Folk Music Ensembles of Hrvatsko Zagorje: Violin, Wind, and Tamburitza Traditions
Folk Music Ensembles of Hrvatsko Zagorje
This study examines three principal types of instrumental ensembles found in the Hrvatsko zagorje region of northern Croatia: violin ensembles, wind groups, and tamburitza bands. At the local and regional level, these formations are regarded as folk ensembles and appear regularly at social occasions ranging from baptisms, weddings, and dances to funerals. While they sometimes perform older traditional music, their repertoire heavily favors newly composed songs in the Kajkavian dialect or other local vernaculars. At the state level, however, the preservation of musical heritage remains the domain of cultural-artistic societies, whose stage-adapted presentations often feature older songs and dances rarely heard in spontaneous community performance.
Until the 1970s, ethnomusicological research in Croatia and across Central and Eastern Europe concentrated primarily on village traditions, seeking authentic, autochthonous values that could affirm and develop national culture. As a result, scholars devoted their attention mainly to old local songs and to music made on traditional village instruments. They studied the construction, technical possibilities, local usage, and geographical spread of these older implements in considerable depth. Once it became clear that a given instrument had been adopted from another culture, was not made domestically, or was bought from a factory or store, it ceased to be classified as a folk instrument and lost its appeal for researchers. Furthermore, because Croatian melody transcription was carried out largely without tape recorders until the 1960s, notating instrumental music—especially that performed by ensembles—demanded uncommon skill and specialized knowledge. Consequently, twentieth-century folklore collections consist mostly of song transcriptions, with instrumental works only rarely notated.
The situation is much the same for the music of Hrvatsko zagorje. The region's largest ethnomusicological source, the Vinko Žganec collection (1950, 1952, 1971), contains 745 song transcriptions but just a handful of single-part instrumental melodies. Ethnoorganological writings are limited largely to descriptions of how early village instruments were built. Although many researchers mentioned the activities of various instrumental groups, they paid them little serious attention for the reasons outlined above. An exception came in 1973, when Jerko Bezić turned his focus toward the instrumental groups in the area around Donja Stubica that used newer, factory-made or cottage-manufactured instruments. This state of research motivated me to concentrate my own work on instrumental ensembles, especially given that, from the nineteenth century to the present, they have been the most visible and significant participants in the region's music practice.
During the 1970s and 1980s, Croatian ethnomusicology expanded its scope by adopting the theoretical postulates of contextual folklorists. The subject now included all music spontaneously performed by various groups of people, not only in villages but also in towns and suburban settlements—music freely chosen from both traditional and contemporary repertoire, including authored creations, from the local environment as well as from nearby and distant regions. Researchers began examining continuity and change in tradition, the multilayered nature and diversity of musical worlds, and the processes of assimilation, acculturation, and transformation that occur when folk music phenomena interact with various cultural influences and with the interplay of traditional and contemporary culture.
Ethnomusicologists also turned their attention to the relationship between music and cultural identity—how music symbolizes and helps shape culture, and how it absorbs and produces meaning that goes beyond its primary code. Today, musicologists view music broadly as a powerful force for social integration, creating feelings of belonging and community, structuring and expressing social processes, and generating significance within particular communities and their identities.
During the 1980s and 1990s, research into instrumental music shifted away from examining and classifying the technical features of instruments and toward repertoire, music creation, and performance itself. Although instrumental music is constrained by the technical possibilities of the instruments played, it often serves as a meeting point for many old and new musical styles, thereby enriching and modifying a region's overall musical practice. This turning point was undoubtedly aided by improvements in music recording and reproduction technology and by the growth of mass media, which made field observation much simpler even as the number of specially trained experts increased.
Various instrumental ensembles participate in the musical life of Hrvatsko zagorje. As in other Croatian regions, groups using amplified instruments are the most common: one or two electric guitars, a bass guitar, an electronic keyboard, and drums. These ensembles play diverse repertoires that usually mix domestic and foreign pop hits at parties, weddings, restaurants, and social gatherings. Alongside these popular groups, several types of ensembles are locally regarded as folk ensembles. Some, especially tamburitza groups, function within amateur folklore societies, providing instrumental accompaniment for folklore festival performances. Others take part in contemporary musical life by developing newly composed folk tunes—songs written by authors in a folk style—and performing mainly at regional music festivals, social gatherings, and on the radio. Depending on the occasion, the individual musicians often move between groups, playing as accompaniment for amateur folklore performances, as a contemporary folk group at a regional festival, or even as a pop group at a wedding.
