The music
The songs that are performed are authentic, i.e.: not arranged to comply with a specific taste. This has often been done with the Russian folk music that has become known in the Netherlands.
| In the Soviet times folk music has been treated with ambivalence. On one hand, that music was used for opera-like arrangements, whereby it was often cut loose from its roots. On the other hand folk music was suppressed as an expression of an obsolete culture. This especially concerned religious music.Because the songs have not been adorned (or only slightly) they may at first sound a bit weird: many are sung slightly nasally, somtimes with strange rythms and dissonant chords. In the extended final unisons it is attempted to produce upper tones of the natural tonality. This singing technique, supposedly thousands of years old, is associated with contacting the divine sphere.
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