Socio-Cultural Space of Don Cossacks in the Genre Retrospective of Song Folklore

Introduction. It is not by chance that the problem of the modern socio-cultural space of the Don Cossacks is addressed in the genre retrospective of song folklore. The very idea of socio-cultural fragmentation, social instability, and changeability has recently become more active in socio-philosophical and cultural concepts, becoming the starting point of discussions about the crisis, risks, and future of a society, and in this case of the Cossack ethnic group.

Unite many things into a single whole, to form a unified concept of comprehension of the social on the basis of the diverse in the folklore tradition are of particular importance in the philosophical consideration of Cossack culture.

Materials and methods. An analysis of the scientific works of D.Yu. Dorofeev and I.V. Tuliganova, who consider tradition in time and history, and sociocultural space as an aspect of the formation of a model of the world. B.N. Putilov, A.F. Kamaev, V.M. Shchurov, studying folklore, talk about the role of folk art and song in the culture of the people, bifunctionality as one of the qualities of a folklore work. The study of the musical and ethnographic heritage of the Don region is based on the works of A.M. Listopadov, V.E. Davidovich, T.S. Rudichenko, O.G. Nikitenko, L.L. Kasatkin. Dialectical, comparative-historical, descriptive methods of scientific research are used.

Results. When studying Cossacks, not all researchers pay attention to the importance of a comprehensive, philosophical study of the socio-cultural space. When analysing the historical aspects of the formation of the Don Cossacks community, it is worth remembering that “...every universalising historical and sociological interpretation that seeks to explain the fate of today’s last type of.... of man and... clearly show the decisive features of the vision in which his existence can be affirmed, must at the same time try to give a picture of in what historical process, illuminated from within, he must see himself and what significance this process has for his existence and self-fulfilment” [1, p. 300].

According to the definition of I.V. Tuliganova, sociocultural space is an important aspect of the formation of the world model — it is a constructed space of meaning, which reflects the specifics of social and cultural organisation of the society under study, in our case the Cossack ethnic group. The spatial paradigm in the sociocultural dimension allows us to see culture and society as a whole, “possessing a special structure, certain elements of homogeneity and, at the same time, multidimensionality” [2, p. 25].

The development of socio-cultural space is directly related to folk traditional culture. In the deep past, folk culture normalised and defined all aspects of human life — rituals, customs, corrected relations between members of society, knowledge, clothing, attitude to nature, type of family, beliefs; formed ritual and ceremonial practices. Starting from primitive times, the carriers of folk culture were clan, tribe, community, and later ethnos.

Before the period of globalisation of society, traditional folk culture was the natural world of all people, which had differentiation depending on the belonging to a certain ethnic group. Folklore, as defined by the English scholar William J. Thoms (folk-lore — “folk wisdom”), who first introduced the term in 1846, was the designation of both artistic (legends, dances, music and so on) and material (housing, utensils, clothing) culture of the people, it is strongly connected with folk life. Folklore is the art of generational memory. The people cherish in their memory what meets their life moods and needs.

In the 21^st century, under the conditions of modernisation, the processes of unification, erosion of national-ethnic identity and distinctiveness became increasingly evident, as the traditional way of life and economic structure changed. Traditional social ties based on direct, informal interpersonal contacts (family, kinship, community, neighbourhood) began to weaken, their range narrowed, migration processes accelerated: the pace and rhythm of life changed. The traditional music of the people, created by the rural population, for quite a long time retains its independence and formally opposes professional (“artificial” — artificialis) music belonging to relatively young, written traditions [3, p. 887].

Traditional culture is the spiritual life not only of society as a whole, but also of an individual. Traditions, customs, rites, rituals play an important role in the life of people and directly in social development. Traditions and customs always consolidate what has been achieved throughout the existence of man in his personal and public life, they stabilise relations in society.

Forms of human behaviour and activity, regulated by tradition, are focused on the repetition of a given stereotype, pattern, in this sense, tradition ensures the stability of any society.

Traditionality takes a special form in the historical process. According to D.Y. Dorofeev in his work devoted to the study of retrospect and perspective in the historical and temporal experience of man, tradition lives in the time segment of history, the connection “time-history” looks so natural, natural and established that it often leads almost to the identification of the concepts of time and history, removing the question of their distinction from each other [4].

In the present time, Cossackism embodies in an indirect form the entire historically previous development of this special socio-ethnic group — because history does not flow from the past to the future, it invariably exists in the present time. Thus, the unity of history, which takes place in the present, reveals in itself a certain remoteness, manifested in the presence of its historical otherness.

There is an important side important for the historical experience in the Cossack existence of the present, the retrospective, the aspiration to its past, to which the individual belongs, as well as to the future, thanks to the unity of the historical process. The main factor here is self-consciousness, directed from the whole to the part, realising the past, arising from the present time, revealing the traces of its presence in its own historical otherness. In fact, the comprehension of the past is often a form of self-consciousness of the present. Plunging into the times of the “Wild Field” or the early 20^th century, the modern Cossack is immersed in his history, as he feels his connection with it, albeit repeatedly mediated. Such a connection is only possible if there is an essential identity of the present and the past, interpreted in the definition of “history”.