I focused my research primarily on groups that the inhabitants of Hrvatsko zagorje themselves consider "their own"—true "folk ensembles" that appear at a wide range of local social events. I did not include the music groups active within cultural and artistic societies (KUDs). These groups are usually uniform (nearly always tamburitza ensembles) and appear in public almost exclusively as accompaniment to choreographed folk dances. Such amateur folklore groups did not emerge from the traditional music practice of Hrvatsko zagorje; rather, they were shaped by the concept imposed on folklore festivals during the second half of the twentieth century. It should also be noted that store-bought string and wind instruments, which had already become prevalent in Zagorje ensembles at the turn of the century, were never accepted as authentic folk instruments. The tambura, although also purchased and made in workshops, achieved the status of a folk instrument through its widespread use in amateur folklore practice, becoming an acceptable replacement for these other instruments at festivals.
I also did not separately discuss popular groups that use electrical instruments, even though they contribute to the overall musical landscape of Hrvatsko zagorje. By their activity and repertoire, these groups try to align with general trends in popular music and therefore do not represent any specifically "Zagorje" practice. In addition, they are indirectly represented by the groups I discuss later, as the same musicians often function in both folk and popular roles depending on the occasion and instruments being used. Brass bands and wind orchestras were also excluded from the study because, although they take part in many social events, they are not considered folk ensembles.
Types of Folk Music Ensembles
The musical life of Hrvatsko zagorje, both past and present, has been marked by small instrumental ensembles, just as in other regions of Central Europe. Violin and wind instrument groups were part of a common European cultural resource, while tamburitza ensembles spread throughout Croatia in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Unlike solo performance, which depends on the technical capability of a single instrument and the skill of one musician, playing in an ensemble requires combining two or more instruments into a harmonious unit with interaction and cooperation among the players. Depending on the technical limits and sound qualities of the instruments, the number of each instrument type in the group, and the role each one is given (whether playing melody or providing harmonic and metrorhythmic accompaniment), individual ensembles create a specific sonority that distinguishes them from other ensembles. In doing so, they follow certain "sound ideals" (Klangideale)—those confirmed in their traditional music region as well as those promoted by modern popular groups. Sometimes ensembles expand by doubling instruments or adding new types because of a desire for a different sound. At other times they change through adaptation to playing conditions, the acoustics of the space, the audience, and the repertoire they perform.
Until around the mid-twentieth century, instrumental groups were primarily there to accompany dance. Music and dance—functionally and stylistically—formed one indivisible phenomenon. But signs of change had already appeared by the end of the nineteenth century, changes that would gradually weaken the dance function of music over the first half of the twentieth century. Some authors connect these early changes to the stylized folk dance music that developed among European composers who, inspired by traditional music, created new dance forms during the nineteenth century—pieces intended to be listened to rather than danced to. This had a reciprocal effect on village musicians. Nonetheless, in Hrvatsko zagorje, instrumental dance music remained predominant through the first half of the twentieth century. Alongside traditional dances (mostly belonging to a broad Central European sphere, such as the polka), the repertoire also included dances adopted from urban culture—the waltz, mazurka, tango, samba, the rašpa, and later the twist and rock'n'roll.
As popular music developed further (with vocal-instrumental forms dominating the second half of the twentieth century) and became more accessible through mass media, the repertoire of village musicians increasingly lost its dance character. Starting in the 1960s, their repertoire came to be dominated by vocal-instrumental genres: pop songs, newly composed folk songs, and pieces from regional popular music festivals. This kind of repertoire even prevailed at dance socials. Young people danced to pop songs and newly composed folk numbers that were not originally intended for dancing.
Changes in repertoire were accompanied by changes in the instrumental ensembles themselves. Newer types of ensembles similar to those in the sphere of popular music increasingly appeared in the music life of northern Croatian villages. The accordion and various amplified instruments—especially the electric guitar, electric bass, and drums—joined traditional groups. During the 1970s and 1980s, such mixed ensembles took over public entertainment settings, including dances and weddings. Violin and wind ensembles withdrew from public musical life or transformed into mixed groups, while purely tamburitza ensembles persisted mainly in the amateur cultural sphere.
