Kupala songs of Belarusian settlers: core principles of verbal text organization

This paper examines the verbal texts of ritual songs associated with Ivan Kupala Day among Belarusian settlers. This is a case study of Kupala song texts - both archival and published - recorded in the Omsk region from the 1950s to the present. The author employs structural-typological and comparative-contrastive methods. The study is based on the works of Belarusian ethnomusicologist Z. Ya. Mozheiko and scholars of the E. V. Gippius school. The analysis of over 150 Kupala songs reveals that all the texts are structured in syllabic verses. Almost all of them have a strophic form, with most texts exhibiting strophic organization without a refrain, a smaller subset realized in a strophic form with a refrain. A defining genre feature is the use of framing structures based on hemistichs from the main line, which serve a refrain function. The songs also feature several lexically independent refrains, such as “Bozhe moy,” “Kupalo na Yvano,” and others. An important stylistic feature is repetitiveness, manifesting across multiple levels of the poetic text structure. The principles of the poetic text organization of Kupala songs under study indicate the special place of these songs within the calendrical cycle of Belarusian settlers.

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