The human individual can feel a sense of historical belonging, of being involved in a historical process that correlates with his cultural and historical past, only because they have a translational experience that is found in his self-consciousness and experience. There is a need to express one’s temporality, which forces one to delve into tradition and history, to recreate one’s past according to one’s own sense of time. These aspects give us a spatial intuition of the present that guides us in our existence.

In this regard, the historical experience of the Cossack ethnic group can change in the course of existence. We observe in the past what defines our present; the realisation of our own temporality builds the basic forms of historical perception, which combines the cognition of the life experience of the present.

It is commonly asserted that a person without the past has no future, and one could say no present, but there is no independent “now” either, because the past and the present are present in each other.

Man “revitalises” the past and the future by extracting them from the present, through the unity of temporal experience. The paradigm is human movement in traditional culture, the search for meaning through the traditions and cultural heritage of the people. Only then will the consciousness of belonging to the ethnic group be born, when traditions and diversity of culture will be the daily way of life of every family and individual of the represented group.

It is necessary to take into account the fact that an individual exists in the present to the extent that he immerses himself in his past and turns to his future, this happens through the everyday life, tradition and musical culture of his people.

In order to fully realise and feel the beauty of works of folk oral and musical creativity, to comprehend, it is important to understand the role of folk works in folk culture, their purpose, which is the genre definition of folk music. This idea of genres of folk art was formed in domestic science for a long time. In folk art, genre is a historically formed relationship of a folklore work with its vital purpose, function [5, p. 4].

Bifunctionality of a folklore work is one of its main qualities; it always combines both applied and aesthetic functions [6, p. 18]. The functional ratio in a work can be diverse. Some song and instrumental genres in the majority demonstrate applied character — these are labour refrains, shepherd’s tunes, lullabies, and so on. Other genres, on the contrary, clearly define the aesthetic beginning: lyrical song, epic tradition, etc., are the most popular.

At the same time, B.N. Putilov rightly notes that the concept of genre in folklore studies is used in two meanings:

1) as a set of works-texts characterised by the commonality of artistic content, functions, features of performance, poetic system, links with extra-verbal artistic forms (music, dance);

2) as a historically developed and realised in specific works, in a set of works, a system of content, poetic, functional and performance principles, stereotypes, norms, behind which there are relationships, perceptions, connections with these or those spheres of reality, everyday life, social institutions, etc. developed by collective experience [7, p. 155].

The multiple meanings and complexity of the term musical genre are also connected with the fact that all factors determining it are simultaneously influencing with equal force. These factors can be all kinds of in essence (place and form of performance), they can appear with a different measure of interdependence and in various combinations. This is an aspect of the emergence in musical science of various systems of classification of musical genres. They depend on the form of the musical genre that is taken as a basis. The development of this direction has brought its own peculiarities to the classification of the term. The changing interaction of professional art and folk art, the conditions of the existence of musical works, as well as the development of musical language lead to the emergence of new genres and modification of old ones.

In Cossack traditional culture, we can distinguish three kinds of musical genres (drama, epic and lyric), and it should be understood that each kind consists of types, the direction of which is determined by the form, time and place of performance of the vocal work. The dramatic genus includes ritual (theatrical) and round dance types of traditional song folklore. The genre of epic is represented by the genres of bylinas, historical songs, and spiritual poems. Lyrics is the most extensive genus, which contains various types of Cossack traditional creativity. The lyric genre is subdivided into groups: household lyrics, social lyrics, joke songs, dance songs.

The study of the musical and ethnographic heritage of the Don region, style features of song genres of the Don Cossacks, the role of musical instruments in the tradition of the Don Cossacks, and the problems of preserving the song and instrumental tradition of the Don Cossacks was contributed to by domestic culturologists and historians: A.M. Listopadov, V.E. Davidovich, A.P. Skorik, T.S. Rudichenko, O.G. Nikitenko, L.L. Kasatkina [8; 9; 10; 11; 12].

The genre forms developed in domestic life, and also managed to survive due to their existence among Cossack warriors in the conditions of a campaign outside settlements. Even with such a restrictive approach, song prose and poetic genres (military conspiracies, historical legends, bylines, anecdotes and oral stories, etc.), not related to song, as well as instrumental music, can be studied.

Undoubtedly, the social factors of existence of genre diversity of the Cossack tradition were important — it was the constant interconnection between individuals of the group, starting from family relations and ending with the whole community. Involvement in a common cause and constant performance of traditional rituals accompanied by certain musical genres united the society, educated the youth, and preserved the ethnic code peculiar to the Cossacks.

Discussion and conclusion. Unfortunately, at the current stage of development of modern society, we see the loss of traditional rituals, songs and meanings in Cossack culture. The modern Cossack man does not identify culture and status as a single whole: everyone can wear a Cossack uniform, talk about status, but at the same time they completely abandon the cultural and traditional basis, which forms the worldview of the “new” man. It is our opinion, that only education through song and cultural tradition can preserve the values and characteristics of an ethnic group; the genre retrospective of Cossack song preserves in the memory of the Don Cossacks and their descendants the cultural code, which is accompanied by cultural integration.

Returning to one’s origins, one suddenly discovers them at the core of one’s present, which can only be understood through the mechanism of interpreting the other – in this particular case, the historical other. In the process of historical perception, the present and the past move towards each other, facilitating the mutual disclosure of the meaning presented in them through a productive dialogue that does not require sacrificing the truth of their uniqueness.