Uccelli [née Pazzini], Carolina Uccellini, Marco

(j) Russian.

The first Russian explorers landed in north-western Alaska in 1741. In 1794 Orthodox missionaries began work among the native peoples, and by 1861 about 12,000 Aleuts, Tlingits and Eskimos had converted to Russian Orthodoxy. The church music of these early Russian immigrants was a blend of medieval znamennïy chants and 18th-century Western European musical styles. Although the connections between Russian and Amerindian musics have not been studied in depth, some scholars believe that multi-voice religious chants still sung among the Tlingits are the remnants of Russian Orthodox a cappella choral singing.

Since the 1880s, when mass immigration began, more than 750,000 people of Russian ancestry have settled in the USA. Each of the many ideological, social, religious, linguistic and ethnic Russian subgroups has contributed to the colourful mosaic of Russian American music. The Russian Orthodox Church of America has been a powerful influence for the expression of a unified Russian ethnicity; it has also provided advanced training for church musicians. The entire liturgy is still sung a cappella (no spoken words are allowed), in intricate polyphonic texture and with characteristic parts for low basses. The use of musical instruments, as objects of human artifice, is still forbidden in the Russian American church. The repertory includes multi-part arrangements of chants, old and new, and liturgical compositions by Russian composers of the 19th and 20th centuries.

Members of several religious minorities, most notably Old Believers and Molokans, immigrated to the USA as a result of persecution in Russia. Accustomed to living in opposition to main-stream society in closed small communities in Russia, many of them persistently maintain their religious, ethnic and cultural identities; they have learned to live in two worlds, the old and the new simultaneously, but without allowing their complete merging. The Old Believers, who split from mainstream Russian Orthodoxy in the 1650s, preserved the repertory of monophonic znamennïy chants (see Russian and Slavonic church music, §2) sung a cappella, as well as knowledge of musical notation by Russian neumes called kryuki. First arriving in the USA in the 1880s, Old Believers scattered throughout New York, New Jersey, south-western Pennsylvania and Michigan, eventually forming a closely knit community in Erie; they spoke Russian at home and maintained traditional dietary customs. Their secular singing included village wedding songs, laments, lullabies, ballads and urban romances, all sung a cappella; only dance-songs and chastushki (see below) could be accompanied by instruments. The cultural separateness of these communities began to break down in the 1950s, and in 1978 one group of Old Believers in Erie, Pennsylvania, integrated English into church services by trnaslating texts of prayers and chants; znamennïy melodies and kryuki notation were preserved intact. Another group of Old Believers who arrived in Oregon in the 1960s also preserved the entire znamennïy repertory. Although it is taught by means of kryuki notation, the performance tradition is largely transmitted orally. Oregon Old Believers continue to perform lullabies, game- and dance-songs, ballads and other genres of Russian rural folksong. Traditional wedding songs and laments are still part of the wedding ceremony.

Unlike the Old Believers, the Molokans broke completely with the Russian Orthodox Church. Molokanism rejected all visual attributes of Orthodox liturgy; consequently, verbal and non-verbal forms of sound assumed some of the functions and energy that flowed through other channels of the Orthodox service. A prominent feature of Molokan sobraniye (communal worship) is psalms and songs sung a cappella by the entire congregation and led by specially trained singers. Psalms and songs are also sung at home on social occasions and during ritual celebrations associated with the benediction of children, weddings, funerals, memorials, house-warmings and religious holidays. The repertory of the Molokans in the USA consists of several hundred psalms and spiritual songs. Adult Molokans are not supposed to sing anything else. Before marriage, they can take part in secular singing and dancing together with non-Molokan youth, but they are expected to refrain from these activities after marriage. In reality, however, the secular repertory of adult Molokans ranges from Russian folksong to operatic arias and American popular music.

Religious singing is an essential factor of Molokan self-identification. The names of the creators of songs and psalms are never printed in Molokan songbooks: being both a manifestation and the source of the communal spiritual power, each composition belongs to the entire community. The repertory is maintained by individual training and spevki (‘singing classes’ led by experienced singers), participation in which is expected from young members of the church. Molokan singing employs a combination of oral and written forms. The melodies are transmitted orally from generation to generation; they are either ‘worked out’ (composed) by an individual singer, usually male for psalms, or ‘given’ by the Spirit. Depending on the local school, psalms are sung in unison (in two, three or sometimes four octaves) or in parts; the melody is often in the middle, surrounded by melodic counterpoints in the lower and upper registers or by heterophonic versions of the same melody. Any passage from the Bible can be used in psalms. A short segment is first read aloud and then lined out (see Lining out) to a melody. Psalm melodies are highly melismatic, use assymetrical phrases and, in general, are similar to protyazhnaya songs (see Russian federation, §I, 1(v)).

Although traditional psalm melodies are constantly undergoing changes, entirely new melodies are no longer composed. However, spiritual songs, set to rhymed poems, are still being created. Unlike psalms, song melodies are syllabic and usually symmetrical in structure. Connections with melodies of old Russian village ballads, dance, love and soldier songs, as well as songs of other sects, are easily traceable. Songs from Soviet films and American popular songs have also left their marks on Molokan music; some are used in their entirety with new texts (Korobochka, Kogda b imel zlatiye gorï, Na zakate khodit paren', Amazing grace, The Last Rose of Summer, Clementine and Red River Valley are examples). Emigré culture can often be characterized as operating between two poles: memory and adaptation. Among Molokans, traditional melodies of psalms and newly composed songs fill in the continuum. Although Molokan communities in the USA are quite different from those of Old Believers, they too have started to accept the use of English during sobraniye.

Outside of religious practices, popular repertories in many urban Russian American communities include late 19th-century romances and ballads, Ukranian, Gypsy and Jewish entertainment music, and poems composed as songs by favourite contemporary poets (Vladimir Vïsotsky, Bulat Okudzhava, Aleksander Galich). This music is commonly performed in Russian restaurants and clubs and has been extensively recorded. A genre of traditional folk music that survived in both urban and rural communities is chastushka (from the adjective chastïy ‘quick’). These songs consist of short, single-stanza rhymed couplets and are usually sung to dance. Chastushka texts are often extemporized and reflect current local events and concerns. One of the few genres of Russian folksong that can be performed with instrumental accompaniment, they are sung with balalaika or, when available, garmoshka (a type of button accordion), and are easily adaptable to any other instrument at hand. Other genres of traditional village folksong have been preserved only in isolated Russian American communities. In the late 20th century, however, there was a revival of Russian folk music in new forms. Instrumental ensembles and orchestras (comprising different sizes and combinations of balalaika, domra, mandolin, accordion and string instruments) have attracted performers from Russian American and other multi-ethnic communities. Arrangements of folksongs also became popular among pop and rock ensembles of younger Russian Americans. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russian American communities in larger metropolitan areas such as New York, Chicago, Philadelphia and Los Angeles sponsored tours of popular Russian singers. Village performers from Russia have performed in the USA under the auspices of American government agencies, private companies and educational institutions.

USA, §II, 1(iii): Traditional music: European American: Eastern