The Generational Venture of the Cultural Federation of American Croats

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Unity, solidarity, and giving: three important virtues that communicate the inexhaustible font and magic power of intergenerational well-being, successfully nurtured over the past 130 years in America, the world’s most developed country, by the Croatian Fraternal Union.

By: Vesna Kukavica; Foto by: K. Peršun, Croatian Heritage Foundation

CFU Junior Cultural Federation of America president Michael Ricci called this year’s tamburitza festival, bringing together Americans of ethnic Croatian extraction, a “once in a generation” opportunity to unite children and adults in a singular heritage ceremony, demonstrating the vast potential of intergenerational creative activity. The event, featuring a record number of performers and ensembles from North American, was staged from June 28 to 29 at the Vatroslav Lisinski concert hall, certainly the best-known venue of its kind in the national capital of Zagreb and in Our Beautiful Homeland as a whole. This festival, staged by the CFU – a dominant force among Americans who nurture and cultivate their Croatian background, serves as a fascinating example of creative émigré tourism in which travel is focused on an engaged and authentic experience, with participatory learning through art, heritage, and the discovery of the particular characteristics of the homeland of their distant ancestors. This certainly engenders a more spontaneous connection with the people who inhabit and inform the living culture and identity of modern Croatia. Contributing to the success of this CFU Cultural Federation event along with Mr Ricci were Ted Sebetich Jr, Natalie Kosta, Robert T. Keber, Linda Spudic, and other CFU officers, including Michele Janicki, Rudi Pesut, Timothy Komara, Michael Vucinic, Joe Grman, Janet Craig, Donald Weakley, Virginia Michtich, Ivan Begg, Emil Riccio and the agile Derek Hohn. CFU president Edward W. Pazo, the organisation’s enterprising vice president Franjo Bertović, and national secretary and treasurer Bernadette Luketich Sikaras were clearly delighted with the performances of the folklore ensembles, as were all of the other CFU members from the United States of America and neighbouring Canada on hand for the event. The CFU members, in particular the parents of the youthful performers, all contributed greatly to the success of this festive double event, staged under the motto “Tambura Across Generations”.

The gala finale of the event saw all of the participants (juniors and seniors) in folklore costume presenting a masterful rendition of three contemporary compositions for tamburitza (penned by musicians from the USA and Croatia: T. M. Poslon, D. Kochis, M. Kochis, D. Bačić and V. Dimter…) under the consummate leadership of honorary conductor Derek Hohn (from Pittsburgh in the state of Pennsylvania), earning an ovation from the gathered audience, joined by the also clearly delighted Andrej Plenković, the current Croatian prime minister.

With this performance the gathered Americans of Croatian extraction once again restored the tamboura to its rightful place and dignity as our most prevalent folklore instrument, often stereotypically disparaged as an artefact of pop culture, providing a deep dive into the sound of contemporary compositions by leading figures of the Croatian tamboura and traditional music scene like Vjekoslav Dimter.

Identity, and the sense of ethnic affiliation attached to it, is said to live in the objective cultural content of humanity, in which tradition has significant status given that the features of ethnicity and culture remain largely drawn from it, as a medium of sorts for identification, as we bore witness to while revelling in each of the twelve-minute performances presented at this festival, hosted by the Croatian Heritage Foundation (Hrvatska matica iseljenika), and bringing to Zagreb Americans of Croatian background. Identity, clearly, lives concurrently in localism and globalism, with each generation looking to its own time. In a global village that often appears to be a virtual world it seems easy to agree with the thought expressed over three hundred years ago by that eminent Croatian polymath Pavao Ritter Vitezović: “Remarkable folk customs testify to the notion that the stability of the process of identification, and its ultimate outcome – identity, in spite of it all, may long remain unquestionable.” The issue of origin remains important to us to this day; who are we and where do we come from? In following this line of questioning we come to the certainly significant social capital of the communities of people of Croatian background abroad, and to the overall issue of modern Croatian unity. It turns out, namely, that identification strategies such as mutual solidarity, cooperation, and shared long-term planning destabilize theories of de-ethnicization and concurrently create innovative shifts in the desire for unity within one’s group, and then with groups in interaction. In conclusion, it seem evident that those who would declare traditional culture -folklore, an anachronism, i.e., an inappropriate medium for identification practices in the present day, are least in the right. Across the majority of the communities of Croatian background around the world it is clear that the interest in folklore is not withering. Quite the contrary; we find groups celebrating Croatian folklore and tamburitza bands across almost every meridian. We also see that folklore is transformed, re-traditionalised, and – what is most important – internationalised. There is no fraternal organisation in North America where the ethnic associations, through their activities, do not emphasize that among the members of the communities of Croatian extraction the identification strategies are focused as much on their own community as on transnational connections. Over its sixty-six years the CFU Junior Cultural Federation of America has undergone a range of transformations that have seen its own identity change, ultimately establishing itself as a reliable promoter of Croatian cultural heritage on the North American continent, as conceived by the visionary Bernard M. Luketich.

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