E-mail: julia.barkova@gmail.com Tel.: +7 (495) 734-00-70
1, Leninskie Gory, Moscow, 119991, Russian Federation;
PhD in Culture Studies, Associate Professor, Department of Comparative Literature and Culture, Faculty of Foreign Languages and Area Studies, Lomonosov Moscow State University
This research was supported by the Interdisciplinary Scientific and Educational School for “The Preservation of the World’s Cultural and Historical Heritage” of Moscow University.
The rapidly changing modern world presents opportunities for the continued existence of ethnomusicological traditions, which the bearers of that culture may consider not as an element of the obsolete past but as a space for finding meaning in life and for creative experimentation. In Yakutia of the 1990s, when the republic was asserting its sovereignty, “varganotherapy” (a vargan is a type of mouth harp) was developed by doctors Matvei and Elena Alekseev as a method of using kargan music deriving from traditional Sakha musical practice for medical therapeutics. Varganotherapy makes use of the traditional khomus music style of Syyia Tardyy; collective exercises; a focus on the magic of the spoken word and sounds; a reliance on patients’ intuitive creativity; and the activation of visual imagery through the use of traditional of Sakha symbols. These function as “symbols of transformation” for a patient’s inner world in the process of creating musical compositions. The adaptation of Sakha ethnomusicological practices may also be observed in the use of the Russian term “vargan” instead of the Yakut “khomus”; in the use of scientific psychotherapy and neuroscience to track results; in the modification of traditional khomus-style playing to fit the needs of particular patients; and in “translating” Sakha ethno-cultural codes into language understandable to a non-Yakut cultural audience.
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