Labas!
Hello and welcome to my summer blog. I'll be updating this with snippets of news, stories, pictures, and my experiences from the field as I conduct my ethnographic project studying Lithuanian folk songs, dainos. Before I leave on June 20th, I wanted to get started by posting some of the background information about my project and my goals.
My research while abroad surrounds understanding Lithuanian identity construction through the performance of dainos (folk songs). I want to understand how people "remember", imagine, and construct their nationality through folk melody and text.
I'm not quite sure what I'll encounter in the field, of course, but I am hoping to really focus on what young Lithuanians think about dainos, music, and Lithuanian art. What can we learn from Lithuanians and the place of music and art in Lithuanian culture as we American artists struggle to build our younger audiences? Focusing on young Lithuanians and their perceptions of music will really show me how memories are transmitted through song - young Lithuanians might not even remember the fall of the Soviet Union, never mind Soviet life, and yet they sing about their triumphs as if they remember it themselves. How does this mechanism operate and help to construct both national and personal identity?
Through my studies I hope to self-reflexively explore my own heritage and my love of music. As a "half Lithuanian" American student who wants to be an opera singer, I hope I can discover throughout this summer how I construct my own identity through music. My relative told me that music is inherent to Lithuanians: that - like basketball skills - music is in Lithuanian blood. Of course, anthropologists agree that such talents are culturally engrained and not quite biologically determined.
Yet it makes me wonder - could music be "in my blood" too?
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