The present state of the song folklore of the Chuvashes of Siberia

The paper considers the degree of preservation of Chuvash-Siberian song tradition, its genre composition, and local features. The history of folklore records of Chuvash settlers is traced, the characteristic of collected material is given, and the genre system of song samples recorded in Siberia is built. From 2002 to 2013, 13 expeditions were accomplished in the different districts of Novosibirsk, Tyumen, Kemerovo, Omsk and Tomsk regions, Krasnoyarsk and Altai territories. The significant amount of audio and video records of song sample performances, as well as large volume of information about the ethnographic context of the existence of Siberian Chuvash songs, were collected. Despite the inevitable loss process, the Chuvash song folklore has been preserved on Siberian land during the entire XX century and some compositions exist until the present time. The best degree of preservation is distinguished for the genres of non-ritual folklore - lyrical, guest, dance tune, jocular songs, Chuvash humorous rhymes; the number of samples of these genres by more than two times exceeds the number of songs having the ritual dedication. The samples of ritual folklore recorded in smaller amounts testify about the carrying of almost all the main holidays of Chuvash folk calendar in Siberia in the first half of XX century, and also about the existence of many compositions of the family cycle. Besides that, the Chuvash variants of Russian songs of the later tradition were recorded. These compositions, adopted from the Russian folklore tradition, have strongly anchored in the Chuvash song culture. Their texts and tunes were significantly transformed by the folk performers. To create an objective impression about the existence of Chuvash folk culture in Siberia in XX century, the samples of Orthodox Christian chants, which sounded in the folklore context and have been subjected to considerable folklorization, should also be taken into account. The local specific is being formed in the Siberian Chuvash song tradition. It does express itself in the performance of the re-settlers songs, in a wide distribution of the songs with adopted subjects and tunes, singular samples of the bilingual songs, texts which sound in the Chuvash and Russian languages. Among the perspectives of further study is the structural and typological analysis of the tunes, and also the search for the Chuvash songs existing in Siberia, which were originally recorded at the Chuvash metropolitan territory, in the Volga region. The comparative analysis of texts and tunes of the songs samples undertaken on their basis will allow us to follow and study as much as possible the transformations that have occurred with the compositions of Chuvash folklore under the conditions of the Siberian diaspora.

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