Miklós Both went to Ukraine for the first time in 2013 to collect folk music, primarily in search of musical inspiration for his own artistic work. Due to the musical material he found there (mainly a plethora of Slavic polyphonic songs), he decided to organize a research group in 2016 and, equipped with modern audio equipment, made high-quality and large-scale recordings of the vocal folk music of the Ukrainian territories. He became interested in the theories of ethnology and cultural anthropology due to the research methodology questions that arose during his work, leading him to contact music folklorists and ethnochoreologists. This is how a self-taught social collector became a professional field worker. Miklós Both is currently a PhD student in the Ethnology—Cultural Anthropology Doctoral Program of the Interdisciplinary Doctoral School of the University of Pécs in Hungary.

However, this is not just an individual success story. Since 2013, Both consciously built his connections in both the Hungarian and international music and academic arenas, thanks to which a large network of professional musicians and researchers came together to form the Polyphony Project, officially launched in 2017. The enterprise is multi-faceted and fulfils many goals: on the one hand, it provides news about the hitherto lesser-known layer of Eastern European vocal folk music, and on the other, it collects material for traditional ethnomusicological analysis, enough to create a serious archive, contributing to the knowledge of lesser-known areas of European cultural history. Similar initiatives are not unknown to the general music-loving Hungarian public: Béla Bartók and Zoltán Kodály’s work at the beginning of the twentieth century is a well-known example, and, in the mid-20th century, György Martin and his colleagues undertook a similar collection of monographic material, which laid the foundation for decades of Hungarian folk dance research (Dóka et al. Reference Dóka, Felföldi, Fügedi, Karácsony, Máté, Varga, Fügedi, Felföldi and Fügedi2016). The former researchers not only collected Hungarian music and dance folklore but also included the music and dances of the ethnic groups living alongside the Hungarians, as well as the dances of neighbouring peoples. The Polyphony Project follows the work of its predecessors and, through its collection, highlights that the folk songs of the Eastern European plains have an extremely important place in the history of the wider European culture. But the enterprise goes further than that: it publishes these melodies on the world wide web in a way that is accessible, understandable, and can be used as a learning tool for everyone, both in an educational environment and for personal use. From this point of view, the website (www.polyphonyproject.com) is also significant from the perspective of the European cultural heritage.

If we look at it objectively, the Polyphony Project is primarily a publication of material based on classical folkloristic data collection. Zoltán Kodály once stated that even the most brilliant theory can collapse like a house of cards under the weight of a single new piece of information: “[t]heories become obsolete, flawlessly presented material never does” (Kodály Reference Kodály and Kerényi1953:VIII.) Behind even the simplest data collection there is a preconception, an intention that focuses more on certain types of data and pushes others into the background (Varga Reference Varga, Fügedi, Quigley, Szőnyi and Varga2020:86–7). Here, the collection of Miklós Both and his fellow researchers is based on the elemental recognition of a musician or person marvelling at the novel and confusing beauty of the material as well as its perceived ephemerality: if I don’t record it, something we might need in the future may be lost.

During the evaluation of the project, we may be called to say that this enterprise is a product of the romantic search for the past, such as the nostalgic material of Rousseau’s idea of lost Eden. However, the sad relevance of documenting disappearing intellectual cultural heritage is highlighted by the current war raging in Ukraine. If we were to expand the current research focus of the Polyphony Project, new results and research opportunities could arise through the examination of the use of Ukrainian folk songs over a longer period of time, as well as through participant observation, the analysis of the circumstances surrounding the data collection, and how the compilation is situated in a cultural, political, and social context. The knowledge of the team of professionals formed within the Polyphony Project and the academic and musical vocation of Miklós Both, the research coordinator, already carry the possibility that the research and analysis of Ukrainian folk songs will give a new impetus to European folk music research.

The database Polyphony Project—Unknown Ukraine undertook the task of organizing the results of folk music collection over several years (https://www.polyphonyproject.com/en). The collection was not only collected but also organised by Both and his international research team on a modern, user-friendly, and versatile online platform. The website is available in three languages: Hungarian, Ukrainian, and English, which facilitate its international access and use. The interface meets the expectations of modern website creation: it is a beautifully designed, easy-to-use platform that welcomes users on every menu item. The website is easy to navigate; the various functions—the folk music recordings in a card-like arrangement, the portraits of the researchers and collectors participating in the project, the clickable map showing the locations of the collections—are clearly separated from each other and are easily accessed.Footnote ¹

The collections are astutely published, with the ethnomusicological aspects remaining at the centre alongside satisfying the cultural and pedagogical requirements. Illustrating this, individual parts are recorded in parallel and can be played together and separately, greatly facilitating the examination and comparison of melodies, as well as a practical too for creating educational material. Polyphonic singing, the analysis of monophonic songs sung in a choir by an individual informant, or even the recording of an orchestral performance in this way is a rarity even among Hungarian music collections; indeed, collectors rarely had the opportunity to make simultaneous multi-track recordings of the playing of individual singers or instruments. In addition to the melodies, the lyrics are also systematically published and added next to the video and audio recording so that the text and the melody can be examined together. As such, this method is a step forward in the use of folk music collecting in scientific research and in (public) education.

