Paper short abstract:

From the perspective of ethnomusicology, or anthropology of music, the paper will demonstrate the significance of minority music, dance and other selected and rediscovered traditions from migrantsʼ homeland as certainties in the uncertain time.

Paper long abstract:

Vienna has historically been, and still is, one of the most preferred destinations for labour and politically motivated migration of both Czechs and Slovaks. The spectrum of minority organisations still includes the old neighbourly associations founded around the middle of the 19th century. For more than fifty years, associations of emigrants and exiles founded in the wake of the turbulent events of 1968 and the subsequent normalisation in Czechoslovakia have cultivated their own activities. However, the current minority community is led by members of the middle and younger generation of Czechs and Slovaks who came to Vienna after the fall of the Iron Curtain or even just in the last few years. It is they who have created the most active and visible musical and dance world of Czech and Slovak Vienna today over the last decade. A key source of activity is the selected and purposefully manipulated manifestations of Czech and Slovak musical and dance folklore. The Czechs and Slovaks in Vienna conceive of folklore not only as a rediscovered cultural heritage of their original homeland and a symbolic identity marker related to it. The various expressions and references to folklore also provide them with existential security, the importance and powerful development of which has been greatly intensified by the coronavirus pandemic. This paper will discuss, in terms of recent ethnomusicological research, the role of folkloric elements that people turn to in uncertain times.