Repulsion to Ritual: Interpreting Folk Festivals in the Polish Tatras‪.‬

I invite you to join me vicariously on a journey to a folk festival that takes place in a village in the Tatra Mountain region of Poland.(1) This region is called Podhale, which means "piedmont" or at mountain's base, and the people of Podhale call themselves Gorale, after the word gora, or mountain. They are mountaineers, and the music and culture I focus on here is defined by the alpine Tatra mountains. Podhale has been developed as a tourist destination since the late nineteenth century to the extent that today tourism is the major regional industry.(2) Part of the development of the region as a tourist destination was the creation of a new performance venue: the folk festival. The goal of this paper is to interpret folk festival stage presentations in two different ways. First I interpret the festival stage shows as stylized events for tourists that contrast sharply with off-stage events that are typically considered more "authentic" and valuable. Second, I argue that the festival stage shows are better understood as modern-day rituals that fulfill some of the same human and social needs met by more universally recognized rituals. Poronianskie Lato: The "Poronin Summer" Festival 1992