Chapter 02
Prekmurje and Bela krajina: Voices, Dance and Eastern Instruments
6 min
Cross the Mura into Prekmurje and the linguistic rhythm changes. Vowels broaden, consonants and endings take local shapes, and a song may carry a regional literary memory as well as village speech. The territory spent centuries in the Hungarian part of the Habsburg lands. After the First World War, a new border divided related Slovene-speaking communities between Prekmurje in Slovenia and Porabje, the Rába Valley, in Hungary. Hungarian and Roma communities add their own continuous histories within the region.
What to listen for
One of the earliest technologies to preserve this world arrived on wax cylinders. Hungarian researcher Béla Vikár recorded singers in Tišina in 1898. Those fragile recordings are the oldest known sound documents of Slovene-language folk song. The catalogue history includes old external labels for local Slovenes and later scholarly annotations. The cylinders preserve meetings among named places, singers, recording equipment and a research system. Surface noise belongs to what survived; it is not the sound of an eternally distant village.
The Prekmurje band breathes through contrast
The word banda in Prekmurje can refer to a group of musicians. A classic local texture may set fiddle, clarinet, cimbalom and double bass into distinct roles. The fiddle leads with ornament and flexible timing. Clarinet brings a brighter, breath-driven line. Cimbalom attacks then rings, creating motion between melody and bass. The bassist keeps the floor stable enough for the upper instruments to bend a phrase.
Beltinška banda carried this grammar through family and community transmission. Its documented musicians included Miško Baranja on cimbalom, fiddler Janez Kociper, bassist Jože Kociper and Anton Rajnar on clarinet and accordion, with singers including Milan and Katarina Kreslin. When Vlado Kreslin worked with the older ensemble, he did more than add folk timbre to rock songs. Concert scale, microphone balance, generational memory and regional speech entered one frame.
“Zrejlo je žito” makes an excellent first comparison. Listen once for the vocal line and once for the band's allocation of space. The cimbalom does not simply sparkle behind the singer; its decay shapes the gaps. Bass notes make each return feel grounded. Fiddle and clarinet can reinforce a contour without erasing one another. Kreslin's public career brought this sound to younger and wider audiences, yet the credits preserve the ensemble's makers.
The cimbalom is especially revealing. Metal strings run in courses across bridges on a trapezoidal resonant box. Small beaters give each note a hard beginning and a sustained halo. A player alternates hands rapidly, rolls a tone, outlines chords or doubles part of a melody. Hungarian and Roma musicians are central to the instrument's regional history. In Prekmurje that shared Pannonian life is the local story.
Hungarian Prekmurje speaks for itself
Around Lendava/Lendva, Hungarian is visible and audible in public life. The Hungarian community supports cultural institutions, schools, choirs, dance groups and media. Pomurski madžarski radio carries speech and music every day. A visitor does not need to infer Hungarian presence from a scale pattern; the language names itself.
Folklorna skupina Muravidék has collected and taught dance and music associated with the Hungarian community around Lendava. Its performance of “Kurizálok” presents a social form organized by a community group in Slovenia. The repertory also connects to Hungary across a nearby state border. Local citizenship and cross-border cultural kinship remain compatible.
Dance collection involves more than copying steps. Researchers and group leaders identify who remembers a figure, which occasion held it, how musicians phrased it and what has changed. A stage version then decides formation, duration and costume. That process can make endangered knowledge available to younger dancers while openly creating a new performance setting.
Roma musicians are authors and neighbours
Roma communities live historically in Prekmurje, Dolenjska, Bela krajina and Posavje. Musical work includes weddings, restaurants, popular song, original composition, festivals, jazz, teaching and broadcast performance. Each career has its own setting. Ethnicity does not produce automatic virtuosity, a single rhythm or one emotional role.
Romano Glauso formed in Pušča and writes original music. “Moja bejla z varaša (Moja Sobota)” addresses Murska Sobota through a Roma ensemble's own popular language. Guitar, accordion, keyboards, percussion, violin and voices give the group a broad palette. The song is valuable because it is contemporary local authorship. It does not need to imitate an archive to belong to Roma cultural life.
Other paths differ. Halgato Band joins Prekmurje and Roma materials with authored songs. Imer Traja Brizani's Amala moves through jazz composition, orchestra and Romani references. Oto Pestner built a huge career through popular song, gospel harmony, studio singing and vocal groups. Placing all of them in one “Roma music” drawer would hide the professions that make each career legible.
Bela krajina follows the Kolpa and many histories
Travel south to Bela krajina and the Croatian border becomes a river, a bridge and a family relation. The region's song and dance histories reflect local ritual, migration, Uskok settlement and exchange with neighbouring Croatian territories. Circle and chain formations are prominent in public representations, but each dance requires a locality and social frame. A broad South Slavic resemblance is a starting question, not a final label.
The Institute of Ethnomusicology's field collections preserve singers, instrumentalists and dance information from Bela krajina and Kostel. Early recording expeditions changed what scholars could retain: pace, vocal grain and ensemble timing joined written transcription. The microphone also selected a position, occasion and repertory. Archive versions, living groups and current teachers reveal different parts of the same history.
Tamburica performance is highly visible in Bela krajina. The instrument family ranges from small, high plucked instruments to larger inner voices and bass. Players use plectra, and repeated strokes can sustain a line. In an orchestra, melody passes across sections while chordal attacks clarify dance rhythm. Tamburaški orkester Dobréč from Dragatuš demonstrates how local societies turn a shared South Slavic instrument family into disciplined Slovenian ensemble work. Its album Bela krajina le tebi, made with singer Janez Doltar, documents a living community ensemble before any Ljubljana-based rearrangement enters.
Tamburica does not belong only to Bela krajina. Documented Slovenian groups appeared elsewhere, and Croatian ensemble movements were crucial to its spread. This wider route makes the Bela krajina practice more informative. It shows how a community adopts, teaches, arranges and competes with instruments whose histories cross borders.
Contemporary artists can reveal the archive's pressure
Katalena began its encounter with Slovene folk material during a stay in Bela krajina. The debut album Zgodbe includes recordings made in Črmošnjice and arrangements that place old material beside electric, jazz, rock and studio thinking. Singer Vesna Zorn does not pose as an unnamed village source. The group lets old melodic and textual material meet the identities of six present musicians.
Compare Zgodbe with an original field recording from the region. The contrast reveals arrangement choices: amplified bass changes weight; drum kit fixes or disrupts pulse; repeated riffs alter the length of a social form; a close microphone brings consonants forward. The folk source stays audible because the new frame has a strong point of view.
An archival Tišina singer, Beltinška banda, Muravidék or Romano Glauso, and a Bela krajina field or tamburica recording reveal four different forms of belonging. Language, instrument and occasion keep eastern Slovenia from collapsing into one sound.
