Valentina Y. Suzukey

ORCHESTRA OF TUVAN NATIONAL INSTRUMENTS: AN INVISIBLE FRONT OF WORK

One of the significant events in the musical culture of modern Tuva was the creation of the Tuvan National Orchestra of the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Tuva, which became famous both in the republic and abroad. Today it is one of the cultural brands of the Republic of Tuva. The creation of the Tuvan National Orchestra was, without exaggeration, a grandiose event in the musical culture of Tuva. With its first concert performance on stage on November 12, 2003, the orchestra marked a new era in the development of national musical culture. The work of the orchestra, in comparison with the work of artists performing solo or in folklore ensembles, has a larger scale and the importance of the orchestra’s role in the further development of Tuvan musical culture is a subject for separate consideration. Several scientific articles have already been written about the Tuvan National Orchestra and a sufficient number of small online review materials, mostly of a journalistic nature, about its active concert activities, about its achievements and achievements at competitions of various levels, about the repertoire, about the conductors. However, almost all publications do not mention the names of people who perform a rather responsible part of the work in the life of such a large band as the orchestra. There is information about three (out of seven) directors of the orchestra in M. M. Badyrgy’s article “The Singing Orchestra of Tuva: the call of the ancestors, revived in music.” The novelty of this article lies in the fact that, for the first time, the activities of the orchestra’s directors are separately highlighted, who have made and are making a huge contribution to the development of the orchestra, ensuring its sustainable functioning and, to some extent, determining the prospects for further growth and development of the collective. The material is based on archival materials collected by the orchestra’s deputy director J.A. Dorzhu.

A PANORAMA OF THE POST-SOVIET DEVELOPMENT OF TUVAN MUSICA

The post-Soviet period in Tuvan musical culture was marked by a bright outburst of the flourishing of traditional music and its entry into the international arena. The article examines the history of the development of traditional Tuvan music, starting from the Soviet period, which caused significant changes in the structural elements of Tuvan musical art. The appearance of folklore groups was an evidence of the development of traditional music in new forms. The methodological basis of the article is relies on the principles of historical continuity, objectivity, and a holistic approach to analyzing the history of traditional Tuvan music and its development prospects.

TRADITIONAL MUSICAL CULTURE OF TUVA IN THE CONTEXT OF CULTURAL PARADIGMS OF MODERNITY

The paper considers the role of the basic parameters of Tuvan musical culture, which, despite social and political transformations, retain a kind of configurational stability, which in itself is new and relevant. The relevance of the topic is also determined by the existing conceptual discrepancies (inconsistencies) between musical practice and its scientific development. The reasons for these discrepancies stemmed from the cultural policy of the Soviet state, which sought to unify culture throughout the territory of the superpower solely on the basis of the European model for the development of musical creativity. The need for scientific understanding of the axiological aspect of traditional culture in the context of a period of value crises, breaking the existing system and searching for new cultural foundations and orientations also determines the relevance of the topic. 

As a result of the research, the author comes to the conclusion that the definition of a tradition as “unprofessional” does not mean the absolute absence of its own concept of the formation and development of music. This knowledge was handed down orally from generation to generation for centuries. The oral tradition has its own professional mechanisms for the transfer of knowledge, and the task of knowing specific unwritten patterns is a problem exclusively of science, and not of the tradition itself.