Symposium Multilinguality in folklore/Večjezičnost v folklori

On 1 and 2 October 2020, the Institute of Ethnomusicology of ZRC SAZU organized an international scientific conference entitled Večjezičnost v folklori/ Multilinguality in Folklore, which, due to the current situation, was held simultaneously online and in the Prešeren Hall of the ZRC SAZU. The symposium was divided into three interwoven thematic panel discussions. Among the participants who took part in the first, which focused on the intertwining of languages in songs as an expression of linguistic margins, dialogues, and non-national discourses, Marjeta Pisk spoke on the topic of songs along the current border between Slovenia and Italy. In her paper “Lan san biu u Gorici”: Bilingual songs along the Slovenian-Italian border, she presented such songs as examples of “in-between practices” that have not been considered in studies of national traditions. She focused on the song “Lan san biu u Gorici” [I was in Gorizia a year ago], which was once the most often transcribed bilingual Slovenian-Italian song in the area of ​​Slavia Veneta and Gorizia Hills.

The participants of the second panel discussed transitions between idioms of three types or levels: dialects, supradialects, and standard languages. They examined different levels of these transitions in both Slovenian and other folk song traditions. Elaborations on these questions in the context of different linguistic and national environments were complemented by a consideration of possibilities for studying dialectal lexical variance in songs, offered by new technologies.

The symposium concluded with the traditional concert Zajuckaj in zapoj [Shout and sing], which presented the interweaving of multilingual singing practices in Istria, Gailtal Valley in Austrian Carinthia, and in Prekmurje.