Tunisian women folk songs have not found themselves among those subject matters enjoying a large amount of interest on the part of scholars, although attitudes in academic circles towards this area of folklore differ. Recently, however, a gradual increase of interest in folk songs can be noticed. Researchers have become aware of the importance of exploring folk songs both with respect to their contents and language. Hopefully this will lead to an increase in scholarly research in this field.

In the summer of 1980, following the death of Vladimir Vysotsky, the Taganka Theatre in Moscow received more than 130 mourning telegrams. Their collection (although not all the items have survived) represents an invaluable source for the study of late Soviet culture. The descriptions of Vysotsky contained make it possible to reconstruct a certain collective portrait of the bard – this being one of the purposes of this article. The reasonableness of this task is justified by the fact that a number of the declarations sent testify to the articulation of emotions perceived by the authors as collective ones. The portrait we have created is a picture that perpetuates the personality, in which all the main features of the Russian cultural concept of “the Poet” are fully realized. It is also a portrait of a person who – according to the author of one of the telegrams – “lived ultimate states”, or – according to another – was permanently “standing on the edge.”

The concept of city has got broad analytical perspectives, one of them are: the structural perspective, sociological, psychological, political, cultural, industrial and also the pedagogical perspective. In opposition to the concept of city is the concept of countryside, within which the concept of nature is regarded as an idyllic place, it is the place of childhood, the place of longing, it is the lost place that has been starting to go under the knife of time since the 20s of the last century. The apotheosis of the concept of city, that is being practiced by many artists, embracing the symbolics of the concept of city by mass culture and later by popular culture, causes the necessity to take the initiative of conducting the research that would attempt to establish the identity of the concept of city in modern culture. The article attempts to specify how the concept of city functions in popular culture through the analysis of chosen texts in popular music, starting from the 50s of the XX century until the XXI century.

A famous Russian folk song, proverbs and sayings about a mother‑in‑law and son‑in‑law are the key elements of the analysis of the relations between a son‑in‑law (a younger member of the male family) and a mother‑in‑law (an older member of the female family). This analysis is also based on the etymological data and the author tries to answer the question: what is the hidden relation between the two families the members of whom are married? Many papers have been written on that matter. This article describes this relation as a gradual process of building the indirect connection between the mother‑in‑law and son‑in‑law. This is a symmetric/asymmetric relations which only seems to be mutually linked and tied. The emerged and shaped relation attitude direction – from mother‑in‑law to son‑in‑law – is presented here as the act of attracting and repelling. By means of fulfilment and satisfaction it implies the necessity of the adaption but not subordination as well as the hidden favour of the unlimited reproductive power. On the other hand i.e. the direction from the son‑in‑law to mother‑in‑law, the attitude is completely different which means the partial rivalry and repelling attraction. The daughter (from the mother‑in‑law side) and the fiancée/wife (from the son‑in‑law side) is completely out of these relations.

While much attention has been paid to several dialectal Arabic narrative and poetic genres, Negev Arabic (NA) daḥīyah songs (NA diḥḥiyyih, also known as daḥḥa) have received little scholarly attention. I report here eight traditional Negev Bedouin daḥīyah songs, one neo- daḥīyah, and one haǧīn (NA hiǧnih) - recorded during personal meetings with informants from 2017 to 2019 - in transcription and translation with some stylistic and linguistic comments. Background information is provided on the characteristics of this vernacular genre - its performance, contents, and scope - and its evolution. Daḥīyah has profoundly changed in content, language, and form in the transition from traditional Negev Bedouin society - before the establishment of the State of Israel - to the present. Originally a form of martial collective chant and dance mainly performed at wedding celebrations, the daḥīyah has gained popularity in neighboring sedentary Palestinian communities, where it has become an expression of identity, resistance, and revolt on various festive occasions. Today, several closely interconnected daḥīyah types coexist in the Negev, from songs that adhere to traditional models in terms of composition and performance to neo- daḥīyah.

The use of canticles in liturgical monody goes back to the early Middle Ages when the practice of canonical hours began to be used extensively. The canticles of the Gospel (Benedictus, Magnificat and Nunc dimittis) were successively incorpora- ted into the structure of the canonical hours and became in time the most important chants of the Liturgy of the Hours (Laudes, Vesperae, Completorium).

