Philip V. Bohlman is the Mary Werkman Distinguished Service Professor of the Humanities and Music at the University of Chicago, and Honorarprofessor at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater Hannover. Nada Petković is the Appointed Lecturer for South Slavic Languages at the University of Chicago.
Few Americans have been aware of the traditions of folk epics that developed in the Balkans, in particular the former Yugoslavia, over the last millennium. Many of these epics tell of conflicts between Slavs and Turks, Muslims and Christians, and feature the deeds of great heroes. Passed on and varied through oral transmission, the epics were performed mostly by singers accompanying themselves on the gusle, a simple bowed instrument. Becoming known to American scholars through the efforts of Milman Parry and Albert B. Lord--who wished to discover parallels to the origin of Homer's epics--the Balkan epics were resurrected in public consciousness by the Balkan wars of the 1990s. Derived from a 2004 conference organized by Bohlman (humanities and music) and Petkovic (south Slavic languages)--both Univ. of Chicago, both distinguished scholars in the area--the work at hand provides 11 essays by US and European scholars of musicology, anthropology, and area studies. The volume touches on many aspects of this large, interesting body of song and literature, which has been neglected in recent decades; more importantly, the volume reveals how this epic functions in the modern world. An illustrative CD accompanies this collection of fine, varied, specialized studies. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Graduate students, researchers, professionals. CHOICE A major contribution of this book is to argue for epic as a genre of intersection and connection rather than a wellspring of narrow nationalist imaginaries...Balkan Epic is to be commended for advancing the study of epic in another sense, by incorporating its "political economy" of "appropriating, collecting, publishing, [and] mass-marketing"...Bringing together an important group of scholars, Balkan Epic will be a valuable addition to research libraries with interests in southeast Europe. For researchers and musicians, its importance goes further, opening up space to question whether epic performance could be reclaimed or redeemed in innovative and pluralistic ways. Slavic Review
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