Authorities, Entrepreneurs, and Sound Archives in Ukraine By Anthony

231 Pages·2012·6.57 MB·English

RICE UNIVERSITY
Cultural Heritage in States of Transition:
Authorities, Entrepreneurs, and Sound Archives in Ukraine
By
Anthony G. Potoczniak
A THESIS SUBMITTED
IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE
REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE
Doctor of Philosophy
APPROVED, THESIS COMMITTEE:
Ja n, Professor
Department of Anthropology
Houston, TX
May, 2011
ii
Abstract
Cultural Heritage in States of Transition: Authorities, Entrepreneurs
and Sound Archives in Ukraine
by
Anthony G. Potoczniak
Since Ukraine's independence, a burgeoning private sector has been increasingly
encroaching in cultural spaces that previously were conceived of as "property of the
state." This dissertation is an ethnographic account of how objects of cultural heritage are
being re-configured within the new post-Soviet economy. Specifically, it focuses on
sound archive field recordings of traditional music and how they are being transformed
into cultural commodities. Regarding the jurisdiction of culture -- who controls cultural
heritage and how it is used to represent ethnic and national identity -- my research shows
how these boundaries are increasingly being negotiated within structures of social,
cultural and political power. Thus, culture becomes a contested object between
competing ideological systems: cultural heritage as a means to salvage and reconstruct
repressed histories and to revive former national traditions, on the one hand, and cultural
heritage as a creative, future-oriented force to construct new identities in growmg
consumer marketplaces.
iii
Acknowledgements
I would like to express my sincerest gratitude to a great number of individuals,
who played an important role in my graduate work and the completion of this research
project.
First and foremost, I want to thank my family, friends, and colleagues in Ukraine,
who endured countless hours of conversation about cultural heritage collections in
Ukraine. Several individuals, whom I would like to mention, were especially instrumental
in providing access to their institutions for my research. They include: Sofia Hrytsa,
Halyna Dovzhenok, Liudmyla Yefremova, Mykhailo Khai, and Olena Boriak of theM.
Rylskyi Institute of Art Studies, Folkloristics, and Ethnology (Kyiv); Lina Dobrianska,
Bohdan Lukaniuk, Iryna Fedun, and Yuri Rybak from the M. Lysenko Lviv State Music
Academy (Lviv); Iryna Klymenko and Olena Murzina from P. Chaikovskyi National
Music Academy of Ukraine (Kyiv); Volodymyr Halperin from the Kharkiv Oblast Center
of Folk Creativity (Kharkiv); Vira Osadcha Kharkiv, State Academy of Culture
(Kharkiv); and especially Yaroslav Davydovsky and Halyna Bushchak from SDA
Technologies (Lviv).
I would like to especially thank the host families, who accepted me warmly into
their homes while I conducted fieldwork in cities across Ukraine. These include
Yaroslava Ostaf (Kyiv) and Ihor Bordun (Lviv). They all thought I was a crazy
American, but treated me as one of their own.
· A special word of thanks goes to my friends at the Fulbright Program in Kyiv,
who were especially helpful in supporting my ambitious research project. Their constant
lV
intercessions and offers to assist in all aspects of my research will always remain an
inspiration. .
At Rice University, I would like to especially thank the members of my
dissertation committee: Profs. James Faubion and Stephen Tyler from the Department of
Anthropology. They were my mentors throughout the years of training in the department.
Their wisdom, flexibility, and understanding during these years at Rice challenged me to
try even harder. I greatly appreciate their enthusiasm and support. My outside reader
from the Shepherd School of Music, Prof. Richard Lavenda, deserves a heartfelt thanks
for all the sound advice before and after my graduate studies.
I would also like to thank former members of Rice's anthropology department for
their early interest and inspiration in my project. These include Christopher Kelty,
Hannah Landecker~ Benjamin Lee, George Marcus, and Julie Taylor. A special thank you
to Nia Georges, whose course on grant writing helped craft (and fund) a fantastic
fieldwork project. Special merit goes to my favorite department administrator, Carole
Speranza, who never let me quit!
What would I do without my cohorts Ebru Kayaalp, Valerie Olson, and Elitsa
Ranova! When we needed to get together to discuss our projects, they were always there
to offer advice. I thank them for their support and friendship.
Other members of the Rice family deserve special mention including my best
friends at the Woodson Research Center, who·gave me firsthand experience working in a
real archive. The Interlibrary Loan Department at Fondren Library went beyond the call
of duty. to ·borrow hard-to .. find books. The Circulation Desk was always forgiving.
v
Finally, I would like to thank my friends at the Center for the Study of Languages. A
special thank you goes to my friend, Eric Granquist, who shared a special interest in my
research.
I would also. like to mention my good friends at the American Folklife Center at
the Library of Congress, who gave me the opportunity to intern at their center for the
summer. I will always remember this experience!
This project took me away from loved ones for extended periods of time. I am
especially indebted to my family, who supported this crazy idea to study sound archives
in Ukraine. I thank my father and mother for their unconditional love and support though
these years. They taught me to be proud of my ethnic heritage. I also thank my mother
and father-in-laws for their enthusiastic support. Their selfless sacrifice will never be
forgotten.
Finally, I thank my wife, who really didn't know what she was getting herself into
when we were first introduced. Her positive attitude and sacrifice over the years have
been the main reason why this research project is so close to being completed. I owe a big
thanks to my children Aiden, Sofia and Harper, for being such good sports while their
father was absent so long during fieldwork and on extended weekends writing up these
findings. I'll try to make it up to you guys!
