“You Uncultured Northerners Don’t Know What Rhythms Are”

The Ethnomusicologist Birthe Trærup’s Fieldwork in Yugoslavia, 1954–1976

Abstract

This article is a presentation of the ethnomusicologist Birthe Trærup (1930–2022) who was a pioneering fieldworker and disseminator of Eastern European folk music in the 1950s. She concentrated her fieldwork among Albanians in Kosovo in the period 1959–1976, but also visited other countries and other areas of the former Yugoslavia. Despite being a pioneer, she has not received the attention she deserves. The Danish Folklore Archive at the Royal Danish Library in Copenhagen contains a wide range of material donated and bequeathed by Trærup.