They memorize the story, with particular names; and then sing it with consitent decasyllabic metre and rhyme. Here’s an example song transcribed with its recording: Ropstvo Janković Stojana (The Captivity of Janković Stojan)
The one you linked doesn’t really rhyme. The meter is quite consistently decasyllabic, though.
I find it interesting that the collection has a fairly large number of songs about World War II. Seems that the “oral songwriters composing war epics” meme lived until the very end of the tradition.
They memorize the story, with particular names; and then sing it with consitent decasyllabic metre and rhyme. Here’s an example song transcribed with its recording: Ropstvo Janković Stojana (The Captivity of Janković Stojan)
the collection: https://mpc.chs.harvard.edu/lord-collection-1950-51/
The one you linked doesn’t really rhyme. The meter is quite consistently decasyllabic, though.
I find it interesting that the collection has a fairly large number of songs about World War II. Seems that the “oral songwriters composing war epics” meme lived until the very end of the tradition.
It’s definitely not exact memorization, but it’s almost more impressive than that, it’s rough memorization + composition to fit the format.