s well known that every folk song is unique, by the same token, it’s difficult to find two identical musical instruments.

They represent the basic aspects of instrumental performance in Serbia and other parts of Ex-Yugoslavia. Many of those national or folk instruments testify to the creative force of this country and of its people who have been making those characteristic instruments for centuries, playing on them both in the past and in the present.

There are all kinds of traditional musical instruments. They are usualy divided in four well-known groups: idiophones, membraphones, cordophones and aerophones. They have some characteristics in common with musical instruments in general, but there are also certain special features by which they can be distinguished from similar instruments familiar among other nations, Many instruments which we have inherited from our ancestors have been used far back in past centuries. The frescoes from our mediaeval monasteries dating from 13th and 14th centuries in which these instruments were painted bear witness of this.

Frula	Lejka	Kanet

The largest of those groups of instruments is the group of aerophones. Among them, a special place belongs to various labial pipes (dudurejs, kaval, frula, okarina, dvojnice), folowed by pipes with idioglottic mouthpieces (lejka, klanet, gajde) or with a funnel-shaped mouthpieces (rikalo-busen, truba).

Trubaci

As for cordeophone instruments Gusle are widely spread over western and suuth-western regions. Tamburas of certain type are mostly spread in the regions of Vojvodina, Western-Bosnia and Srpska Krajina. The violin is mainly to be found in ensembles with other instruments. Membraphones, among which the most widely spread is drum are also often included in ensembles with other instruments. Their purpose is to beat the time keeping the right rhythm and tempo in music meant for dancing. The Jew’s harp (drombulje) is one of the known, but not widely spread idiophonic instrument.

Gusle	Violine

The basic function of Serb traditional instruments is now mostly connected with the dance, accompanying the kolo, but there are also certain instruments which are directly related to some customs and rituals. Beside many kinds of instruments which have been manufactured for a very long time, there are others which we took over from other civilizations and nations in the course of historical and social development and they were duly assimilated in our musical tradition (accordion, clarinet). We consider therefore all those instruments as ours because they are in service of the development of our instrumental folk music.

Songs Associated With Work

The first group of songs consists of songs, which are performed only with particular productive tasks. The agricultural and pastoral year is composed of a series of tasks related to a particular season (plowing, hoeing, sowing, mowing, harvest, plucking, etc.) These are especially concentrated in spring and summer. Most of these seasonal tasks are accompanied by songs which are integrated functionally with particular type of work (sung with the occasion but not connected with rhythm of the work). Thus the folk distinguishes the following songs: oracke(plowing), setvene(sowing), kopacke(hoeing), kosacke(mowing), zetelacke(reaping, or beracke(picking), and cobanske(sheperd songs).

Women and man carry out most of these tasks in the same way. Some types of work, however, were not performed by women (plowing and mowing the meadows), and therefore oracke and kopacke songs were sung only by men. With other tasks the songs are performed characteristically by women, even though they work together with men, and in the same manner.

The work songs are sung in unison or two parts, depending on the vocal practice of each particular region, but a group mostly performs them.

Sheperd Songs

Tending the sheep required a great deal of time and special way of life. Scattered over mountains, forests and hills, the shepherds lived in isolation in various summer pastures from spring to late autumn. They returned to the villages for the winter to their families to sociability. With time they developed a special type of communication by way of music (songs and instrumental). The people call this music accompanying shepherds life either singing in the cobanski glas (shepherd’s tune), or playing po cobanski (shepherd’s way). The main shepherd instruments are frula (pipe) and dvojnice (double pipe).

1) The shepherd music served for communication with people and also with the herd. The shepherds indicate to their comrades through their playing where they are, and call others to come closer.
2) The shepherd girls maintained the same communication with their girl friends or with the boys, but by way of songs. The young people sang back and forth to each other in space. The people call this kind of performance nadpevavanje, a singing dialogue, or outsinging the other, but it means intercommunication rather than competition. The text of this dialogue is as follows:
Male group: Come my dear to the green bank.
We will come, I and my friend.
Female group: Come my dear, don’t bring your friend.
He is handsome, I’ll start to like him
Male group: The meadow is dappled still
Where my little one was kissed
Female group: I am sweetie, a mischievous child
My love will be unfaithful to you.
Male group: Don’t say, little one, that you are mine
Maybe another girl will fall in love with me
3) The third way of songs are a shepherds arija. In the folk terminology arija refers to relatively new musical creations, with texts which are also modern. This one, for example, shows the relations between a young man working in town and girl who lives in the village:
Come, Mile, to the green hawthorn tree
If you are not too grand a gentleman,
Take off your boots, and put on our opanke*
Then come to me, a village girl.

*Opanci- Serbian peasant woven shoes with toes pointed and curling upward, have long been and still are the most powerful symbol of Serbian peasantry.

Harvest Songs

The harvest was and is one of the most important tasks related to the summer crops. Throughout Serbia it used to be the custom to sing with the harvest, but today this is retained only in those mountainous regions where the peasants still harvest with sickle on small, often sloping, parcels of land. Wherever the machine has taken the place of human labor, the harvest song has disappeared.

Harvest is a task which must be completed quickly, in a limited time. Therefore many people were needed to work at the same time, and this was possible only by way of moba, collectively. The moba is a group of neighbors, relativs and friends who come together voluntarily to help a particular household to finish a particular task. The harvest is one of moba tasks, and thus zetvarske (harvest) songs are often called mobarske as well.

The harvest day was completely filled with song, for it was the custom to invite unmarred girls and younger married women who were good singers. Nevertheless , although there were very many harvest songs, a sequence was established which was formed by their social function in time. The harvest songs for morning related to the beginning of the work, the harvest songs for noon, referred to waiting for the noon meal and rest in the shade, while the harvest songs for evening designed the completion of the work.

This is one harvest song from region of Zaplanje near Nis:
You grasp a big bunch, and we do too
Some can, some cannot
I could and I did
The girls could not
Their flowers in their hair fell down
The boys stole the flowers
And put them in their pockets
O beautiful, good girl.

Working Bee Song

From the middle of August far into the autumn season, it was once customary for unmarried women to gather together in the evening around the fire to knit or to spin or comb wool. In the winter the working parties were held indoors. These gatherings are called sedeljke, sedenjke(siting parties), or prela, posijela. They still take place in some villages today, but more and more rarely.

At the beginning and as a signal, fire would started at a crossroad in the village or in someone’s courtyard. The first girl who come started the fire and began to sing, calling her girl friends to come. This kind of song of invitation is sung in the Svrljig region:

Whichever girl is not here Should come, not come, should come.
Kata is not here,
She should come, not come, she should come.
Gordana is not here,
She should come, not come, she should come.
Mirjana is not here,
She should come, not come, she should come.

As the sedeljkas lasted far into the night, there was usualy a great deal of singing at them, so that number of sedeljacke songs was very large in all regions, and they are still fresh in people’s memories. The young men came in relatively late in the evening to pay the girls a visit and to sing a little. They often brought along one or more musicians, and then the sitting party ended with dancing.