While the metadata related to the collected melodies shows some inconsistency, the essential metadata is systematically attached to each recorded melody (filters: first line; lyrics; location; genre; context of performing; ethnographical region; collector; source; themes and motifs). Inconsistencies lie mainly in the lyrics. In the Hungarian translation of a page, for example, some of the related lyrics were published in Ukrainian but transliterated in Latin letters, while other parts were attached to the Hungarian translation without the original Ukrainian text being published. While this may seem like a small detail, it can create a sense of lack of rigour. It is also unfortunate that the informants’ data is not grouped: the names and dates of birth of the singers and, in some cases, the musicians included in the recordings were placed at the bottom of the song information sheets, but their place of birth was not listed next to them—this information was available on a separate map where, after clicking on it, you could see which informant was born where. The identification of the voice (or microphone) associated with each singer is consistent with the photographic content and works according to the following system: in the multitrack player, the first track is the left-most microphone shown in the photo, and so on to the right-most microphone. If the singers are in two rows, the first track is the left front microphone, and the last is the right rear microphone.

Searching the database and using it for research purposes is hindered by the fact that the website does not highlight the identification number of each song, a useful tool to reference particular songs in further research.Footnote ² It is therefore difficult to find specific recordings based solely on the opening line or lyrics unless one knows the Ukrainian language. This shortcoming also makes it difficult to navigate between page translations. All in all, however, the folk song material collected in Ukraine has been brought together in a very serious, high-quality, and tidy database that can be easily and efficiently used, and that is of the standard of the collected folk music material.

In addition to the database, the Polyphony Project’s online presence is extended through social media interfaces with posts in Ukrainian and English (Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/polyphonyproject; and Instagram page – https://www.instagram.com/polyphony.project/), and through online press articles in Hungarian (Anonymous .; Kovács M and Barakonyi Reference Kovács and Barakonyi2019) and English (see further below). The project staff also shared photos taken during fieldwork on the project’s Facebook page. Among the “behind the scenes” photos were included pictures of the audio recording process, informant portraits, and images showing everyday life in the Ukrainian villages, along with shorter, interesting stories about the collection and the people in the photos and recordings.

Hungarian-language articles about the project tended to focus on interviews with Miklós Both or write-ups about his role and work (Balla–Csatlós Reference Balla and Csatlós2019; Anonymous 2021). Before the ongoing Russo-Ukrainian war (which started on February 24, 2022), articles were mostly written about the performances of elderly Ukrainian female singers in Hungary as well as Both’s activities in Ukraine. After the outbreak of the war, the Hungarian press approached Miklós Both as someone who had an intimate knowledge of everyday life in Ukraine. In connection with this, he was asked about his collection, his experience in Ukraine, and the Polyphony Project. In 2022, the Polyphony Project became the Hungarian winner of the European Parliament’s “European Citizen” award and received further press coverage as a programme that promotes integration between citizens and states both within and outside the European Union (Anonymous 2022). The award was received by Miklós Both in Budapest on October 7, 2022, where the promoter György Hölvényi, Member of the European Parliament, and folk musician and folk music researcher Ferenc Sebő praised the project and his work in Ukraine. Kyviv Post (Kiptenko Reference Kiptenko2019) and Euromaidan Press (Bachynska and Chraibi Reference Bachynska and Chraibi2019) interviewed Myroslava Vertiuk, the director of the Ivan Honchar Museum, Kyviv (n.d.), one of the main partner institutions of the project. English articles also regularly highlighted the high quality and large quantity of the collection, how it addressed a gap, and the positive European reception of songs sung by the elderly Ukrainian women during an international tour (Bachynska and Chraibi Reference Bachynska and Chraibi2019; Kiptenko Reference Kiptenko2019).

The project was also briefly showcased in English by the websites of the main foreign and Hungarian partners and supporters of the Polyphony Project: the Ivan Honchar Museum, Kyviv (n.d.), the French theatre company, di mini Teatro (n.d.), and the Hungarian art organization, Pro Progressione (n.d.).

A selection of the collection is also available on Spotify to mainstream listeners (Both Reference Both2016): in 2016, before the Polyphony Project was released, Miklós Both released a 45-minute selection of Ukrainian folk songs from the collection, providing a widely accessible audio version of some of the songs from the database. This database presents a uniquely large collection of Slavic polyphonic singing, hitherto less known in Europe. This compilation of songs can be used for educational, cultural, and research purposes in a user-friendly, modern online format.Footnote ³ The importance of the collection is underlined by the ongoing war in the area, which also threatens this part of Ukrainian folk culture.