Vasil Hadžimanov’s Field Research after the Skopje Earthquake of 1963 and the Process of Reconstruction of the Laments from His Archive Materials 60 Years Later

Folkloristics 9/1 (2024)
Author: Ana Martinoska and Žarko Ivanov
Text:

This paper presents Vasil Hadžimanov as an important ethnomusicologist whose many years of fieldwork resulted in ten thousand collected folk songs. Unfortunately, a small part of that legacy has been published and is available to the scientific and general public.
The focus of this paper is his field research conducted after the catastrophic Skopje earthquake of 1963, when he recorded hundreds of laments, which represents a huge contribution to the study of this, specific and rarely studied, folklore genre. The paper presents the process that preceded the publication of over 200 laments, which included digitization and transcription of audio materials, as well as their comparative analysis with Hadžimanov’s notebooks and musical notations.

Keywords: Vasil Hadžimanov, field research, earthquake in Skopje, laments, archival materials, digitization, transcription, audio materials, comparative analysis.