Šiaurės Lietuvos etninė muzika: pajautos ir atsivėrimai

ENFrom the larger studies on ethnology published during the period of 2009–2011very notable is a fundamental work by the ethnologist of older generation Prof. Romualdas Apanavičius (Romualdas Apanavičius. Etninė muzika. Šiaurės Lietuvos kultūros paveldas 3. Monografija. Kaunas: Žiemgalos leidykla, 2009, 396 p.) In this monograph he decided to do things in a big way: “to fill the gap of ethnomusicology and ethnology researches studying the ethnic music of Northern Lithuania, its musical instruments, traditions of singing and playing music, and to find out their origin and links with ethnic history.” Certainly, to set himself such a goal and achieve it can only a scientist who devoted many decades to getting to know this land and research object; who in 1987–1991as the leader of expeditions far and wide went all over Northern Lithuania, collected data in the museums of Northern Lithuania and other regions of Lithuania, on a regular basis and almost for two decades (1990–2009) published the research results in Lithuania, Latvia, Finland, Germany, Poland, Russia, and the USA. Excellent knowledge of the research object allowed the author of the monograph to find the right and at the same time very logical, comprehensible principles of data classification which determined the structure of the research. There Apanavičius starts with styles of music and successively goes to separate musical instruments and the analysis of the meaning of their music, and finishes with description of the links of ethnic music of Northern Lithuanian and neighbouring nations not leaving aside the role of music in the overall context of the history of ethnic culture. All this he analyzes using the data of other fields of science and trends of research and basing himself of the works of other researchers (historians, archaeologists, mythologists, zoologists, linguists, etc.).