Barbara Majnarić is a Croatian singer and researcher of traditional music. Through the years, she has been singing in various singing groups and expanding her knowledge of traditional singing from various sources, including vocal pedagogies, contemporary singers of traditional music, and indigenous traditional singers. She is active in researching traditional music through audio archives and fieldwork, recording authentic singers, and gathering songs from the Dinaric area of Croatia. Currently, her main interest is the older layer of traditional songs of the Balkans, their specific vocal qualities and acoustic characteristics, much of them being untempered or in undefinable scales. Through active listening and singing, she is trying to spot connections between body and sound, sound and landscape. She is also active in developing and organizing projects whose goals are education, documentation, and the popularization of traditional music in Croatia.
Barbara is working with Joanna Maria Skowronska to establish Ojkamine, a project selected to be part of the inaugural OneBeat Institute. Ojkamine works to make endangered vocal traditions of Croatia more visible, valued and accessible, with a focus on the UNESCO-designated Ojkanje tradition of singing. Through research, archival work and education, Ojkamine aims to create a ‘living’ access point to these intangible cultural heritages for future generations.
