Croatian Intangible Cultural Heritage (UNESCO)

MEĐIMURSKA POPEVKA

Međimurje is an area in northwestern Croatia bordered by the rivers Mura and Drava, where a specific way of singing known as popevka has been formed for centuries. This type of song is a typical way of female singing, mainly in a pentatonic scale that gives archaic colour and mystique to the performance, and there are also younger melodic layers typical of Međimurje and the melodic influences of central Croatia, neighbouring Hungary and eastern Slovenia. The oldest songs are based on melodies from the 16th century. Over time, this type of singing began to be performed by men as well, and then instrumental accompaniment was introduced.

Popevke are thematically divided into love, farewell, patriotic, witty and religious. They are sung on all occasions in life: at work, at ceremonies, in customs and rituals. Popevka still accompanies the people of Međimurje from birth to death. The basic way of transmitting a song is by direct learning from older members of the community who have developed a great ability to memorize melodies and lyrics.

The most prominent researcher of popevka was an ethnomusicologist and melographer, academician Vinko Žganec (1890 - 1976). He recorded by ear, patiently collaborating with one singer, checking the accuracy of the recording by repetition, and in the end, he would sing the recorded melody to the singer himself. He developed his own methods of detailed recording of every ornament and detail in the melody. It was not until the 1950s that he began using a tape recorder for field recordings. The festival "Međimurske popevke Nedelišće", founded in 1971, contributed to the preservation and popularization of traditional singing. Popevka, as a unique reflection of the continuity and identity of Međimurje, was inscribed in 2018 on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.

ANNUAL SPRING PROCESSION OF QUEENS OR LJELJE FROM GORJANI

Pentecost is a Christian holiday celebrated on the fiftieth day i.e., the sixth Sunday after Easter. On Pentecost, lesser-known customary and ritual practices were held in Slavonia, Baranja and Srijem, known as queens and kings. Similar customs are found in some other Slavic and non-Slavic peoples (Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Romania). One such young girl's ritual procession called ljelje, according to the chorus in the songs, was held in the village of Gorjani not far from Đakovo.

Gorjani is a large Slavonian village, with an interesting and long history, known for breeding Lipizzaner horses and rich costumes decorated with gold embroidery. The custom would have been almost forgotten if it had not been well researched, described and documented in the 1950s by the famous Slavonian ethnologist, Zdenka Lechner, who restored and presented it together with a longtime and meritorious Gorjani teacher, Lucija Karalić.

The ritual procession through the village begins in the afternoon on Pentecost Sunday when a procession of young girls dressed in festive colourful silk clothes starts from one house. At the head of the procession are the kings in pairs, recognizable by their conical flower caps decorated with feathers, immortelle and needle grass, mirrors and ribbons, carrying a sword in their right hand. They are followed by queens with wreaths of wax myrtle on their heads. They are accompanied by a musician, bagpiper or tambourine player and gift collectors. They tour the village singing traditional songs and enter the courtyards where they are greeted by the hosts. There they sing songs with appropriate verses intended for each family or individual household, and the kings perform a ritual circle dance with various dance figures as they strike with their swords. When the dance circle ends, the hosts treat the girls, and the celebration continues after visiting all the houses with the food and drinks gathered along the way.

This spring custom of great antiquity from Gorjani was inscribed on the UNESCO Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2009.

ART OF DRYWALL CONSTRUCTION

Drywall construction is the art of making building elements with crushed, untreated or slightly processed stone and laying stone paving and stone coverings without the use of binder material. From prehistoric periods in the Adriatic-Dinaric area this technique was used to build walls, subwalls (for terraced gardens, roads, railways, terraces), houses, churches, fences, wells and roads. Interesting buildings are smaller ones for various purposes, field houses with a circular layout. The most common examples of such construction are dry stone walls, fences for the protection of domestic animals, for the protection of fields from erosion and winds, and often serve as boundaries along the edges of agricultural areas and roads.

Dry stone walls appear in various forms along the entire area of the Adriatic-Dinaric karst. In the past they had a distinctly functional purpose, and today they increasingly serve as decorations in the landscape. A special type of drywall construction are sheep pens called mrgari for sorting and milking sheep in the southernmost part of the island of Krk, on pastures in Baška, Jurandvor and Batomalj, and on the neighbouring island of Prvić. Their layout is reminiscent of a flower, and similar ones still exist only in Wales (UK) and Iceland.

The Dragodid Association works intensively on the protection, restoration, learning and transfer of drywall construction skills, which lists, documents and restores drywall heritage, holds lectures and construction workshops for all age groups, especially children, pupils and students of various professions, and compiles manuals about drywall heritage.

Drywall construction is characteristic of the wider Mediterranean area, and in 2018, on a joint proposal of Cyprus, Bulgaria, Croatia, Greece, Spain and Switzerland, was inscribed on the UNESCO Representative List of Intangible Assets of Humanity.

PROCESSION ZA KRIŽEN (FOLLOWING THE CROSS) ON THE ISLAND OF HVAR

Za križen (following the cross) procession is a unique phenomenon of religious and folk piety in which the family, traditional, spiritual and cultural heritage of Jelsa, Pitve, Vrisnik, Svirče, Vrbanj and Vrboska on the island of Hvar is woven. The origin of the procession dates back to the late 15th or early 16th century and stems from the passion tradition of the Mediterranean region in which the worship of the cross has a central place, and which was nurtured by fraternities during the Middle Ages. The procession is still held today on the night between Maundy Thursday and Good Friday, when an illuminated procession of the faithful departs from each village and goes through other villages in a clockwise direction, almost never meeting.

The procession is led by a cross-bearer, preceded and followed by escorts dressed in fraternal attire, and members of the closest family and lamentation singers wear black clothes as a sign of mourning and sorrow for the dead Christ. A cross-bearer can only be someone who is a local or originally related to the parish, and the schedule of the cross-bearer is entered years and decades in advance. The act of carrying the cross is related to a personal or family vow and tradition.

The central part of the procession is singing a unanimous chorus The Lamentations of the Virgin Mary, sang in a dialogue form at procession stations by two groups of singers - kantaduri and odgovoroči.

The procession Za križen is a deeply rooted tradition that was not abandoned even during the wars, and the evacuated residents of these Hvar villages held it in 1944 in the El Shatt refugee camp in Egypt. Due to its deep significance and connection with the community, the procession Za križen was inscribed in 2009 on the UNESCO Representative List of the Intangible Heritage of Humanity. The Covid-19 pandemic did not prevent the continuation of tradition and the holding of processions in 2020 and 2021.

Tihana Petrović Leš, PhD

Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences,

University of Zagreb