The Fifth International Symposium on Traditional Polyphony ...

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LITHUANIAN AND AINU VOCAL POLYPHONY:
CERTAIN PARALLELS
DAIVA RAČIŪNAITĖ-VYČINIENĖ
(LITHUENIA)
I have already known for a considerable time that a unique form of imitative polyphony distinguishes the
vocal tradition of the Ainu, the aboriginals of Japan. For many years, I hoped to compare the Ainu polyphony
with Lithuania’s polyphonic sutartinės which, for the most part, are grounded on the canon principle. However,
there had always been a shortage of information and examples of Ainu music, particularly its audio recordings.
<strong>The</strong> topic for this presentation appeared due to a stroke of fortune. One year ago, Sergej Chupa, an artist
filmmaker, asked me to participate in the film he was making about the sutartinės. Chupa provoked me into
a discussion about the origins of the sutartinės, the relationships of these songs with the vocal polyphony of
other nations, manifestations of meditation in the music of the sutartinės and the like. He said he could see
interrelationships between the sutartinės and the Japanese culture, among other similar ideas. To find such
relationships, he travelled to Japan and lived in Hokkaido for a time. <strong>The</strong>re he met Ogihara Shinko and Chiba
Nobuhiko, who were researching the Ainu culture and music. He sent me several e-mails from Hokkaido
containing upopo texts of the Ainu and archived audio recordings. Certain of them were recorded as early
as 1903 by Bronislav Pilsudski (fig. 1, 2), an anthropologist and ethnologist whose descent was Lithuanian.
Although Pilsudski is presented to the world as a Polish scholar, his origins are Lithuanian to a large
part. <strong>The</strong> roots of the Pilsudski-Ginetis (Giniotis) family are discovered in the lands of 15 th century Žemaitija,
also known as Samogitia. One family member, Baltramiejus Gineitis, was the first to adopt the name of
Pilsudski, after the name of his manor estate in the surroundings of Tauragė, which was Pilsūdai. Three
families branched out from the genealogical tree of Bronislav Pilsudski-Bilevičius, Pilsudski and Butleris.
Petras Povilas Pilsudski, Teodora Uršulė Butlerytė (the maiden name for Butleris) and Antanas Bilevičius
were true Samogitians, i.e., from Žemaitija. Only one of their grandmothers, Elena Michalkovska, had both
a Polish and Lithuanian origin.
<strong>The</strong> Pilsudski family history (fig. 3 a, b) is typical of the boyar nobility from the Grand Duchy of
Lithuania, which became entirely Polanized by the 18 th century and could not imagine a history of Lithuania
without its alliance with Poland. Nonetheless, they were not truly Polish and spoke Lithuanian; thus they
are considered gente lituanus natione polonus, or Polish of Lithuanian descent. Such a national identity is
characteristic during the 19 th century as much as during the first half of the 20 th century (Gumuliauskas, 2009:
391).
Thus such an unexpected prompting to undertake the comparative research of Lithuanian and Ainu vocal
polyphony came not only due to the valuable Ainu recordings but also due to the idea that the first researcher
of this national group was Lithuanian by descent. From the start, I want to caution that this is the first attempt to
compare these phenomena by perceiving certain commonalities. For the time being, I do not feel competent in
the field of Ainu polyphonic music. <strong>The</strong>refore, I must rely on known truths or the opinions of other researchers.
It is always possible that, beneath my perceived, so-called “superficial” similarities, there are still deeper,
underlying commonalities. It is too soon to talk about this for now. A deeper knowledge of the Ainu vocal