The Fifth International Symposium on Traditional Polyphony ...

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MIKHAIL LOBANOV (RUSSIA)
JOINT SINGING OF THE VEPSES AND ARCHAIC PHENOMENA
IN THE PEASANTS’ MULTIPART SINGING
IN THE BALTIC COUNTRIES
On the map of the spreading of traditional ethnic types of multipart singing, as presented by our colleague
Joseph Jordania in his book “Who Asked the First Question”, Vepses are also mentioned (Jordania, 2006:
67). But here the author simply indicates that he did not possess any material concerning their singing, but
I happen to have some. I am going to touch upon this issue not only in order to fill in the blank spaces but
also because of the fact that, in my opinion, it provides grounds to formulate some hypotheses about the early
stages of multipart singing in the region, where the roads of different peoples – Finno – Hungarians, Balts
and eastern Slavs – intersected.
<strong>The</strong> Vepses, a small nation belonging to the Finno-Baltic language subgroup, live on the western shores of
Onega Lake, in the eastern part of the Leningrad district and in the bordering regions of the Vologda district.
<strong>The</strong> Vepses call themselves Vеps’, Bepsia, Lyudinikad, Vepslayne (informally they, at least, the southern
Vepses, are called Chukhars).
<strong>The</strong> centres of Vepses are the large villages of Shеltozero, Ozera, Vinnitsa, Oshta and others. As to their
language they are divided into three dialectal groups: northern (on the shores of Onega Lake), middle (Vologda
and Leningrad districts) and southern (Leningraddistrict) (fig. 1).
Formerly the Vepses, in whose ethnonym historians trace the transformation of the names Ves’ or Chud’
of the Russian chronicles, were quite great in number. But according to the census of 1939 they amounted
only to 32000 people and in 1979, their number was reduced to 8000, but ten years later, in 1989 their number
already grew to 12000; it should be noted that the number of people knowing the native language always
remains the same – 40 – 45 per cent.
<strong>The</strong> validity of the data requires some explanation: some Vepses areas have being occupied by Finns
during the Great Patriotic War. After the War, many Vepses called themselves Russians since feared to share
the fate of other persecuted nations at USSR. Local autorities help to Vepses too to registry as Russians. Now,
when the Vepses can also enjoy the priviledges meant for the small nations of the North, a reverse process has
started, and the Veps roots are remembered by those, who abandoned them a long time ago.
As it is aptly said in one of the modern articles, the Veps of the chronicles “during its evolution failed
to reach the stage of forming an independent state of its own and turned into a remnant of the once-existing
nation, which was no longer able to create its own history” (http://finugor.ru/node/867).
So far the Vepses have not nurtured their own literature, great artists, musicians, but the interest in their
ethnography, archaeology and folklore from without – St Petersburg, Petrozavodsk, Estonia, Finland – is great.
Now the cultural centres of the Vepses are in the village of Vinnitsa – a House of Culture, a village house in
Shеltozero, a school in the village of Korba, where there is a small museum of regional studies. In Vinnitsa
a Festival of the Veps Language and Culture is held annually, every second Sunday of June. Now not only
poems are created in the Veps language but the works of world classics are being translated as well. This is
how Pushkin’s lines sound in the Veps language: