Juliana Kováčová

Juliana Kováčová was a Slovak folklorist and ethnomusicologist.

She studied history and, externally, ethnology and folkloristics at the Faculty of Arts of Comenius University, as well as voice at the Conservatory in Bratislava.

From 1954, Kováčová spent a full 35 years working in the Department of Ethnomusicology at the Slovak Academy of Sciences. She was responsible for the archives of folk songs and dances, revising older records and cataloguing new acquisitions. She catalogued, for example, transcriptions (copies) of song texts from the collection of Andrej Halaša. She studied folk song comprehensively, focusing on both its musical and textual components within the context of the functions of singing.

“By doing so she contributed to shaping a research orientation that we today consider one of the specific features of Slovak ethnomusicology.” (Hana Urbancová, 2010)

In addition to archival work, she regularly conducted field research into traditional musical and dance culture. Together with her colleague Stanislav Dúžek, she carried out fieldwork in the Podpoľanie region and in the area of Trenčín. For both regions, they created valuable documentation bases.

“She played a significant role in documenting traditional singing practices in the 1960s–1980s. Thanks to her recordings, we can today pursue in-depth analyses of song genres – even of those which, before 1989, lay on the margins of official scholarly interest (Christmas carols, folk spiritual songs).”(Hana Urbancová, 2010)

In her scholarly writings, Juliana Kováčová focused on regional song cultures, song genres, and prominent bearers of song traditions. Publications devoted to genre research include Lúčne piesne žien (Meadow Songs of Women, 1980) and Trávnice – špecifický druh ženských lyrických piesní  (Trávnice – a Specific Type of Women’s Lyric Songs, 1987). Kováčová’s extensive study on the singer Mária Zajacová from Záblatie near Trenčín (1985) ranks among the key profiles of significant vocal personalities in Slovakia.

“Clear formulation of ideas, careful verification of hypotheses, and responsible consideration of conclusions – these are the qualities that made the author’s relatively few works an excellent foundation for our further research.” (Hana Urbancová, 2010)