Current issue

This article examines Štefanské hody, an autumn feast held since 2009 in Kamenná kolonie (Kamenka), a former quarry workers’ settlement in Brno, now an artistic, gentrifying neighbourhood. Drawing on fieldwork (2023–2025) and participant observation at the 2025 feast, it asks how residents turn part of the city into a place that, for a few October days, feels and functions like a village. Rather than measuring it against an imagined authentic original, it treats the tradition as a symbolic construction made in the present. The analysis draws on Lefebvre’s production of space and de Certeau’s tactics, while Turner’s communitas and Bey’s “temporary autonomous zone” explain the event’s social texture and political-affective effect. Alongside recent studies of invented urban carnivals in the Czech lands, Štefanské hody emerges not as degraded folklore but as functional, locally situated folklore, whose significance lies in its transmission and its capacity to bind a changing community.

The folk revival movement in Ukraine, arisen in the late 1960s, has undergone a significant transformation with new forms since the outbreak of the conflict(s) in Ukraine (beginning in 2014 and in larger extent after 2022). Under conditions of war, these practices have rapidly gained popularity among wide audience and responding to a shared social need to support national idea through Ukrainian rural music and dance traditions. A distinctly politicized and national character of the current Ukrainian folk revival movement became a resistance reaction on an armed conflict. The role of grassroots representers have become crucial to new forms of folk music movement, which shifted from performative to participatory music-making after 2014. Its increased visibility across a wide range of media has influenced other spheres of the country’s musical life.

Transformed after 1945 by resettlements, Polonisation and cultural policies, Lower Silesia is today a post-migration region in which music and identities are shaped within translocal networks. Drawing on the concept of translocality and the notion of translocal cultural heritage, the article analyses
three festivals: Festiwal Tradycji Dolnego Śląska (Festival of Lower Silesian Traditions), Wrocławskie Kluskwicki (Wrocław Stonechats), and Swojskie Granie i Śpiewanie (Homely Playing and Singing Festival of Contemporary Folk Culture). It examines the types of ensemble that perform there and the musical repertoire presented. The festivals provide an inclusive space for communities whose transmission of musical tradition has been disrupted, enabling participants to express belonging and negotiate relations between mobility and locality. They reveal a multi-layered cultural landscape in
which minority traditions and hybrid practices coexist.

This article examines Trikraljski zvezdari (Epiphany carolers), a “silent tradition” practiced in the Sutla Valley along the Croatian-Slovenian border. On Epiphany Eve, small groups of zvezdari visit homes carrying a star, singing trikraljska popevka (the Epiphany carol), and offering blessings. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork across several villages, the research examines the persistence of this practice by tracing its historical origins and continuity alongside contemporary performance practices, with particular attention to localized musical adaptations. The findings suggest that the endurance of silent traditions is primarily sustained through ongoing local adaptation, personal dedication and communal participation, rather than the conservation of traditional patterns. Ultimately, the custom of Trikraljski zvezdari exemplifies how a living tradition endures through localized, continuous, and largely unnoticed practices that reinforce identity, memory, and a sense of belonging.

This article examines the interaction between bearers of traditional Ukrainian folk music and revival performers from the late twentieth to the early twenty-first century. Drawing on culturological and ethnomusicological analysis, published scholarship, media sources, and in-depth interviews, it explores key mechanisms of transmitting and preserving tradition, including fieldwork, oral learning, joint music-making, and combinations of traditional and revival practices. The findings demonstrate that traditional musical culture undergoes recontextualization and integration into contemporary cultural space, largely driven by growing societal interest in national heritage and traditional music. At the same time, revival performance shows a gradual shift from stage-oriented reproduction toward interactive, participatory, and community-based practices, transforming it into a form of cultural mediation that supports the sustainability and contemporary relevance of Ukrainian musical heritage.

The accordion is one of the most recognizable musical instruments in Slovenia today and a prominent symbol of national identity, despite its relatively late introduction during the nineteenth century. This article examines the historical and cultural processes through which the instrument became embedded in Slovenian traditional music and acquired diverse symbolic
meanings. Drawing on historical and archival sources, ethnomusicological research, and case studies of folk dance ensembles, popular folk-pop music, revival movements, and diaspora communities, the study traces the accordion’s transformation from a vernacular dance instrument into a national cultural emblem. It argues that the accordion functions not as a fixed marker of Slovenian identity, but as a dynamic cultural symbol whose meanings are continually reshaped through performance, discourse, and negotiation across different social and historical contexts.