Musicology Annotation << Back The tradition of cattle incantations of the Barguzin Buryats Olga V. Novikova In this paper the tradition of cattle incantations in the culture of the Barguzin Buryats is considered. These incantations are solo melodic recitations aimed at infl uencing magically domestic animal females (cow and sheep) if they refuse to feed their newborns or to calm them during milking. The main means of magical effects of the cattle incantations are propelene extralinguistic wordsymbols is uniquely associated with a specifi c species of domestic animals: a sheep (guute) and cow (oog). Today the cattle incantations represent the live, though gradually consigning to the past because of change of traditional economic way ritual tradition. Keeper of this tradition generally people, worked shepherds, milkmaids and veterinarians the most part of life. Musical and textual structure of the Barguzin cattle incantations has many characteristic features of the same genre traditions Hori-Buryat, Telengits, Altaians, Altai Kazakhs, sut-Khol and the Erzin Tuvans, Kalmyks and Mongols. However, the cattle incantations of Barguzin Buryats have specifi c features that distinguish them from closely related traditions – primarily Hori-Buryat. This specifi city is largely due to the strong infl uence of the Barguzinsky cattle incantations song tradition, which is most clearly manifested at the level of melodic, modal and timbral organization of the samples. Keywords: traditional musical culture of Buryat, the cattle incantations, Barguzin Buryats, ritual folklore of Buryat. Contacts: E-mail: novikova_o_v@mail.r u Pp. 41-48.