As you can see from the following videos, one Slovak tradition that ain’t going nowhere is folk groups. These are groups of young men and women who practice and keep alive traditional song and dance. My heart SANG when I saw this! After a week of hearing crickets whenever I asked students what is cool about Slovakia, these kids were up on a stage, PROCLAIMING what makes this country so special over speaker systems and up on mega-trons. Granted, this was at a festival (I have yet to walk down the street and run into a group of civilian teenagers harmonizing or step dancing—mostly they rollerblade, loiter, or devour various parts of one another’s bodies in PDA’s…) it’s good to know that somewhere there is a population of young Slovak people who are willing to spend hours perfecting the arts of singing, leaping, throwing faux-hatchets (yeah, I saw some of that…). The bands were also composed of young people, so the accordion player, the fiddler and standing bass player are all young people who choose to spend their time practicing traditional ballads over and over and over again, instead of learning the latest and greatest rock or pop song.
As many of you know, the whole reason I am here is to collect oral histories from old people to try and preserve a rich culture which I am afraid is evaporating quickly. As the world gets smaller and young people here try to emulate other cultures they see on television screens and web pages, the one they spring from becomes diluted. It’s a double-edged sword, because who I am to say, “You there, you are not allowed to ‘advance’ with the rest of us—you need to stay antiquated in your ways.”? Yet I’ve seen the problem from the other side, and I know some of what they strive for is not all it’s cracked up to be, and that having a sense of cultural identity is invaluable.
After watching the folklore performances my friend and I milled about all the cute-sy little booths and stands selling traditional knick-knacks and goods. One of the stalls I stopped by belonged to a photographer named Jaro Sykora. I was drawn in by what appeared to be high quality black and white photographs of the Slovak countryside and old Slovak people. When I took a closer look and perused his book (which I bought…) I learned that for over two decades he has been committed to taking photographs of people and places in the Old Orava Region. Apparently this is in the Northwest part of the country, and let me just say that the people he depicts make the ones I have met and am trying to work with look like they’ve been living at the Ritz Carlton. Turns out his family heritage comes from this notoriously brutal region, and when he started dabbling in photography in 1987 he felt drawn there for material. Basically, he has done through images (amazing, breath-taking, make you want to cry, or gasp, or maybe even genuflect images…) what I am trying to do with words.
One of my favorite photographs in the book is called “Pedikura” (“Pedicure”) and it is of an old woman with grubby, gnarled hands gettin’ after her big toe nail with her thumb nail and what may or may not be a book of matches. One foot is still shrouded in an ill-fitting sock and worn-out loafer, and her exposed foot reveals a serious case of hammer-toe. It is unclear whether she is inside or outside—as dirty as the floorboards are she might be sitting on her “deck,” but the broom and wash-basin which creep into the frame suggest the inside of her home. He face is not revealed, and since she is wearing pants and a bulky, tattered, and hopelessly androgynous sweater the only indicators of her gender are the patterned scarf she wears on her head, and the few wisps of silver-white hair that escape from underneath it. The title is ironic, and yet rather than displaying her as pathetic, saying “ha! This lady NEEDS a pedicure, look how down-and-out she is!” it shows her profound strength—she has seen everything, been through it all. While the full extent of her self-pampering might be digging the crap out from under her toes with her equally filthy hands, she’s not asking for more. This is the life she knows. For her the luxury and superfluous ness of a pedicure is far-fetched and probably even incomprehensible.
As I said before, Sykora started taking these pictures over twenty years ago because he felt like this culture and breed of people was rapidly disappearing and he wanted to somehow archive it, and recognize them. That momentarily discouraged me. Surely if he was catching the last of this authentic bunch on the back-ends of their lives then, I’ve lost them by a long shot. The thing about time is it keeps going, and so as tomorrow keeps turning into yesterday and then twenty years ago, this old regime of hard-core Slovaks has or soon will pass away and never again will anyone be able to remember quite that far back. This re-solidifies the urgency I feel for my project. I may not be able to find people living in old log cabins sans-electricity, but I’m sure I can track down a whole slew of people who witnessed the onset of Communism, WW II, the Slovak National Uprising, and life in general in a country that until quite recently seems to have always gotten the short end of the stick since about the 1880’s. These people were and are profoundly strong, seasoned by years of unforgiving labor in living conditions most of us can’t imagine. Let’s not let all their work be in vain. Let’s acknowledge and appreciate these people, and like the folk groups, let’s try to keep the few pleasant aspects of their lives like these traditions alive.
