Ondrej Demo

PhDr. Ondrej Demo, CSc. was a Slovak ethnomusicologist, composer, editor and organizer of musical life. He focused mainly on Slovak folk music and its popularization.

After the end of the war he entered the Teacher's Academy in Bratislava, where he graduated in 1948. For the first three years he worked as a teacher at primary schools in Klížská Nema and Číčov. After completing his basic military service in 1953, he became editor of the Folk Music Editorial Office of the Czechoslovak Radio in Bratislava. In addition to his work, he studied at the Department of Music Education of the Pedagogical University in Bratislava under Professor Eugen Suchoň. In 1975 he received his doctor of philosophy degree from the Department of Musicology at the Faculty of Arts of Comenius University under Professor Jozef Kresánek. He completed an external aspirant course in ethnomusicology at the Music Institute of the Slovak Academy of Sciences under the supervision of Jozef Kresánek and in 1983 he defended his degree of Candidate of Arts.

Between 1966 and 1993 Ondrej Demo was popular mainly as an author, presenter and editor of the radio series Klenotnica ľudovej hudby (Treasury of Folk Music). He recorded and broadcast rare music and folklore material from 275 villages in Slovakia, as well as from foreign Slovaks. He was the author and director of many programmes at folklore festivals in Východná, Detva and Myjava. In addition, he was also a member of expert juries at national and international music and folklore competitions. He created the project of the international radio competition Prix de musique folklorique de Radio Bratislava, in which from 1970 to 1991 fifty European radio stations competed with recordings of folk music in authentic and processed form.

In 1976 he was at the birth of the Bratislava Radio Folk Instrument Orchestra (OĽUN) and became its first artistic director. Ondrej Demo composed about 180 scores for OĽUN, the Lúčnica Choir and various folklore ensembles. In 1990 Ondrej Demo became the artistic director and choirmaster of the John Paul II Choir in Vajnory.

He was also the author of the book publications Harvest and Harvest Songs (with Olga Hrabalová, 1969), Janka Guzová Sings (1995), Folklore Music on Radio in Slovakia (1998) and Pavol Tonkovič (2013). He published the folklore material obtained in connection with the preparation of the Radio Treasury of Folk Music in the collections From the Treasury of Slovak Folk Songs (1981) and Christmas Carols, Vinshaws and Plays (1998, 2014). He summarised the results of his folklore research in Vajnore in 1973 in the collection Vajnory sing (2013). As a co-author and compiler, he participated in the preparation of the monographs Vajnory (1978), Myjava (1985), Cífer (1991), Branovo - history, life and traditions (2005) and Naše Vajnory (2008). He has published various studies and articles mainly in the periodicals Slovak Music, Slovak Ethnography, Rhythm and Tradition and Present. He has written about forty scripts for television films about traditional culture and participated in the preparation of eighty music albums.

From 1964 to 1993 he was a member of the programme boards of the Folklore Festival Východná, the Folklore Festival under Poľana in Detva and the West Slovak Folklore Festival in Myjava. In 1995 he became the chairman of the Society of Musical Folklore at the Slovak Music Union and a member of the SOZA committee.