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Lithuania is "Dainava", known to many even from olden times as the Land of Song. The song is a constant companion of
the Lithuanian in all his or her joys and sorrows. The wealth and beauty of the songs/dainos, notable for their lyricism and delicacy, have always amazed other peoples. Many
of the dainos sing of work, ( tilling, harvesting, corn grinding, pastoral life, etc.).
There are many love and wedding songs as well as songs about the lot of the woman. Merry
comic dainos are well represented too. Many of these songs also have religious connotations.
Lithuanians have a very original
type of song, peculiar to them alone, the sutartines. These are unique polyphonic songs in
which two or three melodies are sung in parallel. Many of the ancient dainos are now
rejuvenating and sung at various festivals. This kind of singing is so unique that many non-singers can't begin to grasp the intricasy and professional singer have their work cut out for them.
In the words, of renowned archeologist Marija Gimbutas, "For about 190
days of the year cattle, sheep, goats, and pigs, collected from the
whole village, were kept in pastures and guarded by an old shepherd,
who made music on a buck's horn, and shepherd children, who played
flutes and quaint wooden pipes. In the fields, around fires, as well as
by the mother's spindle wheel and loom during long winter evenings,
folk/songs and tales flourished and were transmitted from generation to
generation. Collective field labours were followed by songs, sung in
rotation by several voices, and with refrains which harmonized with the
rhythm of harvesting, and flax and hemp plucking and drying. From
lullabies and wedding songs to songs of lamentation during wakes, man's
life was inseparable from daina,
'the song' (in the folkloristic archives of Lithuania and Latvia there
are about 500, 000 collected songs, leading us to wonder how many more
may have disappeared in past ages and with the Russian Occupation). The
Balts sang ceaselessly, as though singing were as necessary and as easy
as breathing. And their songs for all occasions reflect these people's
feeling of kinship with mother earth and her many creatures, and
appreciation of her manifold gifts".
Michael Strmiska in "The Music of the Past in Modern Baltic Paganism" says:
"Modern Baltic Paganism grew out of nineteenth- and
twentieth-century folklore research into the folk music, folklore and
traditional ethnic cultures of Latvia and Lithuania. Research into
native Latvian daina and Lithuanian daino folk songs with their rustic
beauty, symbolic richness, and intriguing linkages to ancient
Indo-European cultures and religions generated a new sense of pride and
ethnic identity among Latvians and Lithuanians. Spiritually inclined
folklorists developed religious movements that recreated rituals and
beliefs linked to the dainas and dainos. Repressed during Soviet times,
these movements have reemerged and flourished in the post-Soviet
period. There can be no doubt that music, which over the centuries has
played such a crucial role in the transmission of Latvian and
Lithuanian folk traditions including native Pagan religions, will
remain front and center in the continuing evolution of modern Baltic
Pagan religions in Latvia and Lithuania and beyond. "
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