As many of you know, the whole reason I am here is to collect oral histories from old people to try and preserve a rich culture which I am afraid is evaporating quickly. As the world gets smaller and young people here try to emulate other cultures they see on television screens and web pages, the one they spring from becomes diluted. It’s a double-edged sword, because who I am to say, “You there, you are not allowed to ‘advance’ with the rest of us—you need to stay antiquated in your ways.”? Yet I’ve seen the problem from the other side, and I know some of what they strive for is not all it’s cracked up to be, and that having a sense of cultural identity is invaluable.
After watching the folklore performances my friend and I milled about all the cute-sy little booths and stands selling traditional knick-knacks and goods. One of the stalls I stopped by belonged to a photographer named Jaro Sykora. I was drawn in by what appeared to be high quality black and white photographs of the Slovak countryside and old Slovak people. When I took a closer look and perused his book (which I bought…) I learned that for over two decades he has been committed to taking photographs of people and places in the Old Orava Region. Apparently this is in the Northwest part of the country, and let me just say that the people he depicts make the ones I have met and am trying to work with look like they’ve been living at the Ritz Carlton. Turns out his family heritage comes from this notoriously brutal region, and when he started dabbling in photography in 1987 he felt drawn there for material. Basically, he has done through images (amazing, breath-taking, make you want to cry, or gasp, or maybe even genuflect images…) what I am trying to do with words.
One of my favorite photographs in the book is called “Pedikura” (“Pedicure”) and it is of an old woman with grubby, gnarled hands gettin’ after her big toe nail with her thumb nail and what may or may not be a book of matches. One foot is still shrouded in an ill-fitting sock and worn-out loafer, and her exposed foot reveals a serious case of hammer-toe. It is unclear whether she is inside or outside—as dirty as the floorboards are she might be sitting on her “deck,” but the broom and wash-basin which creep into the frame suggest the inside of her home. He face is not revealed, and since she is wearing pants and a bulky, tattered, and hopelessly androgynous sweater the only indicators of her gender are the patterned scarf she wears on her head, and the few wisps of silver-white hair that escape from underneath it. The title is ironic, and yet rather than displaying her as pathetic, saying “ha! This lady NEEDS a pedicure, look how down-and-out she is!” it shows her profound strength—she has seen everything, been through it all. While the full extent of her self-pampering might be digging the crap out from under her toes with her equally filthy hands, she’s not asking for more. This is the life she knows. For her the luxury and superfluous ness of a pedicure is far-fetched and probably even incomprehensible.
As I said before, Sykora started taking these pictures over twenty years ago because he felt like this culture and breed of people was rapidly disappearing and he wanted to somehow archive it, and recognize them. That momentarily discouraged me. Surely if he was catching the last of this authentic bunch on the back-ends of their lives then, I’ve lost them by a long shot. The thing about time is it keeps going, and so as tomorrow keeps turning into yesterday and then twenty years ago, this old regime of hard-core Slovaks has or soon will pass away and never again will anyone be able to remember quite that far back. This re-solidifies the urgency I feel for my project. I may not be able to find people living in old log cabins sans-electricity, but I’m sure I can track down a whole slew of people who witnessed the onset of Communism, WW II, the Slovak National Uprising, and life in general in a country that until quite recently seems to have always gotten the short end of the stick since about the 1880’s. These people were and are profoundly strong, seasoned by years of unforgiving labor in living conditions most of us can’t imagine. Let’s not let all their work be in vain. Let’s acknowledge and appreciate these people, and like the folk groups, let’s try to keep the few pleasant aspects of their lives like these traditions alive.
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