18th International Meeting

StubickeToplice
Croatia

13-17 April, 2011

at the invitation of

Institut za etnologiju i folkloristiku

Panel Discussion

Naila Ceribašić, 
Katarina Duplančić, 
Nina Šala, 
Andor Vegh, 

Pavo Gadanyi and Croatian bagpiping

The aim of this panel is to present building and playing of a variant of dude bagpipes, based on the fieldwork conducted with Pavo Gadanyi (1932), a member of Croatian community in the village of Tótújfalu, Hungary. He is a musician who concludes the old tradition of local oral transmissions; the rest of today’s Croatian players and builders grew up within revival movement initiated in 1980s. The type of the instrument he builds is a bellow-blown dude consisting of a chanter with four pipes and a drone, all with a beating reed of a clarinet type. The usage of this type of bagpipes, categorized in recent scholarly literature as Slavonian dude, has been documented in the Drava river area from Virovitica vicinity to the west of Baranja, both on the Croatian and Hungarian side of the river, and on the south to Daruvar and Našice vicinity, while in other parts of eastern and central Croatia have been used two other types of dude resp. gajde bagpipes (mutually different as regards the number of pipes in a chanter, the system of air supply, size, intonation, playing techniques, etc.). No matter these differences, as for their role in communities, players of these instruments were in the past the most respected rural musicians, functioning as the key entertainers and providers of music accompaniment for all main community happenings (such as feasts, weddings, dance parties). In principle, they were paid for their services and worked as soloists. As emphasized in historical sources, to gain the status of a skillful player has meant to know a wide repertoire of traditional dances and songs, to be apt in singing, and to be overall adroit in amusing others. Starting in early 20th century, gajde and dude players were gradually replaced by tambura ensembles. Their presence has been increasingly restricted to particular annual rituals and other representative and institutionally supported occasions, especially folklore festivals, supplemented in the most recent times by their engagement within tradition-based popular music scene. Likewise, the transmission of knowledge is today to the greatest extent institutionalized through schools, seminars and workshops, starting with the seminar of the Croatian School of Folklore in late 1980s onwards.

How Pavo Gadanyi, as the last in the row of pre-revival bagpipers, fits to such a historical trajectory of bagpiping among Croats? Several aspects of his craftsmanship and musicianship will be analyzed: Andor Vegh, who is himself a bagpiper and a pupil of Gadanyi, will provide an introduction to the panel by describing key components of building and playing this type of dude; Nina Šala will reveal the process of Gadanyi’s instrument making, examined in relation to existing (scarce and mainly older) literature on the topic; Katarina Duplančić will elucidate Gadanyi’s repertoire and style of playing, comparing him with other pre-revival bagpipers; Naila Ceribašić will depict Gadanyi’s participation in, and significance for diverse communities, and conclude the panel by commenting Gadanyi’s case in the context of an ethnomusicology of the individual.

Andor Vegh
The main characteristics and diffusion of Slavonian dude bagpipes 

Three types of bagpipes have been documented in the Pannonian part of Croatia: dude of Bilogora-Podravina type, dude of Slavonia type, and gajde. The scholarly literature about these instruments is quite limited, and displays variations in terminology. The most elaborated instrument is Slavonian dude, spread overwhelmingly in the area near the city of Virovitica and in northern Slavonia. It differs from two other types of bagpipes according to the number of reeds and closeness of its chanter. Despite its "late discovery" (e.g., the first example in the Ethnographic Museum in Zagreb were bought in 2008) and the smallest spatial extent (in comparison to other types of bagpipes), musical and ethnographic characteristics of this instrument are comparable to other Pannonian types of bagpipes. Music of this instrument is a special phenomenon, since it combines eastern (gajde) and western (dude from Bilogora) elements of the music on these instruments.

Based on the analysis of the whole existing musical material, this paper aims to describe the general features of the performances on this instrument, noting the similarities and differences in playing techniques and styles among a number of its players. Besides showing general, sub-regional and personal characteristics of the music, a special attention is dedicated to the artistry of Pavo Gadanyi, the last original dude builder and player.

Nina Šala
How to make dude bagpipes? A lesson from Pavo Gadanyi 

The film that the author will present within this paper is a part of the video material filmed during the three-day-fieldwork with Pavo Gadanyi in the village of Tótújfalu, Hungary, in the March 2010. It documents the process that starts with pieces of wood and leather, and ends with a fine instrument. On the two locations – Gadanyi’s work room and Gadanyi’s greenhouse – we are going to see making of some parts of dude bagpipes, in particular a four-part drone pipe called trubanj, a cup-like stock called našak, the carving of wooden parts and their decoration with zinc or lead. The procedure of making the chanter (diplice) and bellow (laktaèa), as well as the process of preparing the leather for the bag (mješina) will also be explained and presented by visual material. At the end, the author will discuss some of Gadanyi’s innovations in making dude bagpipes.

Katarina Duplančić
Pavo Gadanyi’s repertoire and style of playing 

The repertoire that Pavo Gadanyi performed for us in March 2010 included 25 pieces in Croatian language. They can be classified into dance tunes (kolo, drmeš, kokonješæe, csardas, foxtrot, tango), wedding songs, drinking songs, and songs borrowed from popular music. As for the Hungarian songs, because of their different musical characteristics (larger melody ambitus, minor third) they cannot be performed on Gadanyi’s bagpipes.

The variability of Gadanyi’s performances manifests itself in the changeable length of instrumental interludes at the beginning of song and between verses, and also in varying ways of how he organizes songs in sequences, either with or without the break. According to Gadanyi, to be a good bagpipe player it is important to be a good leader, the one who can initiate and lead the song. Because of his lifelong experience he can recognize other bagpipers by the sound of their instruments and different styles of melody ornamentation. The main characteristics of Gadanyi’s ornamentation are trills, repetitions, and various manners of circling around the main tone. Gadanyi uses drone accompaniment during all songs, but the dominant (so) as accompaniment appears very rarely (then in the rhythm of the melody) or it is totally absent when he plays more complicated melodies. The cadence is always on the second tone in the row, with characteristic repetition of the final tone in rhythm and tempo that differ from the whole song.

Naila Ceribašić
Pavo Gadanyi: A profile of a bagpiper, a convivial builder of social communication 

Since ethnomusicologists are, of course, tuned to focus on music, and since, on the other side, players of folk music instruments are scarce, eminent individuals in their communities, the ethnomusicological literature tends to interpret them along the lines of their musical artistry and dedication to music-making. Accordingly, when meeting Pavo Gadanyi, the last inheritor of precious yet disappearing musical knowledge, we expected to find such an individual captivated by music. But the main lesson we learnt from him bears upon the artistry of building bridges among people. He has never played bagpipes just for himself, he has always been eager to play in company, for the amusement of others (either in in-group or out-group contexts, among inherited or voluntary communities, across ethnic and generational categories). This does not mean that, following Gadanyi’s understandings and approaches, we may make conclusions about the whole scene of pre-revival bagpipers, but certainly his ways of musicing should not be neglected either. His case testifies both the merits and limits of an ethnomusicology of the individual (Stock et al 2001). Besides, it recalls yet other important ethnomusicological theories, such as Blacking’s argument on the cultural creativity that springs from social cooperation and loving interaction (1976:115) or Turino’s notion of participatory performance, in contrast to presentational one (2008).