Slovenia is not a large country, yet it represents an area of great natural and cultural diversity in central Europe. It bonds the edges of several larger European regions; the Alps on the northwest, Panonia on the northeast, and the Adriatic Sea as a part of the Mediterranean on the southwest. Slovenia is also a crossing point of Germanic, Roman and Slavic cultures. It is no wonder, that its cultural heritage is so rich and varied in content and in mood…(more on IGIZ)

Sounds of Slovenia – Fieldwork project

Nowdays several thousand Slovenes sing and play the folk songs and melodies of their ancestors. The memory from ancient times and echo of space that we call Slovenian folk music was followed by a research project form December 2010 to March 2011 by a team of three members. They travelled through Slovenia and abroad. The result of the project is a booklet with a double CD, with more than 70 pages of photos, descriptions, performers, forewords and 159 minutes of field recordings.

The booklet with double CD truly captures the present image of today’s Slovene folk music; it is bilingual and can be ordered from the web site – www.celinka.si

More information about the fieldwork.

At the project’s closing concert in Ljubljana’s “Stara Elektrarna” more than 150 singers and fiddlers gathered under one roof at the beginning of May 2011. This unique unison was recorded by the national TV station RTV SLO.

“From an ethnomusicological point of view, Sounds of Slovenia is an invaluable project, rooted in fieldwork, and based on in depth understanding of the musicians and their repertoire, as well as the context in which the particular music exists, and skillfully recorded in various formats (audio, photo, video). With systematic and user-friendly approach this project reveals the many layers of Slovenian cultural heritage, and the efforts of important, though still not widely recognized, facilitators of Slovenian traditional folk music”

Prof. dr. Svanibor Pettan
University of Ljubljana