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

[Kristine Maitland <rosanera...>]

At 06:49 PM 2/15/99 -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. 

It's funny that you mention that.  In the Society for Creative Anachronism,
the trend amongst Middle Eastern dancers (calling them belly dancers is
definitely NOT kosher) is to play Jewish music WITH the "hard and dirty
rhythms".

Why?  It's simple really:  doumbek players are doumbek players are doumbek
players... for the most part.  Musicians in the SCA that do not play
percussion instruments, i.e. guitars, recorders, oboes, bassoons (my cousin
Jeff Burke plays a mean bassoon) as well as the vocalists (like myself)
come in from different traditions, European for the most part.  Jewish
music (and ladino/sephardic) is simply much more accessable.

"Middle Eastern"  in an SCA context means anything touched by Islamic
civilization circa 8th-17th century.  So we are talking anything from
Andalusia to Afghanistan.  This does not necessarily mean that the music or
dancing will be Arabic in nature.  

It's re-creationist admittedly.  And often SCAers go by the "the text is
medieval so the music must be" philosophy [which I still say is bunk].  But
we are not talking university scholars here and really as Anthony Shay (see
my previous post) points out, only now is the research being done.

Oh, and by the way, the majority of SCA Middle Eastern enthusiasts are
either white gentiles or Jews "playing Arab" in both cases. My being a
Black pagan who has been known to sing in Bulgarian just adds an
interesting twist to the whole thing.  My being Canadian may explain it.
*grin*

caramente
Kristine Maitland
www.bestiary.com/diaspora/

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