who asked the first question? - International Research Center For ...

227major forests, islands, continental fringes) or throughout easy to access territories? Theanswers to these questions are usually very easy to discover, and are very informative atthe sam e time. Here are the simple answers to these two questions:(1)Heterophony is distributed virtually throughout the whole ethnicterritory of the Russian populations, as well as the Ukrainian andBelarus populations. Only in a couple of smaller regions do we see theexistence of a different type of polyphony – drone polyphony. Thissimple and well known fact among Russian ethnomusicologists pointsto the earlier chronological period of distribution of drone polyphonyand the later distribution of the heterophonic singing style.(2) The area of the distribution of heterophony is the hundreds of thousandkilometers of open area of Eastern Europe, north from the Black andCaspian Seas. No major geographically isolating ecological systemsexist on this territory. Except one. The only geographically isolatingregion on this huge territory is Polessye, the biggest forest region ofthe Europe, the border region between all three Slavic peoples(particularly – between the Ukraine and Belarus). And again –Polessye is almost the only region where another (drone) type ofpolyphony is distributed.Therefore, the distribution pattern of heterophony on the territory of EasternEurope point to its late distribution. This is particularly evident in comparison of thedistribution pattern of heterophony with another polyphonic type of the Eastern Europe –drone polyphony. Drone polyphony of Polessye and some other (also isolated!) smallerregions (like the Bryansk and Belgorod districts in Russia) must be chronologically mucholder than the tradition of heterophonic singing.The idea of the possible later origin of heterophony, as the result of losing theancient “more polyphonic” tradition, has been expressed (as one of the historicalpossibilities) by Russian and Ukrainian scholars. For example, Sokolova declared“Heterophony is not the primordial type of polyphony, but a specific version of thetexture of the ‘podgolosochnaia polifonia’ type” (Sokolova, 1989:44). Efremovconcluded his recent paper, delivered at the Tbilisi 2004 International Symposium ontraditional polyphony, with the idea that the dissonant small range drone polyphony anddissonant small range heterophony is the archaic form of Ukrainian polyphony, and theheterophony with parallel thirds and large range (up to sixth) melodies is a historicallylater form of group singing (Efremov, 2005).If we have another look at the geographic map of Eurasia, we can see the possiblereasons for the disappearance of the older forms of polyphony in most of the territory ofEastern Europe: this territory is totally unprotected by any serious geographic barriers, sothe new migrating waves (coming from the east, by the way) were able to go throughwithout any major natural obstacles. This was the region where the migration waves fromCentral and East Asia (the most monophonic regions of Eurasia) were coming intoEurope.