At the same time, the influence of popular music created fresh opportunities for folk ensembles. Modeled on the popular music festivals that had started in the mid-1950s, regional festivals were established in Croatia during the 1960s. These included Melodije Istre i Kvarnera (Melodies of Istria and the Quarnero, established 1964), the Festival kajkavske popevke (Festival of Kajkavian Songs, 1966), and the Muzički festival "Slavonija" (Music Festival "Slavonia", 1969). In organization, structure, and performers, these ev ent s r e- sembled popular mu sic festivals. Entertainment singers—often soloists—performed with festival orchestras, presenting new songs that blended individual traditional patterns and regional features with contemporary popular music expressions. The regional character of this creativity came primarily from dialect texts and motifs rather than from musical components. Composers, lyricists, and performers were not tied to a single regional festival and often participated in several different popular music festivals.
Thus, these festivals did not truly represent the musical creativity of their respective regions, and local instrumental groups did not perform at them. However, they did inspire the creation of festivals of more local significance, especially in northern and northwestern Croatia. Just two years after the founding of the Festival kajkavske popevke in Krapina, a festival called Igrajte nam mužikaši (Play for Us, Musicians) started in Bedekovčina. From the outset, ensembles made up of Zagorje musicians performed their own new compositions at this festival, mostly vocal-instrumental pieces. They tailored their creativity to the tastes of the audiences they ordinarily played for, and this event became far more popular within the region than the Krapina festival. Regional festivals like the one in Bedekovčina opened up opportunities for individual ensembles to present themselves to a wide public, to appear on local radio programs, and to make recordings. This is now the most common way for folk ensembles to connect with their audience, since dance socials are rare and popular groups usually play at weddings.
Violin Ensembles
Historical sources indicate that "purely" violin ensembles existed in Croatia during the nineteenth century, sometimes including a žvegla (flute), a flute and tambura, a dulcimer, and in the second half of the twentieth century, an accordion as well. Zagorje ensembles of this type were called mužikaši, cicari, and guslari. When they played at weddings they were simply known as veselniki. These groups do not have specific names today; people refer to them descriptively as "those with violins," while Radio Krapina calls them "violin-dulcimer ensembles," thereby emphasizing its preference for the older group configuration before the accordion was added. Most violin ensembles today feature violins, an accordion, a guitar (or a tamburitza bass), bajs, or contrabass. Of the eighteen violin groups I documented between 1997 and 2003, fifteen mixed groups.
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Then both instruments play the same passage, intensifying the sound.
The accordion plays a twofold role in the instrumental composition: in the strophe, and sometimes in the introduction and the interplay, it carries the melody while also supplying harmonic accompaniment throughout the song. The musician most often plays solely on the keyboard, completely neglecting the basses. Playing only on the keyboard risks disturbing the balance of the violin ensemble's sound, and if the basses were added they would completely overpower the violins. For this reason, the accordion is played more softly when accompanying violins, while its sound is more prominent in passages without the violins.
A considerably smaller number of ensembles continue the violin and dulcimer group tradition. These are mainly ensembles that were
founded during the 1990s in an effort to revive the early Zagorje music tradition, which nearly died out during the 1970s and 1980s. During my research, I documented only three such ensembles: the Cimbuli band from Ivanec, which stopped playing in 2003; the Visočki cajti group from Visoko that performs at frequent intervals; and the from Bednja, who are today the only truly active "violin-dulcimer" group in Hrvatsko zagorje.
The accordion is absent from violin ensembles that include a dulcimer. With its powerful sound, the accordion would completely "drown out" the dulcimer. In these ensembles, the dulcimer fulfills the harmonic role and sometimes also takes over the main melody in place of the violin. It typically does this in the song's introductory passages and in the interplay. The group has come closest to the ideal "violin-dulcimer" sound of the traditional Zagorje players. Although they, too, change instruments and repertoire depending on the circumstances and performance venue, they have become popular with a wide audience precisely because they nurture a distinctive, old ideal of sound and playing. The lead melody, as well as the second-part melody, is played by the violins, the bass passage is played by the contrabass player using his bow, and for the , the uses the third violin instead of the or guitar. It warrants emphasis that the violin-playing technique is fundamentally different when performing the kontra. Unlike the players of the first and second violin, the holds the violin vertically on his chest, enabling him to execute sharp, rapid downward strokes with the bow, producing accompaniment on the weak part of the beat. This difference in violin playing technique appears in the musical practice of other European countries (see Deutsch 1975:13). Compared with ensembles where the accordion provides a steady intonational foundation as a tempered instrument and, combined with the plectrum-played instruments, creates a more sonorous, that is, more pronounced accompaniment, the sound of the is softer, less penetrating, with a less stressed and almost fluid metrorhythmic background, owing to the generally quieter stringed instruments and the dulcimer. Due to its instrument construction, manner of playing, and the non-tempered nature
of the string instruments, this ensemble enjoys greater freedom in intonation. All of that, along with their song texts in the local Bednja vernacular of the Kajkavian dialect, makes the an ensemble that produces the pronounced "old-fashioned" ideal of sound, thereby making it unique and identifiable among the violin ensembles of Hrvatsko zagorje. The non-tempered playing of the violinists is precisely what most creates the old-fashioned character of the violin ensemble sound. While developing
The first and second violin hold the instrument under their chins, in the position customary for performing the melody, which foregrounds the instrument's technical capabilities and the player's skill.
individual playing styles, they also contribute as the lead musicians to the particularity and mutual differences between the individual ensembles.
Today, the violin ensembles perform mostly authored songs. Elements of folk-popular music from the Alpine region are noticeable in their repertoire: most songs are in moderately brisk tempo, in the dance rhythm of the polka and waltz, with major-key melodies that feature arpeggiating of chordal tones, and sometimes with upbeat beginnings. A small portion of their repertoire comes from old Pannonian parlour songs or music featuring traits near to Schlager, as the most widely diffused genre in popular music. These songs are characterised by a moderate tempo and gradual melodic development, which is occasionally in a minor key. The harmonic progression in almost all these songs is reduced to its fundamental function, with occasional modulations to close tonalities at the song's end, that is, in the final repetition of one section or even the entire refrain.
The song texts do not differ in theme from popular music lyrics in the broadest sense. Most are love songs or humorous songs, but they are imbued with local colour and speak of love, home, the people of Zagorje and their way of life, about their kleti [vineyard cottages], their gorice [vineyards] and wine. Nearly all the texts heard in violin ensemble performances today are in the Kajkavian dialect, often in a specific local vernacular. For instance, almost all the ensemble's songs are in the Bednja vernacular and are difficult to understand even within Zagorje itself.
Apart from new songs, the violin ensemble repertoires also contain older Zagorje songs. These are songs that were mostly written or recorded during the 1960s and 1970s, which, although authored, are regarded as "authentic folk"
songs. They include, for example, "Suza za zagorske brege" [A Tear for the Hills of Zagorje] by Zvonko Špišić, "Dobro mi došel prijatel" [Welcome, Friend] by Vili Čaklec, and "Veselo, veselo Zagorci" [Cheerily, Cheerily, People of Zagorje] by Franjo Boroš. And sometimes they also perform older traditional songs. Thus, for example, the Haubiksi ensemble included in their repertoire the well-known Zagorje wedding song "Zorja je, zorja" [It's Dawn, It's Dawn]. Variants of this song had been noted in the field by both Žganec and Bezić (Žganec 1950:254, 321, 365-366, 382; Bezić 1973:333-334), and it is often performed by contemporary folklore groups.
Violin ensembles perform on various occasions: at celebrations and events, sometimes at weddings, but most frequently at local festivals. Most ensemble members come from the same community where they live and work. They are largely amateurs, although some, such as the , due to the number of their diverse performances, recordings,
and frequent television appearances, could well be called semi-professionals. However, the money they earn from playing is not their primary income—all the ensemble members hold other jobs. Most of the musicians are self-taught or were taught by older musicians in their villages. It is rare for them to have been trained by professional musicians or to have attended music schools. They mainly learn the musical components of their repertoire by listening and memorising, "playing by ear," while they write down the texts. Sometimes they write the chords beside the song texts. Still, most ensembles, including the , transform into pop groups by switching instruments and, as such, play at various events such as weddings and dances.
