Res Humanitariae

Collecting folk music and ethnographic materials for a long time in one locality forms a collection of records and the analytical database. This allows you to make a comparison and reveal the dynamics of the change in the people’s traditions, identify the factors that affect it. For ethnomusicologists, there is rarely a happy opportunity to compare modern folk music records (late 20th – early 21st centuries) with materials from the late 19th – early 20th centuries (at that time the foundations of traditional life were still preserved). One of such opportunities is provided by records in the village Romanovka in the Popelnya district of the Zhytomyr region (north-eastern edge of the Podillia). In this village folk customs, rituals and songs began to fix approximately the 1870s. The article covers the song genres of the calendar cycle: carols («kolyadki»), «schedrovki», spring games and round dances («khorovody»), «petrovki» and reaping («zhnyvni») tunes. Records of the beginning of the XXI century with musical notations are published for the first time.