Sounds You Never before Heard

A lthough the gradual loss of the old mother tongue among minority ethnic groups on this continent usually signals the degeneration of various aspects of the traditional folklore complex, the same process can concomitantly pave the way for the penetration of new elements and the generation of original phenomena. New motivations and inventions tend to replace the old resulting in a new look and a new outlook which are more attuned, as it were, to the needs and requirements of the acculturative situation. As a vehicle for the transmission of verbal lore, there can be no doubt that the Ukrainian language in Western Canada has become increasingly obsolescent and incapable of carrying on as the sole media of oral communication in a community that continues to shed the old, peasant folkways and to adopt those of the urbanized, English speaking mainstream culture which surrounds it. Insofar as the Ukrainian folk music complex in Western Canada is concerned, two outside factors have recently emerged to influence and arrest, temporarily at least, the complete devolution of the folksong and folk music heritage: Anglo-American country music and the commercial disc recording industry. Together these two factors have combined to reactivate a tottering legacy by providing, on the one hand, a new but somewhat similar folk music tradition whose form, content and style can be easily absorbed by Ukrainian folk music, and a novel, dynamic means of transmission on the other

Country · Economics · Linguistics · Management · Political science · Ukrainian · Canadian Identity and History · Folklore, Mythology, and Literature Studies · History

• International Country Music

  Nathan D Gibson•Journal of American Folklore•2014

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• The Letter in Canadian Ukrainian Folklore

  Robert B Klymasz•Journal of the Folklore Institute•1969

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• Anglo-American Folksong Style

  Open Access•William Randel, William Peirce Randel et al.•American Quarterly•1969

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