Rick wrote:
That's wonderful! I'll have to wait till I'm at home to work out
what key/position he's in. That's really fluid and rhythmic
simultaneously. Is that a known melody they are playing? I'm
assuming it falls into the Klezmer bag, no?
It doesn't sound very much like any Klezmer I've ever heard. If we
were all specialists in eastern European music I'm sure we'd hear
some connection. Since it's a Romanian group, perhaps it's some
form of Romainian folk music or dance music.
The famous Klezmer song is "Romania Romania" but the Klezmer cats I
know make fun of the old people that request it. It's the "When the
Saint's Go Marching In" of Klezmer -- the one Klezmer song the
civilians know. And that song sounds nothing like this wonderful
harmonica band.
However, Klezmer is absolutely expected to grow and change, so maybe
this is what it sounds like in Romanian now.
Before he actually became a Klezmer musician himself, Andy Statman
studied with a bunch of Eastern European music masters who were all
living in dire poverty in NYC. Communism was still the law of the
land in their countries, and cultural anhilation was the order of
the day, so they'd all blown their homes. Each master represented a
completely different form of Eastern European music, and confusing
one with any other would have been as weird to them as confusing
Bluegrass with 70's Funk. One afternoon Andy took me on a musical
tour of Eastern Europe with his amazing record collection, and he
kind of opened my eyes, if only for that day.
At one point he played me several different kinds of music that were
native JUST to Istanbul, which I realize is not in Europe. Each one
sounded really different from the others. Amazingly, he had 78's of
music that was only played in Istanbul gay bars.
Has anyone counted the time signature of this tune of Trio Polifonic?
K
_______________________________________________
Harp-L is sponsored by SPAH, http://www.spah.org
Harp-L@xxxxxxxxxx
http://harp-l.org/mailman/listinfo/harp-l