Anya Shatilova (Wesleyan University):
St. Petersburg Brings Back Its Past: An Exploration of Ingrian Musical Heritage within an Urban Space
A historical territory of Ingria is home for Votians, Izhorians, and Ingrian Finns – three Finnic minority groups who have been inhabiting the region of St. Petersburg and Leningrad Oblast since long before the Slavic domination. Ingrian musical heritage had attracted many folklorists in pre-revolutionary Russia but it is almost completely neglected by contemporary scholars. A long period of repressions against those Finnic groups during the 20thcentury left almost no imprints of their presence in the cultural life of St. Petersburg. The recent reawakening of the long forgotten cultural heritage of the Ingrian population has led to the formation of several music groups that focus on local Finno-Ugric traditions. In this paper I explore the manifestation of Ingrian culture in the modern context of the urban space of St. Petersburg from the ethnomusicological perspective. Using physical and digital ethnography in the form of interviews and social media platforms and drawing from approaches of musicology, anthropology, and social studies, I analyze Ingrian heritage in the form of music and its impact on the creation of various identities with examples of two local groups – Talomerkit and Ingervala. The former is composed by people of the Finno-Ugric origin adhering to traditional representation of this musical tradition, and the latter formed by music enthusiasts who perceive Ingrian heritage as a symbol of local idiosyncrasy and a basis for their creative process as a response to forces of globalization. Having formed nonoverlapping audiences and pursuing different creative goals, Talomerkit and Ingervala create different group identities within the city by using the same cultural element.
Keywords: Ingria, musical heritage, globalization, local identities