Reading this delightful book evoked memories of the first time I heard a singer of the dramatic epics the Sakha call olonkho. At a Museum of Music and Folklore conference in 1994, the star was a Sakha-Evenki woman singer-tale teller, the elderly Daria Tomskaia. As Robin Harris explains, by 2005 the Sakha government recognized her as one of two remaining “master olonkhosuts,” the last of the improvisation masters who made tales come alive in multiple voices, through several nights of marathon olonkho performance. Daria told our spell-bound audience that as a child her whole being absorbed the chanted narratives of olonkho singers visiting her family. She would lie in a semi-awake trance-like state in her bed, listening near the hearth in their small home crowded with guests, local kin and neighbors who had come to enjoy the rare treat of a travelling story-teller. When Daria enjoyed a tale, including obscure ones circulating in the far northern communities, by morning she could perform all the parts. Since her childhood was in the Soviet period, her amazed parents recognized and feared her powers as shamanic, and tried to discourage her.
Robin Harris’ monograph places Daria's rocky history of talent first repressed and then valorized in context. The monograph is an analysis of the decline of the vast epic repertoire through most of the Soviet period, due to lack of appropriate traditional milieus and community encouragement, followed by their uneven role in cultural revitalization. Harris's argument, that the epics came to be associated with Sakha identity in the post-Soviet period, is similar to my analysis of sacred olonkho as synecdoche for the Sakha people. Since 1986, banners at folklore concerts have proclaimed “Yakutia—Land of Olonkho.” This formula, as Harris demonstrates, has intensified in the past twenty-five years, with one suspiciously commercial variation including plans for an “Olonkho-land” Disney-like theme park. Harris explains that standardized forms of the best known epic Niurgun Bootur served as bridges between the Soviet and post-Soviet periods. Examples include an art volume with Sakha and Russian translations, and multi-disc recordings by the beloved actor-singer Gavriil Kolesov, who in turn influenced younger singers such as Pyotr Tikhonov, with whom Harris worked.
The most significant stimulus for epic revival, putting cultural revitalization in global perspective, is the 2005 designation by UNESCO of olonkho as a “monument of intangible cultural heritage.” Harris's detailed chapter on how the designation was achieved is itself a daunting tale, involving near-miss timing, ethnomusicologist diligence, and begrudging Russian Ministry of Culture signatures. Republic authorities, using the prestige and support derived from international recognition, declared 2005–15 “The Decade of Olonkho” and enabled the establishment of an Institute of Olonkho. Support for youth programs and for digital archives has flourished, as have creative expressions of the epics in non-traditional forms, including folk rock, multi-genre theater, and mass-scale danced enactments of heroic epic battles between good and evil at annual summer solstice festivals. As Harris correctly worries, however, “festivalization” of epics, new creative channels, school programs with elders, and youth competitions featuring set epic fragments cannot mask the politics of neo-colonialism and the lack of a social milieu for the rekindling of full scale epics sung on the basis of improvisation within traditional rules and performance standards.
Harris's admirable presentation includes strategic comparisons with the epic traditions of Koreans and Kyrgyz. Theoretical literature in ethnomusicology and linguistics is selected to show precedents for the importance of keeping alive improvisational arts for changing times. A website features epic excerpts and interviews discussing singer biographies and epic diversity (www.press.uillinois.edu/books/harris/storytelling). Fuller flavor of various epic storylines, beyond their moral education functions, and more extensive translated samples of the power of the Turkic language Sakha epic poetry, would make the book even better.
Harris and I differ in our analyses of the significance of olonkho with regard to Sakha shamanic world views, perhaps due to her Christian background, the reason her family came to the republic. Harris notes her interviews demonstrate “widely varying opinions at the grassroots level regarding the questions of whether olonkho connects to uniquely shamanist beliefs or merely presents a broadly spiritual view of reality” (17). For me, shamanic cosmology and practice, far from unique or narrow, provided the culturally-saturated basis of inspirational poetry that poured from masters like Daria Tomskaia. This shamanic spiritual view has enjoyed a remarkable post-Soviet revival, nourishing the cultural renaissance that has been led by, among others, the Sakha Minister of Culture and theater director, Andrei Borisov, whose “theater of olonkho” is one of the best hopes for the viability of the epics for new generations in new forms.
