Bećarac

Bećarac is woven into the life and traditions of Slavonia, especially Pleternica, which was a frontier area. Bećarac was born, lived, and died with.
Bećarac is a decasyllabic music form in which various decasyllabic verses different in content (erotic, satiric, love) are sung on a musical pattern and in numerous versions. Personality and beauty are praised, there is some spite, two or more singers are trying to outsing each other. The second verse is usually a playful antithesis of the first verse. Bećarac used to be accompanied by bagpipes, samica, and tambura. It developed in the period of abolishing the Military Frontier when the Turks were leaving. Even M.A. Relković was creating bećar songs in his satire. Bećars are long gone today, but bećarac is still here.

The word bećar has its root in the Turkish word “bekar”, which is loosely translated into Croatian as a bachelor, a cheerful young man fond of women and drink. Bećar did not like to work, he was single, and he was courting girls and married women. The fact that bećarac was protected by UNESCO in November 2011 and included in the UNESCO intangible cultural heritage list, tells a lot about how unique bećarac is.
Bećarac is woven into the tradition of Šokci, frontiers, and Pauri of the Pleternica region. It is less known that Pleternica is the reason why the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy was introduced to bećarac, and after World War II the information even reached the American continent.
Fridrich Salamon Kraus, an ethnologist, folklorist, philologist, and sexologist, who was not that well known in the area of Požega, lived with his family in Pleternica, and later in Požega. Kraus had a diploma in classical philology and history and got his Ph.D. from the University of Vienna. With the help of manuscripts and associates, Kraus published his first ethnological book “Legends and fairytales of South Slavs” where he mentioned Pleternica and Drenovac inspired by the stories about the songs, customs, and fairytales that he heard from his mother. This is the book that encouraged the Ethnographic Commission of the Austro-Hungarian society in Vienna to hire Kraus for one year to research the peripheral parts of the Monarchy and their customs and culture.
Kraus published the results of his research in his work “Life and customs of South Slavs”. With that book, Kraus brought the mystical and exotic world closer to western civilization. It is important to point out that Kraus was the pioneer in illustrating the importance of bećarac from Slavonia (he had a collection of more than 2000 bećarac), without even thinking that it will later become protected by UNESCO. Kraus went so far as to compare this heritage with the Greek cultural level. At the end of the 19th century, he was the leading folklorist and he edited the first folklore magazine “Na praizvoru”. He also started an almanac (“Kryptodia”, meaning, hidden). The almanac has erotic content and folk songs where bećarac is mentioned (seventh number from 1901).

Interestingly, over 100 bećarac come from the Pleternica area, and the magazine was available even in Paris. Kraus was a friend of Sigmund Freud with whom he worked on the project “The origin of man”. After his death, his son William went to America as a professor and took with him his father’s rich ethnological material and donated it to UCLA. Rich, still unpublished material from the area of Pleternica and Požega is there. The Americans wrote a monography in the honor of Kraus, the Germans wrote a bibliography, and we are re-discovering him.
The new look of the city is adorned by the unique Bećarac Square which celebrates the intangible cultural heritage of bećarac, protected and treasured by UNESCO. The Bećarac Square has become the new center of the city, the beginning of all the touristic stories, and the end-stop of tours, together with a souvenir shop that will soon open its door right on the Bećarac Square.