Wind ensembles
The activity of wind ensembles in Croatian Zagorje was confirmed at the beginning of the 20th century. They used to be called trumbetaši [trumpeters] (Kotarski 1917:73) or plehmuzika [brass bands] (Širola 1933a:205; Žganec 1971:47, 48), and were composed largely of brass instruments only, sometimes with an added clarinet (Ivančan 1973:271). The wind instrument ensembles encountered today in Zagorje's music practice are always mixed groups. They consist of a clarinet, a trumpet, a piano accordion, an electric guitar, a bass guitar, and often also drums. Groups of this composition—identical to that of the Oberkrajner groups, which were widely diffused in the western Pannonian and Alpine zone (see Deutsch 1990)—are called folk-popular groups in the media, particularly by Radio Kaj. The main and accompanying melodic line in the wind ensembles is played by the trumpet, the clarinet, and sometimes the accordion, which also provides harmony, while the metrorhythmic function is entrusted to the electric guitar, bass guitar, and drums. Wind ensembles today usually perform in the same or similar instrumentation where acoustic and electric instruments are combined. In this, they differ from the violin and tamburitza ensembles, which, because of the weaker sonority of the violin and the tambura, do not as a rule venture into such combinations. Frequent instrument changes are also evident in the wind ensembles, even within a single performance. The trumpet and clarinet are sometimes replaced by a saxophone, piano accordion, and the bass guitar with a baritone euphonium or trombone.
The traditional repertoire is usually played only on acoustic instruments. For example, the Fiškali almost always play the older polkas with the following combination of instruments: trumpet, clarinet, accordion, guitar, and euphonium or trombone, thereby trying to produce "the old-fashioned sound."
Apart from the earlier repertoire, the wind ensembles in such an
acoustic instrumental combination sometimes also perform newly-composed, authored songs. Still, electric instruments and drums usually join this basic acoustic group for the performance of new songs. In such a composition, they also perform pieces from the popular music repertoire or, as mentioned in connection with the violin ensemble, completely replace the acoustic instruments with electric ones, thus transforming from a folk to a popular music group.
Due to their musical characteristics, the songs of the wind ensembles fit entirely into the style of Alpine folk-popular music, as already described in the section on violin ensembles. It is highly probable that these very wind ensembles diffused it throughout Zagorje.
The song themes are nearly identical to those performed by the violin ensembles. They sing about love—happy and unhappy—home, wine, the vineyards, or they address some particular motif from contemporary life, such as Blatar's Band's song about the Internet, "Štief na internetu" [Štef on the Internet]. The song texts of the wind ensembles are generally in the Kajkavian dialect, although they are sometimes also in standard Croatian.
As far as their repertoire is concerned—motifs and structure of the songs—and the sound ideal they achieve through the described instrument combination, the Zagorje wind ensembles are essentially the same as ensembles of this type active in the broader region (cf. Weber 1999). The wind ensembles regularly have six or seven musicians, mostly amateurs, although trained musicians are not rare in this type of ensemble. The majority of players first gained experience in wind orchestras, brass bands,
which prompted some of them to continue their training at music schools. Thus, although some wind orchestra members can read music, they still usually learn new songs "by ear" from recordings. Although individual musicians in some groups are professionals, the wind ensembles as a whole are not, since the earnings they generate from playing are not a basic income for most members.
The popularity of wind ensembles in Hrvatsko Zagorje has grown considerably over the last decade or so. Regional and local radio stations played a major role in this increased popularity. Recordings of their repertoire are also easily available at many sales outlets, such as mixed goods stores and gas stations. The reason for their high number and broad popularity in relation to the violin ensembles lies perhaps in their "more modern sound," which results from the use of electric musical instruments; in song texts that, although in the
Kajkavian dialect, lack local particularities and are thus understandable throughout the entire region; and, finally, in their exceptionally diverse repertoire, which, alongside their own new compositions and pieces adopted from other groups, consists of traditional music and domestic and foreign popular music. This range of repertoire enables them to play at various gatherings. In addition to festival performances and independent concerts, the wind ensembles play at public celebrations and saint's day festivities, weddings, and funerals.
Compared with violin ensembles, the wind ensembles have always been more inclined to venture into the new, aspiring to be active more broadly in musical life. In the past, they often drew on the repertoire of urban and military music, while today they are increasingly making their way into popular music, trying to break outside the region and into the mainstream Croatian music scene. In contrast, the violin ensembles, which were historically more closely linked to local music styles, are still active today primarily as Zagorje folk ensembles not interested in emerging from their regional framework, instead consciously nurturing the "old-fashioned" style.
