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Site
of the fortress of Royal Marko, hero of Bulgarian epic. Prilep,
Macedonia.
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K.M., S.P.
and V.K. are not medieval artists who would be known from incertain ancient
documents, but masters-singers of today, former soldiers of the last World
War, witnesses and actors of history which is making up day after day in
the heat of Europe. And these singers are masters. They know how to create
a piece through the act of interpretating it, they know how to produce long
and detailed texts. They also know that their audience is competent to hear
them, has time to spend with them, is able to notice their omissions and
does not hesitate to point them out. They know that this audience is prepared
to be quivering with emotion and that they must not deceive them. They know
by experience the disastrous consequences that an insufficient complicity
with this audience might have on their performance. Therefore, they concentrate
on the story, on the narration and colour of the verbal expression, on creating
text rather than music (...).
If there is a ritual situation similar to the production of an epic song,
it is the declamation sung by the aede who has been asked by the family
of a dead to compose a piece celebrating his feats (...). These "men's lamentations"
feed poetic and musical pieces that generate epic. With the information
given by the family of the dead the singer composes a piece that he interprets
at the funerals and at the deceased's birhdays, or the day of the patron
saint. His audience is composed of the family and nearest and dearest who
listen to him at the grave foot and cry while eating together the funerary
meal. He proceeds, indeed, like prehomeric aedes who sang similar pieces
to celebrate dead heroes before Homer or his followers of the Pisistratus
times fix in writing an official version of "Patrocle's death".
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