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A skomorokh (, Russian language: скоморох, , ) was a medieval East Slavic actor, who could also sing, dance, play musical instruments and compose for oral/musical and dramatic performances. The term has an unclear etymology.
The Primary Chronicle on skomorokhs concurs with the period. The monk chronicler denounced them as devil servants. Furthermore, the Eastern Orthodox Church often railed against them and other elements of popular culture as being irreverent, detracting from the worship of God or being downright diabolical. For example, Theodosius of Kiev, one of the co-founders of the Caves Monastery in the 11th century, called the skomorokhs "evils to be shunned by good Christians".Feodosii Pecherskii, Sochinenia, I. I. (Izmail Ivanovich) Sreznevskii, ed., in Ucheniia zapiski vtorogo otdelenie Imperatorskoi Akademii Nauk, Vol. 2, no. 2, (St. Petersburg: Tipografii Imperatorskoi Akademii Nauk, 1856), 195; See Russell Zguta, "Skomorokhi: The Russian Minstrel-Entertainers", Slavic Review 31 No. 2 (June 1972), 297–298; Idem, Russian Minstrels: A History of the Skomorokhi (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1978). Their art was related and addressed to the common people and usually opposed the ruling groups. They were considered not just useless but even ideologically detrimental and dangerous by both the feudalists and the clergy.
They were persecuted in the years of the Mongol yoke (1230s), when the church strenuously propagated ascetic living. Their art reached its peak in the 15th to the 17th centuries. Their repertoire included mock songs, dramatic and satirical sketches, called глумы (glumy) in Russian (глуми in Ukrainian), performed in masks and skomorokh dresses to the sounds of domra, balalaika, gudok, bagpipes or buben (a kind of tambourine). The appearance of Russian puppet theatre was directly associated with skomorokh performances.
Skomorokhs performed in the streets and city squares, engaging with the spectators to draw them into their play. Usually, the main character of the skomorokh performance was a fun-loving saucy (мужик in Ukrainian) of comic simplicity. In the 16th and 17th centuries, skomorokhs would sometimes combine their efforts and perform in a (ватага in Ukrainian, big crowd), numbering 70 to 100 people. The skomorokhs were often persecuted by the Russian Orthodox Church and civilian authorities.
In 1648 and 1657, Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich issued ukase banning skomorokh art as blasphemous, their inventory was destroyed, skomorokhs fell into captivity, were pursued but actors would still occasionally perform during popular celebrations. In the 18th century, skomorokh art gradually died away; passing on some of its traditions to the (балаган in Ukrainian) and (райок in Ukrainian).
The role of the skomorokhi in the preservation and dissemination of folklore was closely linked with their important contribution to the development of secular music, first in Kievan Rus’ and later in Muscovite Russia. Before the introduction of Christianity in the late tenth century, Kievan music was characterized primarily by ritualistic songs of worship, ceremonial (i.e., wedding, funeral) songs, and seasonal songs such as koliadka and vesnianky. With Byzantine Christianity came Byzantine chant and a vigorous attempt to suppress native music because of its close identification with paganism. This attempted suppression was only partially successful, because it was mainly aimed at the more populous urban centers and left the remote rural areas with their flourishing folk music relatively untouched.
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