The tamburitza ensembles
According to accessible sources, tamburitza ensembles began their activities in Croatian Zagorje at the start of the 20th century. Josip Kotarski testified to their presence, noting that they played only from time to time "in inns or free of charge on festive evenings, playing uninvited in front of the inn" (Kotarski 1917:73). Twenty years later, the tamburitza players were already fairly entrenched in the region's music practice. Božidar Širola mentioned that the tamburitza ensembles had replaced "the music of the muzikaši," but also confirmed the existence of mixed ensembles with tamburitzas and one violinist (Širola 1942:41). More information on the later activities of the tamburitza ensembles—exclusively tamburitzas, as well as those where the violin was retained—appears in more recent sources (Žganec 1971:47-48; Bezić 1973:327; Ivančan 1973:272), and was confirmed by my research.
During my fieldwork in Hrvatsko zagorje, amateur tamburitza ensembles were active largely in providing accompaniment to folklore groups. Tamburitza orchestras
are rare, a fact confirmed by the absence of any orchestra from Hrvatsko zagorje (see, for example, Dragun 2003)
in the programs of the Festival of Croatian Tamburitza Music in Osijek at the end of the 1990s and beginning of the 2000s. However, a considerable number of folk tamburitza ensembles existed.
According to data in written sources, such tamburitza groups did participate in the musical life of Hrvatsko zagorje during the 20th century, but they were far fewer than wind ensembles during the second half of the century. Their number increased in the first half of the 1990s, connected with the boom in tamburitza music in Croatia during those years, but by the second half of the 1990s the number had fallen, and the wind ensembles once again took the leading position among folk ensembles.
The rise and fall in popularity or representation of tamburitza ensembles in the musical life of Croatian Zagorje can be traced in the programs of individual Zagorje festivals, for example, the Igrajte nam muzikaši festival, held in Bedekovčina since 1968. Two tamburitza ensembles, compared with as many as fourteen wind ensembles, performed at that festival in 1987; there were also two tamburitza ensembles, but only six wind ensembles, in 1991; while there were as many as six tamburitza groups, but only three wind groups, in 1994. However, their number started to fall from 1995: two tamburitza groups performed in 1995, one in 1998, and none after 2000. At the same time, the number of wind ensembles at that festival began to grow once again: nine performed in 1995, twenty in 2000, fourteen in 2002, while there were sixteen in 2003. The absence of tamburitza players from the Bedekovčina festival, however, was not solely the result of declining activity, but also a consequence of changes in the festival's conception due to the public's increased preference for wind ensembles.
After the upsurge in the first half of the 1990s, the number of tamburitza ensembles in Zagorje did fall, but their presence in the region's musical life stabilised. This is also illustrated by their representation at the Zagorska krijesnica festival, founded in 1997, where the tamburitza ensembles are fewer in number than other types of folk groups, but still permanently present.
During field research, I documented eleven tamburitza ensembles active between 1997 and 2003. Their basic instrumental composition consists of a prim tamburitza, two brač tamburitzas, sometimes with the addition of a čelović, along with a tamburitza and a bass. The melody is performed on the prim, the accompanying melodic line and harmonical complementation on the brač tamburitzas and čelović, and the metrorhythmic background on the and the bass using the plectrum technique. The playing style of the Zagorje tamburitza
ensembles changed during the 1990s. Listening to performances recorded twenty years earlier, it is easy to hear that the tamburitza players at that time did not particularly ornament the melody. Some ensembles still nurture that style of playing today.
However, the majority of tamburitza ensembles in Zagorje today perform songs that have been more richly ornamented, with many flourishes and passing tones—in both the melody and the accompanying passages—thereby aligning with the playing style and sonority of other tamburitza ensembles in Croatia.
A violin is often also present in Zagorje tamburitza ensembles, which
The transformation of musical practice in Hrvatsko zagorje has been shaped by various factors. Historical records reveal changes in the regional repertoire during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, as musicians incorporated music from visiting players they encountered while performing in neighboring or more distant areas (see Kovačić 1985:243–247; Kotarski 1918:11), and even by learning from sheet music (see Žganec 1971:47–48). Beginning in the first half of the twentieth century, media-mediated music began to exert a stronger influence on regional and local musical life, driven by technological advances and the greater availability of recording and playback devices. Around mid-century, radio stations extended their broadcast ranges, and cheaper devices for sound reproduction emerged – for example, transistor radios1 – which intensified the interplay between media-mediated popular music and local traditions (cf. Malm 1992:211, 213).
