NY Times article re: Transylvanian music

[Sandra Layman <sandl...>]

Considering the recent question about Hungarian and Romanian music, I
thought some on the list might find the NY Times article below of interest.
 (There is also passing mention of the former role of Jewish musicians in
Transylvania.)

Sandra Layman
sandl (at) compuserve(dot)com

---------- Forwarded Message ----------

From:   Kalman Magyar Sr, INTERNET:magyar (at) magyar(dot)org
TO:     EEFC, INTERNET:eefc (at) eefc(dot)org
DATE:   16-02-98 16:06

RE:     Where Folk Roots Still Survive (New York Times)


February 15, 1998

/'Csardas', a festival in Brooklyn, raises thorny issues related to
traditional
culture and commercialism./

http://www.geocities.com/Nashville/5546/Neti.html
 
         Where Folk Roots Still Survive
          By MICHAEL BECKERMAN

KALOTASZEG, Romania -- There are few paved roads in Kalotaszeg,
Transylvania: 
just wide and muddy streets. Every few moments a horse-drawn wagon goes by,
filled with sawdust or carrying a pig to market. 

At first glance, the villages off the small highway appear to be lost in
the
last century. But here and there one notices satellite dishes. They
represent a
kind of Transylvanian phenomenon:  Hungarian-speaking villages in a region
often agonizingly divided by national identity and ethnicity.  The dishes
connect the remote villages, islands in a Romanian sea, to Hungarian Danube
Television, providing a linguistic and cultural umbilical cord. 

Kalotaszeg (pronounced KAH-loh-tuh-sek) is a long way from Brooklyn, but
some
of the spirit of the region will be seen and heard at the Brooklyn Academy
of
Music next weekend, when the Brooklyn Philharmonic presents the festival
"Csardas." Listeners will be able to hear music of Brahms, Bartok and
Kodaly
alongside its folk sources, some of which are Transylvanian.

Robert Spano, the orchestra's music director, conducts, and the guest
artists
from Hungary and Romania include the Okros Folk Music Ensemble; Kalman
Balogh,
a cimbalom virtuoso, and Neti (Sandor Fodor), the remarkable 78-year-old
dean
of Transylvanian fiddlers. (The native performers will also appear at
Symphony
Space, on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, next month.)

An orchestral program on Friday and Saturday evenings and a chamber concert
on
Saturday afternoon will be put in context by lectures and panel discussions
featuring scholars in the field.

One of the most interesting guests is not a musician at all: Bela Kasa is a
photographer whose powerful images, offering vivid slices of village life,
will
be exhibited during the weekend. After roaming throughout Europe in the
1970's,
often as a virtuoso freelancer, Mr. Kasa returned to Hungary in the early
80's,
then fell in love with Transylvania. His feeling for the landscape and its
inhabitants is uncanny, and his compelling black-and-white portraits of
musicians will add a valuable visual dimension to the proceedings.
          
When you mention Transylvania to Americans, they giggle and ask about
Dracula. 
One young woman from San Diego even warned me not to go there. 
          
Few have wondered why, if Transylvania is in Romania, the befanged Count
has
traditionally spoken with a broad Hungarian accent, while the peasants
swarming
about, wielding silver stakes, mutter oaths in German. Therein lies the
marvelous richness of the area: people still converse in the archaic German
known as Saxon, and the Hungarian is in some areas so antiquated that it is
unintelligible to a native of Budapest. It is a place where the
professional
musicians were once Jews and are now mostly Gypsies;  where you can hear
old-timers talk about a fiddler named Hitler (and another named Stalin) as
you
watch water buffalo pull carts out of the mud. 
          
Long before post-modern criticism, readers of Transylvanian history
understood
the extent to which our narratives conform to our desires. One need only
compare a recent volume by the Romanian historian Stefan Pascu with another
published by the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, both titled "History of
Transylvania," to see that these people cannot agree on a single detail
through
an entire millennium. 
          
One may decry the nationalist bombast that often holds sway, but one cannot
dispute the extent to which this land has attached itself to the hearts of
inhabitants and outsiders as well; Mr. Kasa's photographic love affair with
Transylvania is hardly unique. Mr. Pascu's history begins with a
description
befitting a paradise:  "The peaks of the Carpathians are not only
hospitable
but very useful to man; the level plateaus, covered with lush alpine
pastures,
support herds of sheep in the summer. The philologist Ovidiu Densusianu saw
the
Carpathians as friendly companions, radiating an almost classical harmony
and
serenity." In short, Transylvania is a remarkable place, and everyone wants
it. 

If it is difficult to judge political and cultural claims to Transylvania,
figuring out how to interpret the various musical styles is even more
confusing. 
Pieces are described with words like "Romanian city music," "slow Hungarian
csardas" or "Gypsy fast dance." 
          
My guru in these matters is Laszlo Kelemen, the violist of the Okros
Ensemble,
who has been directing a fascinating project of preservation called "The
Final
Hour." Each week, for 46 weeks, he has been transporting village bands from
Transylvania to Budapest, where, over several grueling days in the studio,
they
record as much of their repertory as Mr. Kelemen and his collaborators can
tease
out of them. Asked about issues of nationality, he says that designations
like
"Hungarian," "Romanian" and "Gypsy" music have the same sort of
significance
that national styles did in the Baroque. Thus, both "Hungarian" and
"Romanian" 
music in Transylvania are Transylvanian in the same way that Bach's
"French" and
"English"  suites are German. 

