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I need to go back into programming brain after work all this week or two, so I'd better try to finish my trip posts tonight. I get in a see-saw between trying to be too complete or whether to go in order or what... we'll see what I get out here.
One of the men on the group said that the biggest thing for him was experiencing the difference between stuff done as presentation and stuff done as part of living tradition.
I've already seen presentations substituting for ritual and experienced 'real' things and a range of in-between so that wasn't exactly it for me. But this is the closest I've gotten to being in a traditional society context, to be in the right places of traditions with the people who still have living memories of how it was in their communities. That would be my equivalent major thing.
Despite how most of us were remarking that there was so much still there, Anna is upset at how much is gone already. We were pretty consistently meeting groups of middle-aged and elderly women and more rarely girls at cultural centers devoted to preserving tradition. You don't start to make a point of preserving traditions until you see they are disappearing from the every day existence, otherwise it's just normal everyday life.
Some in our group talked about preserving these traditions, this culture. Like they felt they or we - are or should be on a mission to do that. It's not possible for us to do that. We can't be and aren't of a given village.
Sure we can learn a song, and learn a dance. We could even do the dance at the right time of year, but not in the right place (if it's something we're taking home with us). We would need to be from a particular village to really preserve its traditions. Real preservation has to come from within.
People would lament the changes, how so many young people leave the villages. We were told that one we visited had only one child in it. But to try to force them to stay would, be equally as not right as forcing them to leave was.
The fact is that stay or leave - life is changing. There is another generation gap coming up, as much as the boomers that made up the bulk of our group were a gap, as much as the industrial revolution was a gap. Bulgaria is set to join the EU soon, and some entrepreneurs are already busy selling as much of the country as they can to foreigners (mostly Europeans, but whoever has money to invest). This upcoming generation is a gap, both here and there.
The Annas get the job of documenting what they can for posterity. They can't 'preserve' it as a living tradition either. They are between us and the villagers, in that they are of that culture, but not of any of these villages. Sometimes they know the songs, dances, traditions better than the people of a particular village can remember them themselves, but professionally as researchers their job is to observe and record, not influence.
Anna expressed frustration that now people (as in Bulgarians) repeat what ethnographers wrote about Kukeri being "to scare evil spirits." Quoting this sort of pat simple cliche only helps to drive out the passing of memories of what all else they are.
The traditions will change, they have to. Different bits will be preserved in different ways, probably by different people. Some who are still there - in it to various degrees - will adapt what they can into the next phase of their lives. Not just the surface either, even if that is all many people see. Not everything will be saved, but not all will be lost either.
One of the men on the group said that the biggest thing for him was experiencing the difference between stuff done as presentation and stuff done as part of living tradition.
I've already seen presentations substituting for ritual and experienced 'real' things and a range of in-between so that wasn't exactly it for me. But this is the closest I've gotten to being in a traditional society context, to be in the right places of traditions with the people who still have living memories of how it was in their communities. That would be my equivalent major thing.
Despite how most of us were remarking that there was so much still there, Anna is upset at how much is gone already. We were pretty consistently meeting groups of middle-aged and elderly women and more rarely girls at cultural centers devoted to preserving tradition. You don't start to make a point of preserving traditions until you see they are disappearing from the every day existence, otherwise it's just normal everyday life.
Some in our group talked about preserving these traditions, this culture. Like they felt they or we - are or should be on a mission to do that. It's not possible for us to do that. We can't be and aren't of a given village.
Sure we can learn a song, and learn a dance. We could even do the dance at the right time of year, but not in the right place (if it's something we're taking home with us). We would need to be from a particular village to really preserve its traditions. Real preservation has to come from within.
People would lament the changes, how so many young people leave the villages. We were told that one we visited had only one child in it. But to try to force them to stay would, be equally as not right as forcing them to leave was.
The fact is that stay or leave - life is changing. There is another generation gap coming up, as much as the boomers that made up the bulk of our group were a gap, as much as the industrial revolution was a gap. Bulgaria is set to join the EU soon, and some entrepreneurs are already busy selling as much of the country as they can to foreigners (mostly Europeans, but whoever has money to invest). This upcoming generation is a gap, both here and there.
The Annas get the job of documenting what they can for posterity. They can't 'preserve' it as a living tradition either. They are between us and the villagers, in that they are of that culture, but not of any of these villages. Sometimes they know the songs, dances, traditions better than the people of a particular village can remember them themselves, but professionally as researchers their job is to observe and record, not influence.
Anna expressed frustration that now people (as in Bulgarians) repeat what ethnographers wrote about Kukeri being "to scare evil spirits." Quoting this sort of pat simple cliche only helps to drive out the passing of memories of what all else they are.
The traditions will change, they have to. Different bits will be preserved in different ways, probably by different people. Some who are still there - in it to various degrees - will adapt what they can into the next phase of their lives. Not just the surface either, even if that is all many people see. Not everything will be saved, but not all will be lost either.
