Lecture ‘Ojkan Singing by Serbs from Drežnica: Poems Systematisation and  Meaning’

Professor Branko Ćupurdija will give a lecture titled ‘Ojkan Singing by Serbs from Drežnica: Poems Systematisation and  Meaning’ on Tuesday, 25 November, at 2 p.m. at the SASA Hall 2.

This is a short poetic form, most often a rhymed distich in 10-syllable verse, which is sung in the regions of Drežnica near Ogulin at the intersection of Gorski Kotar, Primorje and Lika. In decades of research in this area, as well as in the settlements to which this population was resettled after World War II, 863 poems have been collected. These types of poems describe many spheres of social, everyday and ritual life. The material contains 24 thematic and motivic units, which in the final analysis can be grouped into four categories: one group of poems talks about celestial bodies – the Sun, the North star and the Moon; the second group describes celestial phenomena – rainbows and the moon seen as a rainbow; the third one includes ritual poems from a person’s personal life and calendar rituals; and the fourth, which contains all the other songs, most often chronicles everyday situations in a person’s life. The aim of the lecture is to highlight the messages and meanings embedded in the poems.