Funding for my research, which is reflected ·in this dissertation, was ·made
possible through the generous support of Rice University's Department of Anthropology,
the Fulbright Program, and the Shevchenko Scientific Society in New York. Thank you!
vi
Table of Contents
Abstract ii
Acknowledgements·· iii
Introduction
Projecting the Field 1
Chapter One
Fieldwork in the Age of Ruslana 16
Chapter Two
Beyond Traditional Borders 36
Chapter Three
Collections in Capitalism 56
Chapter Four
Eyewitness of the Archive 85
Chapter Five
A Field Entry 102
Chapter Six
Voices from America 141
Chapter Seven
Networking Folk Heritage Collections 158
In Lieu of a Conclusion 193
Bibliography 197
Appendix A 211
1
Introduction
Projecting the Field
During the summer of 2002, I participated in a joint folk expedition along the
Ukrainian-Belorussian border with several Ukrainian ethnomusicologists, folklorists, and
recording engineers from a state-supported sound archive and a privately owned
recording studio. Our objective was to record folk music for a compact disc featuring
traditional Ukrainian music. In one remote area, we asked a folk singer to perform the
traditional songs from her native village. To our surprise, the singer declined the request.
Apparently, a contractual agreement between this woman and a private company in
faraway Kyiv prohibited the villager from publicly singing folk songs without its prior
consent. We had no other recourse than to emphasize our collective association with the
state archives. The singer eventually acquiesced to our pleas for cooperation and we
recorded her songs without reflecting too much on this incident. However, I realized later
that this episode was not some random misunderstanding between ethnographer and
informant. Rather, it reflected more far-reaching cultural and social transformations that
are prevalent today in many post-socialist countries like Ukraine.
This dissertation examines how objects of cultural heritage are being re
configured within the new post-Soviet economy. Specifically, I focus on folk songs and
how they are being transformed into cultural commodities. Many social transformations
in. post-socialist countries are driven by public policies that promote nation-building
agendas and by free market reforms that are sanctioned by international financial and
cultural institutions. Since Ukraine's independence in 1991, a burgeoning private sector
2
has been encroaching increasingly in cultural ~paces that previously were conceived of as
"property of the state." As described above, new questions regarding the jurisdiction of
culture -- who controls cultural heritage and how it is used to represent ethnic and
national identity - are being negotiated within structures of social, cultural and political
power. Thus, culture has become a contested object between competing ideological
systems: cultural heritage as a means to salvage and reconstruct repressed histories and to
revive former national traditions, on the one hand; and cultural heritage as a creative,
future-oriented force to construct wholly new identities in growing consumer
marketplaces, on the other.
Current research on cultural heritage collections especially in post-socialist
countries increasingly examines the effects of transition from the perspective of global
and institutional processes. For example, there exists a rich body of work that studies the
political, technological, and legal challenges experienced in many. modem memory
institutions and archives in the former Soviet states (Burds 2006; Galili 2006; Lapin
2006; Smith 2006). Cultural anthropologists have been interested in the ongoing re
configurations or cycles of transitions of ethnic identities prior to and after the breakup of
the Soviet Union (Grant 1995). In my initial study of the these issues, three areas of
scholarship provided a framework for studying cultural artifacts such as field recordings
and the generation of new discourse of the post-Soviet realities, which relate to the re
emergence of the nation-state after the fall of the Soviet Union (e.g., Szporluk 1997;
Burawoy and Verdery 1999). The first is the national archive as a site of cultural memory
and its political significance in ·the larger notion of a world cultural heritage (Marcus
1998; Brown and Brown 1998). The second set of research examines the circulation of
3
cultural heritage in the form of indigenous art in free markets (Marcus and Meyers 1995),
current intellectual property laws and the institutional recognition of indigenous cultures
(Seeger 2005); and important developments in international heritage protection
movements (Brown 2003). Finally, I examine how new paradigms· of governance
regulate the complicated cultural, political, and economic relationships between the
nation-state and its citizenry especially after traumatic disaster like the Chernobyl nuclear
accident (Anderson 1993; Petryna 2002). These areas create the foundation for my
ethnographic fieldwork in Ukraine and provided a methodological framework and lead to
more careful study of the symptoms of reflexive modernization at the levels of
institutional and individual practices (Beck, Giddens, Lash 1994).
The questions my study explores fall into three interrelated categories, which
observe the long-standing historical relationship between property and culture in Soviet
and post-Soviet Ukraine:
1) Definitions of cultural property: How can the state's concept of 'public' and
'private' property relate to ideas of cultural heritage? Have definitions of "culture as
public property" changed since 1991?
2) Cuitural boundaries: How and by whom are domains of cultural heritage within the
public and private sectors delineated? How have recent state's policies and free market
reforms restricted/accelerated the appropriation and use of "culture as public property"
within these sectors?
4
3) Intellectual property: How does "culture as public property" become "intellectual
property" in re-configured public and private sectors? Where do activities related to
cultural heritage intersect in the public and private sectors? .
Thanks to a grant from the U.S. Fulbright Program, I was able to spend nine months
completing my fieldwork in Ukraine between the years 2005-2006. During this time
abroad, I sought established experts, who worked in topical areas concerning native and
indigenous cultures. The field sites of my investigation included numerous state
sponsored institutions and sound archives located in the vicinity of four major
metropolitan centers of Ukraine: Lviv, Kharkiv, Kyiv, and Odessa.
Supported by the same government agencies during the Soviet and post-Soviet
periods. many of these organizations have been involved in multi-year programs to study
Ukrainian folk traditions in their respective localities. In some cases, their research
programs have functioned for several decades. The primary sites of my research included
the following institutions:
• The Scientific Laboratory of Music Ethnology in Lviv. For the past ten years, this
archive has been collecting folk songs for the creation of an atlas of folk music
genres and dialects in Western Ukraine.
• The Laboratory of Folk Music in Kharkiv. Located in the Northeast Ukraine, this
archive studies the effect migration along the Russian and Ukrainian border has
on folk music traditions.