Gustaw Juzala, a musicologist and ethnologist, holds the position of associate professor at the Faculty of Philology at Vilnius University as well as the Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theatre.
He completed his master’s degree at the Jagiellonian University in Kraków. He earned his Ph.D. in ethnology and ethnomusicology from the University of Łódź in 1996, and his habilitation from the Institute of Archaeology and Ethnology of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw in 2013. He served as a professor in the Department of Cultural Anthropology at the Faculty of Philosophy and History of the University of Łódź.
He is mainly interested in ethnomusicology, folklore studies, cultural semiotics, the culture of Polish communities abroad, national minorities in Poland, culture at cultural borderlands, the protection of intangible cultural heritage, the connections between music, ritual, and magic, and the applications of traditional music in education. He has written two monographs: “Semiotics of Musical Folklore in Polish-Lithuanian Borderlands” (Kraków 2007) and “Semiotics of Spring Carols: A Folkloristic and Ethnomusicological Study” (Warsaw 2012), in addition to numerous articles in Polish, Lithuanian, and English, which have been published in scientific journals and collective works.
Gustaw Juzala-Deprati has conducted multiple studies in border regions and Polish communities overseas or within national minority groups in Poland, including the Polish-Lithuanian-Belarusian borderlands, Romanian Bukovina, Latgale (Polish Inflants) in Latvia, and among Polish populations in Hungary. Like many ethnomusicologists of his generation, he does not limit himself to studying folk music but also performs it, which allows for a better grasp of his research areas. He is currently a member of two musical groups – the Lithuanian ensemble “Visi,” which consists of lecturers from the Department of Ethnomusicology at the Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theatre, and the Polish group “Łałymka,” which he leads. The ethnographic group “Łałymka” is active in Biała Waka in the Šalčininkai District, where they sing songs gathered by their leader during fieldwork.
He is a member of the The Polish Ethnological Society, the Scientific Council of the Institute of Slavic Studies of the Polish Academy of Sciences, and serves on the Editorial Board of the scientific journals “Lietuvos muzikologija” and “Res Humanitariae.”
photo: Aneta Stabińska
