A Short Story about a Great Man:

Contribution by Svanibor Pettan to the Development of Ethnomusicology in Bosnia and Herzegovina

Abstract

Bosnian-Herzegovinian ethnomusicology started to develop in the early 1930s. The first Bosnian ethnomusicologist, Friar Branko Marić, began to research the traditional folk music of Bosnia and Herzegovina in the 1920s and presented the results of his research in the doctoral dissertation Volkmusik Bosnien und der Herzegovina (1936). The first systematic ethnomusicological research was initiated by Cvjetko Rihtman in 1947 within the Institute of Folklore Research. The main goal of his fieldwork was the collection of old, traditional “untouched”, and therefore locally colored music forms. Thus, the concept of “authentic” was for a long time dominant in collecting, and when associated with “old” it worked well. However, this one-sided approach had to be overcome, since rigid approach to modern processes was a threat to the development of Bosnian ethnomusicological thought.