Individual songs in the Nenets collective memory

Singing individual songs can encourage people to tell Nenets traditional life stories, ile”mya, because for the most part they are based on somebody’s biographical story.

The Nenets traditions and norms of performing Nenets individual songs were described in works of the early researchers of the Nenets language and folklore (Lehtisalo 1947; Lehtisalo 1960:460; Pushkareva 2000; Pushkareva 2001; Niemi 1999; Niemi and Lapsui 2004). Individual songs are an important part of Nenets oral history, and are worth further investigation as to the place of words and silence within them. This means that individual songs can become part of the group or collective memory stories. However, this happened quite seldom with personal stories. Singing or just retelling the Nenets individual song is another way of remembering individuals and stories about them. During my work on collecting Nenets stories, I managed to record some Nenets individual songs. I was surprised that some of them are connected to collective memory stories.

These works shows that Nenets individual songs have many important social functions in Nenets culture and daily life. My research partners said that singing songs helps them to relax, to express feelings of happiness, joy, sorrow, pain and sadness. Otherwise, being in silence makes a person think about sad moments from the past (FM 2015). Nonetheless, the most important function of individual songs is to keep memories about the past. However, like the narratives that accompany them, this process of remembering them is inevitably selective. Every Nenets individual song has an author and tells a personal story about somebody’s life story (Pushkareva 2001:33). Jarkko Niemi explains that Nenets individual songs mostly describe personal experiences of the past (Niemi 1999:104). Additionally, when Nenets tell stories about somebody, they can accompany their narratives by singing this person’s individual song or songs. Quite often, it is just a starting point for beginning a typical Nenets collective memory narrative about people and what they did in the past and why people remember them. This way of telling a story explains why people keep memories about different events of the past and why they tell these stories to their children, relatives or friends. Stories of songs can give information not only about the ancestors, but also about the descendants of people who made these songs. It is interesting that nonfamily members can perform other people’s individual songs, but then it is important to first give the name of the owner of this song and tell the place name where it was made.

Therefore, individual songs give examples of such a form of remembering which is connected both to individual narratives and collective memories about people and their life stories.

If a song is performed by a person who made it, an audience should memorize his or her name and the lyrics of this song. If somebody else performs this

song later, then, before singing it he or she should tell who is the owner of this song, and this song’s story.

(Pushkareva 2001:33).

Actually, Nenets perform their individual songs in almost the same way as we declaim poetry to an audience. First, we introduce the name or names of the author/s that wrote it and then recite the poem. However, there are many strict rules and regulations of performing Nenets individual songs. In Nenets everyday life, people usually do not say the names of people, but in individual songs, it is important to give the names of the people who made the songs. Children cannot perform (sing) their parents’ songs in their presence. The same rule regulates performing individual songs of other people in the presence of their owners. They are important identity markers because relatives, friends and neighbours know their authors and their family members. In this way, individual songs regulate the ownership of Nenets personal songs and keep safe a network of agency of Nenets personal names. For example, after singing an individual song, a performer should tell a background story of the song.

In this work, I will tell stories about three individual songs. Two songs talk about the history of Nenets reindeer theft, and the last one is an individual song about childhood trauma. I will discuss these three examples of Nenets individual songs in Chapter 4. There I will explain how the Nenets collective narratives keep memories about people and reveal them in public and what kind of lessons Nenets people get from these stories.

One Nenets individual song tells about committing reindeer theft for saving people from starvation. Moreover, it talks about the power of a human prayer to the tundra spirits, which helped to save a hero. Some Nenets elders even call this type of song a little yarabc – ‘epic crying story’, which originates from the Nenets word – yar

‘crying’.

Since I collected this Nenets individual song, I started to look for the answers to why and how Nenets tell them. After talking with elders, I understood that every song and every story makes people responsible for them. I asked tundra elders to explain some specifics of Nenets ways of communication with people, nature and spirits of the tundra by speaking or singing. I received a range of answers to my question. Mostly people mentioned that usually people keep special knowledge in silence because it can be very intimate and personal. Thus, telling such a story is synonymous with being responsible for it.

In the literature about the Nenets shamanistic religion and communicating with nature and the spirits of the tundra, I found that for Nenets people, it is normal to worship trees (mostly larch), stones and fire (Golovnev 1995; Pushkareva 2007).

Nenets can communicate with nonhuman beings and tell about this in their individual songs (Pushkareva 2001:34). I found some examples of such songs in

Toivo Lehtisalo’s book, which are defined as prayers (Lehtisalo 1960: 448-460).

Jarkko Niemi calls this phenomenon a ritual communication between people and nature and its spirits (Niemi 1999). This is very similar to the Saami culture of singing traditional Saami joiks (yoiks). Such joiks are equivalent to personal signatures of the people who made them (Jones-Bamman 1993). Moreover, Saami joiks can actually connect many personal stories together and join them to a bigger collective narrative story. This means that joiks are actually part of the collective remembering of the story and can be performed in public. Therefore, joiks are considered different from ordinary Saami songs, and they have different social value. People keep these stories safe to remember the people who made them. Exactly like the Nenets individual songs, Saami joiks reflect the emotions of people, their connection to the family, their memories and the nature where they live, saving the names of the people to whom they belong. Like Nenets individual songs, they can give lessons about how to work with reindeer and how to live and survive in the tundra. In addition, Saami joiks also help to build an important mechanism of communicating between human and non-human beings in the tundra.

The main difference between Nenets individual songs and joiks (yoiks) is that whereas the Nenets make them themselves and it is offensive to perform any individual song in the presence of its author. While the Saami believe that humans get their joiks from the tundra spirits and that they can be given as gifts or inherited by other people (Anderson 2005:216-219).

Nenets individual songs keep memories about important parts of the Nenets personal and local collective memory stories about people and their lives in the tundra (Niemi 1999:104). Not every Nenets individual song can be saved in the collective memory history, but only the examples of songs which were selected by the Nenets audience (Burykin and Pushkareva 2010:334). At the same time, an individual Nenets song khari syo can be connected to a personal story khariilye”mya. Because when other people perform them, they know who made them, how and why.

People can perform other people’s individual songs nyenetsya syo”, but it is offensive to perform any individual song in the presence of its author. Individual songs are usually performed only for a small circle of family members. Also, if a performer knows the background story of an individual song, he or she should tell to whom this song belongs and also how and why it was made (Tonkov 1936; Pushkareva 1990). There are also Nenets individual songs that are open for public performing.

Tundra people can sing them as old legends about the history of the tundra. These songs also are accompanied by a short introduction to the author of the song and the reason it was made. Individual songs which tell interesting stories nyenetsya ilye”mya”

are very valued by tundra people and can be confided to children as part of their family heritage (Niemi and Lapsui 2004). I show this connection between personal life stories, individual songs and collective narratives in figure 3.3.

Figure 3.3. Connection of Nenets personal stories, individual songs and collective narratives.

During my work on collecting Nenets stories about the past, I was surprised that the Nenets can remember very old songs and even the names of the people who made them. I consider these old songs, which many people know and can perform, to be a part of the Nenets collective memory stories. They tell about Nenets individuals, and can be told to young people with a special message or a lesson from the past. It is important to underline that all Nenets individual songs can be performed only in the Nenets language. Nenets songs have a special song language, without which it is not possible to perform and remember them. Even to the extent that it is possible to translate them into Russian and English, performing Nenets songs in these languages is not possible.