The Fifth International Symposium on Traditional Polyphony ...

Lithuanian and Ainu Vocal Polyphony: Certain Parallels
is common in Ainu vocal traditions; neither can it be
treated as alien in regards to Lithuania’s neighbors –
archaic Finnish-Ugric as well as Slavic polyphony).
Several types of movements can be defined in the
choreography of the sutartinės. One is walking in a
circle. <strong>The</strong> “walking about in a circle” choreography
of the sutartinės has many variations: dancing with
arms either linked or not, hands joined in a “star” (fig.
6), walking one behind the other while occasionally
stamping and so forth.
Lithuanian sutartinės tradition
<strong>The</strong> Lithuanian folk term, tūtavimas ‘tooting’, ex–
presses a variety of performances – woodwind blo–
wing and sutartinės singing and dancing. <strong>The</strong> verb
giedoti means ‘to sing sutartinės (or hymns)’, ‘to
chant’, ‘to warble’ or ‘to pipe (about birds or wo–
odwinds)’.
6) Song-dance-music syncretism
Ainu tradition
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Rimse means both dances and dance-songs in the
Ainu language. Originally rimse means ‘making
stamping sounds.’ It is said, it derives from an
exorcism march, wherein village people used to walk
in lines stamping and flinging swords up and down
when something evil happened. <strong>The</strong>re are two kinds
of rimse. One kind is a dance in certain styles with
no descriptive movements. <strong>The</strong>re are three types of
songs for this dance. <strong>The</strong> first type is when an iekai
‘leader’ sings and the followers sing; the second type
is when two groups sing to each other and the third
type is to sing in unison. Another kind of rimse is a
dance of animal movements 20 .
In Sakhalin, a repertoire is known collectively as
heciri or hecire with no distinction between dance
songs and seated songs or between song and dance.
<strong>The</strong> term heciri-yukara, however, can be used to
denote songs alone 21 .
Some songs accompany dances and games. Many
dances imitate birds and animals 22 .