Page 260 - Небесные спутники айнов. Осипова М. В., Мамчева Н. А.

Summary. The heavenly companions of the Ainu
Lyrical Ainu songs sinotcha express love, longing, joy depending on the mood of a person. The Ainu
myth oina/kamuy yukar in a melodious form represent various episodes of the gods’ life in a disguise
of birds and animals. In addition to the kamuy yukar the bird images are found in musical fragments
of the Ainu fairy tales. The poetic images of nature, images of birds are conveyed in the instrumental
compositions of the Ainu. They can be heard during the play on the jew’s harp mukkuri or plucked
string instrument tonkori. Shaman reproduced bird voices during his séance. The bird images which
can be traced in all genres of the Ainu musical folklore reflect a long evolutionary process from the
primary naturalistic onomatopoeia to the works with artistic orientation.

Section IV. “Bird” dances and their musical
accompaniment

The imitative dances of the Ainu include the so-called “bird” dances, where a close connection with the
images of birds can be traced. A person saw the mating dances of birds, their arrival in spring after a long
winter and tried to imitate birds’ movements. The Ainu dance was mainly ritual and mimic pantomime.
It correlated with the ritual and its functions. This was a primitive type of dance and its main goal was to
effect on the spirits and kamuy deities through the symbolic-imitative dance. The birds were such spirits
and deities as well. All Ainu dances had obligatory musical accompaniment, where the rhythmic effect
played an important role. The Ainu “bird” dances are not comic entertainment. Despite the fact that they
contain the elements of pantomime, they are still far from purely mimic hunting pantomimes. The people
put on their best and most beautiful clothes for the performance of the “bird” dances.
The nationally mixed population of the Ainu neighbors didn’t have a significant impact on the
Ainu dance art. There were the same “bird” dances with the same plot of neighboring peoples, but
most part of the Ainu “bird” dance movements and musical accompaniment were original and
inherent only in the Ainu dance.

Conclusion

Every nation has myths and tales about birds. Their role in human life is indisputable, because people
have come into contact with these representatives of the animal world throughout their whole history.
The existence of birds on the planet is of great importance to human beings. Some of their
species, which once served only as a subject of hunting, were domesticated, providing humans with
food. Birds contribute to the spread of plants on Earth, which protect all living from the scorching
sun. They regulate the number of pests on the planet. Birds have contributed to the acquisition of
technical knowledge by humans. The human being looking at flying birds created the airplane. The
singing of birds and the appearance of certain species give people aesthetic pleasure. As part of the
ritual, the Ainu took various actions in order to gain the favor of influential nature spirits. One of
such actions was dance, imitative or totemic, in which a person took the form of a bird or an
ornithomorphic creature. The parallels present in the culture of the Ainu and neighboring peoples
are beyond doubt. All the folklore genres considered in the book are convincing proofs of such.
Today the interest in the cultural heritage of indigenous peoples is growing. A lot of people are striving
to comprehend themselves as subjects of national and cultural traditions, to acquire previously lost values
of spiritual culture. The task of science has been and still remains to study of the traditions and rituals that
once constituted the basis of the spiritual life of the aborigines but now gone into oblivion.