Some shorter canticles of the Old Testament books were also included in the Divine Office but it was only after the Second Vatican Council that shorter canticles of the New Testament books came into Vespers. They replaced the final (i.e. the third) psalm.

The designation „song" which was used to describe „canticle" in the Polish translation of the revised Liturgy of the Hours appeared to be highly controversial and inadequate. Thus, it was necessery to explain such definitions as: canticle, psalm, hymn, song. Based on the studies it is possible to definitely determine that a return to the original designation (canticle) is necessary and inevitable, in order to avoid confusion in terminology. Benedictus and Magnificat have received the primary thrust of poetic translations of canticles into Polish. In the latter case there are as many as five different Magnificat translations in Polish church song-books; only two versions of the Benedictus have been found. These canticles have a wide liturgical application; their use is not limited to the Divine Office alone.

They have been introduced into the Roman Catholic Order of Mass as the chants after Communion, or as the responsorial psalms, or as the verses sung before Gospel. Some of them have become independent processional chants for Mass, especially the ones intended for Lent. As far as the number of musical settings is concerned, it can be said that the Magnificat canticle seems to be highly favored. Nevertheless the melodies connected to other canticles, including the ones with the texts from „non-Gospel" biblical books, deserve attention as well. The melodies originated either in the Gregorian chant, or in the ecclesiastical songs, or in foreign sources, or, finally, in indigenous pieces of original compositions.

Thus, the repertoire of the New Testament canticles exhibits itself as a rich resource of new chants which have been included in the official liturgy in Poland since the Second Vatican Council. Clearly, further research is required in the aera.

The figure of a woman in folk songs is understood from the point of view of philosophical, moral and ethical, aesthetical criteria. The article analyses the ethnic image in different folk genres – calendar and ritual (carols, spring songs, Petrivka songs, Kusta songs, harvest songs) and the family and ritual (wedding and baptizing). The main methods of representation revealed are those by artistic parallelism, comparative expression, and metaphorical comprehension. A very important role in the architectonics of folk lyrics is played by floral, astral and other images‐symbols. Special attention is paid to the main attributes of a girl (the braid, the wreath) which distinguished her in daily life from a married woman and singled out is also the concept of the creation and perception of the traditional female image. Ukrainian ritual songs are imbued and have brought to our times the aesthetic characteristics of a young maiden. The psychology of the ethnos, its emotionality, its attentive attitude to the woman as an equal partner in the family is traced in folk songs. The conclusion drawn is one about the important role of a Ukrainian woman in the upbringing and directing of youth to marriage, sticking to the moral and ethical norms in the family, community and society.

The paper deals with coupled flexural-torsional vibrations of straight prismatic elastic bars made of a linearly elastic isotropic and homogeneous material. One of the aims is to develop an effective method of modelling vibrations of train rails of cross-sections being mono-symmetric, taking into account warping due to torsion as well as transverse shear deformations. The Librescu-Song 1D model has been appropriately adapted to the above research aims by incorporating all the inertia terms corresponding to the kinematic hypotheses. The finite element(FE) program has been written and its correctness has been verified. The results concerning natural vibrations compare favourably with those predicted by 3D FE modelling using dense meshes. The paper proves that neglecting warping due to torsion leads to omitting several eigen-modes of vibrations, thus showing that the popular Timoshenko-like models are useless for the vibration analysis of bars of mono-symmetric cross sections.

The Arab Republic of Egypt – the most important Middle Eastern Arabic country, is one of the oldest countries in the world, believed by some to be the cradle of civilization. Patriotic songs are very popular in it. They can be heard in times of peace and when the country may be facing some difficulties. They are shown on television, played on the radio, broadcast during official ceremonies, and used in social media, coffee shops, and weddings. In recent years, there has been something of a phenomenon around songs titled Taḥyā Maṣr. Notwithstanding the main messages – for Egypt to “live long” and show the artist’s love for their country – other messages and differences in how the singer expresses their love can be found. An analysis of six songs released in the years 2013–2018 under the same title, Taḥyā Maṣr, will be presented in this article. Any clear distinctions between them and the reasons for their being made under the same title will be shown.