Reconstruction of Traditional New Year's Rites in the Work of Student Folklore Group

Abstract

The purpose of the article is to highlight the Ukrainian New Year’s Carnival rite Malanka, which is best preserved today in the Carpathian region, primarily in the Bukovyna and Galician parts of the Hutsulshchyna region; to characterize the main elements of the ritual performance and to reconstruct it using ethnographic sources collected by students of the Folklore Department of the Rivne State Institute of Culture (now Rivne State University of the Humanities) in the 1980s and 1990s. Research methodology. In the process of searching and analyzing the relevant literature, music-theoretical and source studies methods were used. In the process of collecting folklore and ethnographic material on the state of the Malanka traditions’ preservation, field methods were used, including interviews, observation, etc. with further primary processing of materials in the conditions of a field folklore expedition, decoding (transcribing), archiving of materials and direct rehearsal and stage performance reconstruction. The comparative and analytical method was used to substantiate the conclusions. Scientific novelty of the research. The article reveals the role and significance of the New Year’s Carnival rite Malanka and its influence on the formation of spiritual culture in the student community. Conclusions. In the Ukrainian traditional culture, such a New Year’s Carnival rite as Malanka makes it possible to realize the unity of man and nature. This holiday, in its essence, reflects the worldview of Ukrainians and emphasizes their identity and originality among other Slavic peoples. In the past, it served as a censor of moral norms, actions and behaviour of peasant community members. Unfortunately, the object under study has already passed into the phenomena of entertaining staged carnival and mask culture and has lost its deep semantics. That is why it is so important to reconstruct this example of the spiritual culture of the ancient Slavs in order not to break the connection between the culture of ancient ancestors and the present.