Another issue that will bedevil the participants in "Csardas" involves the
question of appropriation. The most obvious aspect is the role of
nationalism in
the event itself.  Although Mr. Kelemen seems to understand that much of
this
music is transnational, and Neti, who speaks Romani, Hungarian and
Romanian,
embodies the region's multicultural hue at its best, BAM's advertisement
for the
weekend reduces intricate plot to a politicized trailer. It is as if the
needs
of programming and fund-raising had conspired to place the activity
squarely
within the orbit of Hungarian culture (beginning on Thursday with a
$500-a-plate
Hungarian dinner).

There are related issues of greater moment. What happens when the
traditional
culture of a village becomes a commercial property? In parts of Canada,
ethics
committees determine what kinds of research can be done with native
populations,
what kinds of photographs can be taken and how the materials gleaned from a
different culture may be used. Nothing like that exists in Central Europe.
Although the Okros Ensemble is exemplary among groups in the Hungarian folk
revival, since it actually invites village musicians like Neti to perform
with
it, the issues are worth pondering.

It is also fascinating to compare the group's sound with the original
sources. 
One of its most characteristic recordings is a gorgeous album, "Blues at
Dawn" 
(available through Hungaria Records in Teaneck, N.J.), consisting of music
from
the Kalotaszeg region. It is a single track, 60 minutes long. 

First, two fiddles race around each other with embellishments
characteristic of
the region. Particularly noticeable are the repeated notes. Neti thinks
that
they originated to make the music sound louder.  "After all, if you are
repeating a note," he said, "it's louder than if you just hold it." 

After almost two minutes, the rest of the ensemble enters, playing a modal
accompaniment centered on D minor, with inflections to F and C. Soon, the
singer
enters: "The plowing has to be done; it's spring. But my tools are strewn
all
over. The plow is in Vasvar. The yoke pin is in Szeged. The axle is in
Dengeleg. 
The wheel is in Kerepes."
          
This is strange music to our ears. As Mr. Kelemen writes in his notes: 
"The
people who like to sing stand in front of the musicians and sing sometimes
for
hours on end. They sing their fates." The voices are rough, and the
technique is
parallel to that of the ornamental fiddles but less elaborate.
          
How does this relate to any supposed original? In the case of the Okros
Ensemble, both the singers and the violinist, Neti, are effectively the
source
itself. Yet in contrast to some of the archival recordings Mr.  Kelemen
makes in
his Budapest studio, "Blues at Dawn" has a polished sound. It is easy to
conclude that the word "authentic" simply means "ugly." Of course, it is a
modernist kind of ugliness, a coarse honesty, promising a more dazzling
kind of
beauty.
          
"We learn to perform as the source musicians perform, but we also want to
add
something," Mr. Kelemen said. "It's an issue of musicianship and
performance.
Sometimes we play just the source, which for us was something
unforgettable." 
But there is also the desire for personal expression, he added; thus the
difference.
          
Another thorny issue sure to arise next weekend is what role the Gypsies,
or
Roma, play in the region's musical life. "The problems here have been
settled," 
the Hungarian scholar Balint Sarosi angrily declared in a recent article.
In Mr.
Sarosi's view, the Gypsies have always played "Hungarian" music; as the
"music-making caste," they did what their employers wanted. It was never
"Gypsy" 
music; rather, the Hungarians "generously" (Mr. Sarosi's word) allowed the
professional musicians to call it that.

This view seems to ignore the subtleties of the relationship between
performers
and audience, and will certainly be challenged by some of the participants
in
"Csardas." The presence of two extraordinary Romani musicians, Neti and Mr.

Balogh, and the scholar Jonathan Bellman may allow for sophisticated
discussion
of this issue, which carries particular weight in the current political
climate.
Whatever the case, the presence of the Okros Ensemble will further showcase
the
role of Gypsies in world musical culture: an astonishing contribution that
has
yet to be fully addressed or understood.
          
Although we city dwellers probably cannot imagine what it was like to be a
peasant, we can have a sense of what it was like to be Bartok, and imagine
the
richness of his response to folk materials. But however attractive that
response
may be, it is ultimately limiting. If Bartok and Kodaly are taken as
primary
texts, then folk music becomes something like Mark Twain's oyster, which,
seen
from the vantage point of human arrogance, evolved only so that we could
eat it. 
In fact, neither Bartok nor the folk sources are primary; instead, they are
perfect mirror images, illuminating each other through their contact.
          
Our study of Stravinsky's "Noces," the ethnomusicologist Margarita Mazo
suggested recently, can change the way we listen to the wedding songs and
laments that inspired it.  Those investigators, like Bartok and the Okros
Ensemble, who take the rawness of rural life and seek to place it on the
main
stage are always living a paradox. But it is a paradox that produces the
kind of
glorious tension that makes us think deeply about the richness of our
music-making.

Source: New York Times

http://www.geocities.com/Nashville/5546/Neti.html