Seraphimovich district in Volgograd province, Russia | January 2 - 12, 2009

Our winter expedition to the Cossack village Ust-Khopiorskaya was completed in January 2009. We chose the winter time for a special reason. This time coincides with the unique time of the Russian folklore calendar “svyatki” which happens between Russian Christmas (January 7) and Epiphany (January 19). These holy evenings were full of special Christmas rituals, visiting guests, greeting each other, games and fortune-telling. In Russian tradition, time moves in circles and every New Year could be happier then the previous one. Christmas rituals are full of the ideas of leaving all evil and bad things behind in the previous year and meeting the new year with hope for a better life. The purpose of our expedition was to collect folk memories about the rituals, mythological stories, games, songs, fortune-tellings and just to enjoy the wonderful Cossack area.

Zhitomir province, Ukrain | July 23 - August 4, 2008

One hundred years ago, a significant part of the population from this village moved out to Siberia with the hope of creating a better economic life for their families. Fifty families from Krapivnya settled in Siberia, establishing the new village of Batama. The purpose of the expedition was to compare the folk music repertoire of both these villages and to investigate the effects of time and geography on the dynamics of musical traditions.