The Crooked Bow: The Art of Gusle and the Oral Tradition among the Serbs

Note:
In the Serbian language, the word gusle is a plurale tantum, ie. a
plural word, even though it is a singular object (such as the English
“scissors” or “pants”). Because of this, I will refer to gusle as “they” to
indicate both singular and plural.
The correct plural form for guslar in Serbian is guslari, which I
only mention once at the beginning of the essay. For the rest of the
essay, I refer to more than one guslar as “guslars”, to agree with the
English plural form.
Any materials taken from non-English sources were translated by
me. Also, any materials that were originally in the Serbian Cyrillic
alphabet have been transcribed to the Latin alphabet with diacritic
markings, both in the essay and in the bibliography.
K.B

From the deep pocket of his cloak the Montenegrin drew out a gusle, a
tiny primitive fiddle, clumsy and as small as the palm of a man’s hand,
and a short bow [...] He bent over, the gusle in his lap, and pressed its
head under his chin, greased the string with resin and breathed heavily
on the bow [...] At last the first notes wailed out, sharp and uneven.
The excitement rose [...] Everyone was intent, awaiting the wonderful
tale [...] The peasants pressed closer and closer around the singer but
without making the slightest noise; their very breathing could be heard.
They half closed their eyes, carried away with wonder. Thrills ran
up and down their spines, their backs straightened up, their breasts
expanded, their eyes shone, their fingers opened and shut and their jaw
muscles tightened. The Montenegrin developed his melody more and
more rapidly, even more beautiful and bolder, while the wet and sleep-
less workmen, carried away and insensible to all else, followed the tale
as if it were their own more beautiful and more glorious destiny.1)
This is how Ivo Andrić described a gusle performance in his Nobel
prize-winning novel, The Bridge on the Drina (1945). This episode
takes place in medieval Bosnia, when forced labourers are taking a
break from a long day building the famous bridge in Višegrad for the
Turks. It is likely the most famous description of the gusle to Western
readers, if they are familiar with Andrić's work. However, to most Bal-
kan peoples, the music and social function of the gusle is an integral
part of not only of the musical culture of the Balkans but also the
very preservation of culture. For the Serbs in particular, the gusle
was a means of preserving national identity in the face of an Otto-
man occupation that lasted five centuries. The gusle is not only an
instrument that accompanies dancing and lyric songs: its most impor-
tant function has been as an accompaniment to the guslari, or singers,
who for centuries were illiterate bards who recited epic folk poetry by
memory. This unique cultural practice was brought to nternational
acclaim in the 1930's when Homeric scholars Milman Parry and Albert
Lord from Harvard University traveled to Yugoslavia and collected
thousands of songs and stories from many guslars in order to formulate
a theory on how it could be possible for an illiterate – and sometimes
blindman to recite thousands of lines of poetry and constantly learn
and create new songs. Before their arrival to the Balkans, the man
considered the father of Serbian literature, philologist Vuk Karadžić
(1787-1864), was collecting folk songs, fairy tales, proverbs and guslar
songs during a period now considered the last wave of authentic gusle
playing and singing.
This paper will examine the role of the gusle in Serbian culture and
musical practice, and examine which historical circumstances led to
the development of the epic story genre. It will examine which musical
features are integral and characteristic to gusle playing, and provide
an idea as to how epic poetry is created and modified by the guslar in
every performance while still maintaining the same story structure.
It will examine the role of the guslar himself, and demonstrate the
different roles of the guslar in different communities and parts of the
Balkans, as well as looking at gender roles and how they influenced
the manner in which gusle music has been performed. Finally, it will
briefly consider the modern legacy of the genre and how the tradition,
although “dying out” from its original form of being sung by illiterate
bards, is taking new forms and maintaining its integral role as a cultu-
ral treasure among the Serbs and other Balkan peoples. Indeed, Njegoš,
the great Montenegrin Prince-Bishop and poet, wrote: “Where one
cannot hear the gusle coming from a house, there both the house and
the people are dead.” 2)
It is assumed that the gusle are not an autochthonous instrument
to the Balkans, but that they came from Asia; however they have
been mentioned in literature as early as the tenth century. They were
present in the court of King Stefan Prvovenčani in the thirteenth cen-
tury and were mentioned throughout the Middle Ages.3) The geogra-
phic area where the gusle tradition has been most prominent is what is
known as the “Dinaric cultural zone”, which is comprised of modern-
day Montenegro, Herzegovina, Bosnia and Serbia (mostly the south,
southwest, Kosovo and Metohija, but also Srem). The tradition has also
been prominent in parts of Croatia, particularly in Dalmatia which has
a large Dinaric population, as well as parts of Macedonia and Albania.4)
It is an important tradition for all the ethno-religious groups of the
Balkans – namely, to the Muslim, Catholic, and Orthodox peoples, all
of whom developed the tradition in different ways. The instrument
itself is a single-stringed chordophone usually made of maple wood,
often by the guslar himself. The front is covered in animal skin and has
several apertures, and the headstock is usually carved in the shape of
an animal, often a horse or an eagle, and has a tuning peg. The single
string runs across a wooden bridge along the entire length of the
instrument and merges in the back, and is played with a short, arched
bow. The guslar tunes the instrument to his own voice and plays it by
sitting on a chair with his legs crossed and holding it at an angle across
his knee.5)
Albert Lord states that when he and Milman Parry started con-
ducting their research in the 1930s in Yugoslavia, the tradition of the
oral epic was accessible, alive, and distinguished.6)
It was the means by which all kinds of information had been tran-
smitted from one generation to the next for hundreds of years, since
most of the Balkan population – especially the Serbs – was illiterate
after the arrival of the Ottoman empire and the destruction of the
medieval Serbian state after the Battle of Kosovo in 1389.7) Although
the southern Slavs had a written tradition since the ninth century (and
indeed, the Cyrillic alphabet was invented in the Balkans at that time),
literacy mostly stayed in the clergy and had no influence on the oral
tradition until the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.8 ) With increasing
literacy among the rural population and the introduction of radio and
television, the loss of the oral tradition has been accelerated, and the
areas which have best maintained the tradition have been the areas
most resistant to social change, such as mountainous Montenegro and
the uplands of Herzegovina.9)
In gusle playing and singing, the text and music are so closely tied
that often concepts and tendencies overlap. As it will later become
apparent, both are equally important to one another and can barely
exist without the other, but for the sake of clarity and presentation, they
will be briefly separated. The main genre performed with gusle is epske
pesme, or epic songs, which deal with historical and mythological sub-
jects, and stories which often combine both elements.10) Epic songs have
always been sung in the meter deseterac, or ten-syllable line. The ori-
gins of this meter are obscure, but the form, style and content are
well-known because it has survived until the present day – indeed,
examples of deseterac have been copied since the seventeenth century,
____________________
1) Ivo Andrić trans. Lovett F. Edwards, The Bridge on the Drina
(Beograd: Dereta, 2000): 33-34.
2) Dimitrije Golemović, Pjevanje uz gusle (Beograd: Srpski genealoški centar,
2008): 5.
3) “Guslarske,” Gusle.net, n.d. March 2012.
4) “Guslarske.”
5) Dragoslav Dević, et al., “Yugoslavia,” Grove Music Online, Oxford Music
Online, n.d. March 2012.
6) Albert B. Lord, The singer of tales (Cambridge: Harvard University Press,
1960): vii.
7) Dević.
8 ) Lord 135.
9) John Miles Foley & Barbara Kerewsky Halpern, “’Udovica Jana’: A Case
Study of an Oral Performance,” The Slavonic and East European Review
54.1 (1976): 12.
10) Foley 11.