Re: Bitchin' about the role of percussion in Mideastern influenced Jewish Music

[Ernie Gruner / Cathy Dowden <erniegru...>]

EK
agree mostly -  percussion in "belly dance" music is a whole other kettle
of fish. In the middle-eastern band I play with - percussion (2 players
(daraboukas/tablas + dancers-zils) is definitely out front followed by the
leader on ney/zorna/accordion and then with oud and violin, often doubling
with occasional taksim. often we're doing hand or raks percussion also.
My understanding of KLEZMER (east european jewish music - the early stuff
before it came to america) is that percussion instruments were not strong
or even present and  that the percussion came from the  way the instruments
were played etc. the drive can come from gutsy fiddle chording or cimbalom
or accordion or bass, or the ornamentation and attacks/phrasing from
clarinet and fiddle.
Not so sure about SEPHARDIC jewish music but I have heard a fair amount of
sephardic music with daraboukas and frame drums prominent.
Ernie


At 18:49 15/02/99 -0600, you wrote:
>    This talk of things Middle Eastern (in this case Persian) is bringing
>on a rant (no, not Udi Hrant, who was Turkish anyway).
>    Jewish music which has a Mideastern flavor in general seems to be
>missing the hard and dirty rhythms of the music commonly known in the West
>as bellydance music. (An immediate exception would be certain Israeli bands
>- but I do wonder whether most of that kind of thing is Jewish music, or
>just regional music performed by Jews?) Case in point: the CD by George
>Abdo and 'his Flames of Araby Orchestra' (not to be confused with 'James
>Brown and his Famous Flames')- I think it's called 'The Joy of Belly
>Dancing' or something like that. Now listen to that funky hard drumming
>here, on dumbek, claves, tambourine, zil...- the rhythms are wild, and
>there's no keeping them down. The fifth track (A Nada) - a perfect case in
>point. It's essentially a simple Balladi rhythm (the same one that keeps
>popping up in Jewish music when the band wants to sound exotic in a Mideast
>fashion- ONE AND two AND THREE and FOUR and), but Abdo's piece sounds as if
>somebody's lit it afire. There is precious little distinction between
>rhythm and melody- you can play the melody on your dumbek.
>    The hand percussion playing in most Jewish music (already a rare bird)
>that I've heard, and with occasional rare exception (Klezmatics version of
>'Fun Tashlikh', for example) always sounds oh-so-skilled and
>oh-so-restrained. I do not mean this as a cut at some very good percussion
>players or bandleaders, but there seems to be a general tendency to place
>the percussion in the background- mostly as a time keeping device- rather
>than letting it sizzle up front the way it does in so called 'Belly Dance'
>music.
>                       EK
>
>
>
>
>
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