Folk Songs by Tijana Stanković

Tijana Stanković (born 1984, now with the name Golubović) is a violinist, vocalist, ethnomusicologist and improviser based in Belgrade in Serbia. Already as a young kid, she had classical violin training. Growing up surrounded by traditional songs from the Balkans, she started playing and singing folk music at the age of 15. This interest led her to study Ethnomusicology at the Academy of Arts in Novi Sad. Even though improvisation was always close, it wasn’t until 2011 — after a workshop with Hungarian Mezei Szilárd — that she started working with free improvisation. 

Her musical world is rich. You’ll find her working with contemporary composer Iancu Dumitrescu, and singing in the a cappella Serbian folk group Pjevačka družina Svetlane Spajić, among many things. And when it comes to free improvised music her approach stands close to folk music in a nearly dualistic way, with tension created between the poles of traditional/contemporary, ritual/abstract and fixed melodies/improvisation. When starting to blend these, as it seems, different approaches, Stanković soon saw similarities. In a way, she tells me, improvised music also works like folk music: there is no writing, and you nearly always play together with other people (even though she works alone here). But maybe even more importantly, in both approaches she saw how certain models or motifs were recurring, often without the performer even thinking of them. In seeing similarities between the way melodies are used in an un-notated traditional context, and the way an improvisor is using their own dictionary of musical motifs and textures in an improvised context, she started combining these approaches. 

This could be heard on her solo debut Freezer (LOM, 2020), and also on this follow up, recorded at a FRIM concert at Fylkingen, Stockholm in April 2022. The music on Freezer was, she explains, a result of thinking in “a long, long musical sentence”. The same works for the FRIM concert, even if the result is even more free. From specific folk songs Stanković creates something very earthy and raw, but also delicate and beautiful. The dualism of her voice and her prepared violin and bow is extraordinary in its rich blending of the ritual and the abstract. 

When it comes to the songs, you find beauty in Song for the Bees (Za Pčele), where Stanković finds inspiration from a ritual song sung when collecting bees to the beehives, rawness in the energetic and droney Song for the Queen (Kraljička) which also is ritualistic, but from the field of carnival with people singing and dancing in the streets. Kontra is more traditionally performed, and so is the melodic part of Jano Mori, songs from Croatia and Macedonia respectively. 

In using elements of Balkan folk music, the overall musical environment of Stanković has a unique quality compared to the old style of fragmented West-European improvised music that was stipulated the Free Improvisation scene in the 1970s. The use of drones, for example, is an effect of her great interest in the heterophonic “izvika” style that can be found in specific forms of Serbian traditional music. In its use of long tones and microtonal variation of melodies, it has more similarities with other Non-Western heterophonic music, such as Arabic traditional music, Gamelan and Japanese Gagaku. Incorporating this into the world of free improvised music is a blessing. 

Magnus Nygren

FRIM (The Association for Free Improvised Music) was founded in 1976 to create a platform for free improvised music in Sweden and to promote the ongoing discussion about improvised music as an artform. These days FRIM arranges concerts and festivals of improvised music in Stockholm. Since 2017, FRIM is running a monthly concert series at Fylkingen, and since 2021, a record label: FRIM Records.