THE PERFORMER AND TRADITION: PERSONALITY AS A PHENOMENON IN TRANSMISSION OF THE UDMURT CULTURAL HERITAGE

For the first time, this article concentrates on the phenomenon of personality in the Udmurt ethnical culture. This is a good framework to talk about Olga Nikolaevna Solovyova (1932-2018), well-known among the Udmurt as Dzhaky/Dzhakapay/Dzhakyapay (litt.: Jay/aunt Jay). There are several reasons for scientific interest about her: she had a huge knowledge of singing repertoire and rituals, she was able to improvise freely within her local tradition, she had exceptional musical abilities. The analysis of Olga Solovyova’s character as a performer allows to connect the songs in her repertoire with her singer’s fate. Many of her non-ritual songs are indeed autobiographic narratives with her reflections about her unhappy life, her fate as an orphan. A large corpus in her songs belongs to the so-called personal songs, a kind of memory about a person in musical, singing form. Another original feature in her singing art was the knowledge of other communities’ songs (Russian, Mari, Tatar), from the surrounding villages, both in the original languages as in translation into Udmurt. Because of her knowledge of the local ritual tradition, Olga Solovyova was a significant and respected member of her village community. Until her life’s last day, she respected the traditional worldview positions, the behavioural rules, the canons of ritual and singing performance, which she endeavoured to instil in her entourage. All this arose genuine interest in social and scientific circles. And today, when she is no more among us, her name comes back to life in numerous different projects.