Gastvortrag in englischer Sprache von Olga Zaitseva-Herz
Dissertantin in Bereich Ethnomusikologie an der University of Alberta (Partneruniversität)
Abstract
Ukrainian emigrants from the eastern edges of the Habsburg Empire brought a vast repertoire of songs with them during the first wave of immigration to Canada (1891-1914). In the following decades, many of these traditional pieces were recontextualized, and new songs were also composed based on recent immigrational experiences. Many of these songs found their way to the contemporary music stages in North America and still demonstrate the elements from the pre-immigrational culture. This presentation demonstrates the reality of pluralistic connections between Austria and Canada that are present in the song repertoire of the Ukrainian-Canadian community even after more than a century after the actual emigration. The study is built on the audio collection of songs created by Robert Klymasz during his fieldwork in the 1960s, where he recorded vernacular song repertoires in the main Ukrainian settlements on the Canadian prairies in Alberta, Manitoba and Saskatchewan. These songs, many of which are hybrid, have often been thought of as marginal by Canadian and European ethnomusicologists of earlier generations and by the communities that sang them. The vast majority of these songs have remained unexplored and unpublished, and this study provides the first in-depth research of this collection and, particularly, the first analysis of vocal techniques used by singers, explores the continuity and change in Ukrainian diasporic songs and examines how their performing style and texts reflect hybridity and adaptation in the Ukrainian-Canadian diaspora community.
Bio
Olga Zaitseva-Herz is a Ph.D. candidate in Ethnomusicology in the Department of Music at the University of Alberta (Edmonton, Canada), a research assistant at the Kule Folklore Centre and guest researcher at the Music and Minorities Research Center at the University of Music and Performing Arts (mdw) Vienna as an Ernst-Mach Worldwide OeAD grant holder. Her research focuses on Ukrainian Canadian music and studies vocal techniques and the multidimensional hybridity of folk songs in Ukrainian diasporas. She received her first degree from a conservatory in violin; then, she graduated in sound design at Kyiv Karpenko-Karyi University of Theater, Kino and TV. After this, she pursued and completed her studies at the Frankfurt University of Music and Performing Arts (Germany) in singing and vocal pedagogy. Olga Zaitseva-Herz is also an active performer with extensive international experience. In addition to communicating her research findings in traditional academic venues, she presents them in the form of performances with her music project ZAITSA and raises awareness of archival collections in the world.