As the media and music industry exerted increasing influence, the musical life of individual communities began to evolve rapidly. Musicians constantly expanded their repertoire by learning popular hits from all directions, but they also changed local approaches to music-making, thereby altering the musical landscape of their area. According to 1970s accounts, Zagorje musicians adopted new material mainly from gramophone records; following models from popular music, they gradually converted their ensembles into vocal-instrumental groups (see Bezić 1973:328; Ivančan 1973:285–286). Yet the development of media also allowed local musical genres to gain attention. In Hrvatsko zagorje, this was achieved through local radio stations (founded in the 1960s) and recordings made by Jugoton, the leading record label at the time.
In the past, ensembles appeared only in live performances; today, their survival and success depend on being presented through diverse media channels. Every performance opportunity and venue imposes different demands on musicians, including those of media corporations, the press, experts, festival organizers, and the public (cf. Lundberg, Malm, and Ronström 2003:29). This is especially evident at Zagorje festivals, where organizers often also act as radio editors. Musicians wishing to promote their songs at festivals or on radio must meet these demands. Zagorje musicians primarily present their new creative work through radio, festivals, and recordings; while this output largely adheres to a folk style, it also aligns with the musical idioms of popular music. The same ensembles perform at various social gatherings – saint’s day celebrations and weddings, for example – where they play public requests alongside their own songs. Most requests are for popular hits borrowed from other Zagorje groups or else taken from recordings. Depending on the venue and the audience, musicians also perform older folk songs and dance music, often learned from older players. They usually offer traditional music in service of promoting their specific local area, especially at events arranged by the local tourist board.
1 Transistors were invented by J. Bardeen and W.H. Brattain in 1948. ([S.n.] 1980:726).
Though the number of occasions for musical performance has multiplied, competition among musicians is fierce; securing a prominent place in the public eye is no easy task. More frequent appearances at the regional and local level help musicians gain notice from a larger audience, which leads to higher earnings and a higher rung on the ladder of social and cultural esteem. Those who have not yet reached a satisfactory level of visibility often attempt to do so by imitating already-recognized musicians, performing similar music, or else trying to make a name for themselves with a completely different style. A third option is to seek financial and promotional backing from sponsors and the media.
Almost all music ensembles in the Zagorje area launch their activities by performing at social events and weddings, offering a repertoire that they have learned and absorbed from others. For most of them, the goal is to break onto the local and regional scene with their own compositions. The surest way to gain validation as musicians is to perform at festivals and on radio programs, which in turn increases demand for their music and raises their earnings. Higher income and more frequent performances at a variety of occasions enhance the chances of making recordings and thus boosting the ensemble’s popularity.
Festivals, radio stations, recordings, and – more recently – websites constitute the main contemporary vehicles for circulating music in Croatian Zagorje. During my fieldwork they offered a rich source of information about the region’s ensembles and musical life. Even so, Zagorje ensemble music has so far remained at the regional level.
Though some groups might gladly expand beyond that boundary, none at present, it seems to me, would substantially alter their concept to fit the expectations of large record companies or the broad public. They are content, then, with strong distribution of their recordings at the local and regional level.
In the activities of the region’s three main ensemble types – violin, wind, and tamburitza groups – the contemporary and the traditional are fused. The “old‑fashioned” combination of instruments is employed increasingly often, yet the ensembles rarely aim for an equally old‑fashioned sound. The media, the growing use of tuned instruments, and easier access to music education (music studies are now part of both elementary and general secondary schooling) have reshaped the sound ideal of the musicians – and possibly of their audiences – so that the formerly common practice of playing on instruments that were out of tune is now regarded as “ugly, bad, and inappropriate.” Through their playing and singing, these musicians strive to appeal to a relatively broad audience; in other words, they adjust their performances to market demands. At the regional and local level, these ensembles are categorized as folk groups and appear regularly at all kinds of social events, from baptisms and weddings to dances and funerals. At such gatherings they sometimes perform music of older tradition, but far more often they offer newly composed songs in the Kajkavian dialect or in local vernaculars. Meanwhile, creative activity at the state level is entrusted to the performances of cultural‑art societies, whose stagings are adapted to the proscenium and often feature older songs and dances rarely seen in spontaneous performances conducted by groups of people. Whether this situation is genuinely decided by the region’s inhabitants or dictated by power structures or market forces remains, for the time being, an open question.