Wacław Sieroszewski – a Deportee Exiled to Siberia and His Studies into the Yakutian Music in the Nineteenth Century

Karolina Kondracka

Abstract

Wacław Sieroszewski is a very interesting figure, known mainly for his research into the life and culture of Yakuts – a native people of Siberia. This nineteenth-century writer, politician and deportee is the author of a monograph titled Якуты. Опыт этнографического исследования (Âkuty. Opyt ètnografičeskogo issledovaniâ), published in 1896. The study was awarded a golden medal by the Russian Geographic Society and remains to this day the most authoritative source of knowledge about the life and culture of the Sakha people.

The article Wacław Sieroszewski – badania zesłańca syberyjskiego nad muzyką Jakutów w XIX wieku [Wacław Sieroszewski – a deportee exiled to Siberia and his studies into the Yakutian music in the nineteenth century] consists of two parts. In the first part, the author included an overview of Sieroszewski’s life and work, his activity in exile and legacy. The second part presents Sieroszewski’s accounts of Yakutian music, with emphasis on the functioning of song and dance in the daily lives and rituals of the Yakuts. In addition, the text contains a transcript of a song from the Olonho epic and a classification of vocal music in tabular format.

Wacław Sieroszewski, sent to Siberia for conspiring against Tsarist authorities, was a very perceptive observer of Yakutian life and customs. In a vast monograph published in Polish in 1900, titled 12 lat w kraju Jakutów [Twelve years among the Yakuts], he discussed a variety of issues, such as food, buildings, clothes, pastimes, beliefs, language and folk music. In particular, two chapters, devoted to the religious beliefs, language, and folk literature, deserve attention as they contain information about the traditional music of the Sakha people. In the two chapters, the ethnographer discussed vocal music, the role of song and dance in shamanistic rituals, the construction and functions of the drum, and offered a classification of songs.

It should be emphasized that Wacław Sieroszewski’s publication is more than a significant contribution to research on nineteenth-century Siberia. From the musicological perspective, his work is a testimony of the studies conducted by Polish scholars in exile into the culture and music of the vernacular population, which was undergoing a process of Russification in the course of the nineteenth century. This process left its mark not only on the everyday life of the yakut people, but also on their music.