Preservation of music tradition in Moslavina Croatia

At first, music was used to accompany dances and religious rituals. The ones who first learned to enjoy music alone were the peoples of ancient civilizations in Mesopotamia, Egypt, India, China and Greece. It is difficult to estimate the time when people started to write music. The instruments did not remain the same as originally made. Some of them were changed and improved; others were abandoned without attempts of improvement, replaced by some newly-invented ones.

Moslavina and Croatian Posavina
The traditional way of life in Moslavina and Croatian Posavina (Sava River Valley) started to change systematically between the two world wars and particularly so after World War Two. The changes came as a result of the migration of rural population into cities on one hand, and the rapid rural development on the other, with the rural population adopting numerous novelties coming from the city. They considered everything coming from the city exceptionally valuable, progressive and exemplary, while underrating their own folk culture. Becoming aware of the irreversible loss of folk values, the Seljačka Sloga (Peasant Concord) cultural and educational organizations were restored on November 10, 1935, after a six-year-break, to promote educational, economic, and with strengthening of HSS also its political role. It was at that very time that the peasantry became the main subject in public life and cultural creativeness. During the five-year-period these organizations achieved great success – they managed to gather thousands of peasants and founded an exceptionally large number of branches.

Typical wooden architecture of the Moslavina region.

Collecting and publishing materials on the music heritage of Moslavina and Croatian Posavina is not sheer romantic revival of the folklore past. It is a point of positive attitude towards the own folklore heritage. This seems to be especially important today, when it is necessary to bring to public attention (and with a good reason, too) the values that our rich and diverse music past has to show.