Crazy week, the disorganised and the organised: Fărșang and “inverted” weddings in the Banat mountains

Keywords: ,

During crazy week (the week in which lent commences) carnivalesque events, in various manifestations, take place in many villages in Banat. The commonalities between these events are that they focus around local music, dance and customs and only local people are involved. Although each event may be nominally organised by a particular ethnicity the participants include people from all the co-located ethnicities. This paper is based on fieldwork undertaken at carnivalesque events between 2016 and 2019 supplemented by informal conversations with locals, local media reports, published articles and videos of events. Drawing on anthropological theory, the authors propose that these events are liminal times within the annual calendar, marking the transition between the end of the winter and the beginning (re-birth) of spring that both draw from, and contribute, to the realities of the contemporary societies in which they take place.

Mellish, Liz & Green, Nick (2020). “Crazy week, the disorganised and the organised: Fărșang and “inverted” weddings in the Banat mountains.” Tvrtko Zebec; Liz Mellish; Nick Green (editors), Music and dance In southeastern europe: Migrations, carnival, sustainable development:132-144 Zagreb, Croatia, International Council for Traditional Music Study Group on Music and Dance in Southeastern Europe, Institute of Ethnology and Folklore Research, ICTM Croatia National Committee. ISBN: 978-953-8089-61-9.