Re: Information about tzimbls

[Paul M. Gifford <PGIFFORD...>]

Warschauer (at) aol(dot)com wrote:

> You friend should contact Kurt Bjorling in Chicago (muziker (at) 
> aol(dot)com).  Kurt 
> builds tsimbls.  Amazing, considering his musical, scholarly and teaching 
> activities, but true.  

I'm not familiar with his instruments, but just wanted to say that at
one level, there is no such thing as a "Jewish" dulcimer or cimbal 
(tsimbl), but at another level, all the traditions of the cimbalom 
family go back to Jewish tradition.  This includes the Hungarian 
cimbalom (originally part of a Central European variety, also 
including Bohemian and German instruments), which Gypsies adopted from 
Jews during the 18th century,
Belarusian/Ukrainian/Lithuanian/Galician variety (which can be broken 
down into subtypes), and the Romanian tzambal mic.  There are some
tuning similarities between the Eastern European variety stretching
between Vitebsk, Belarus, Rzeszowskie, in Poland, and southern 
Romania, and similarities in design and structure which suggest that
a lot of features from about 1700 were retained into this century.

Thus Jewish players who were active c.1900 in places like Daugavpils, 
Latvia; Vitebsk, Belarus; Rzeszowskie, Poland; Lviv, Ukraine; 
Koloszvar, Hungary; and Galatz, Romania (all documented), would have 
used instruments of the same style as players of Gypsy or peasant 
background. Today I would think one would either use what the person 
happened to have or acquire or find a Ukrainian-Canadian or small 
Romanian instrument. For the latter, avoid the "Doina" factory 
instruments and see if the music store on Calea Victoriei in 
Bucharest has an older one for sale.  Traditional Belarusian 
instruments would be very difficult to acquire (but not "modern" ones 
made in the Minsk factory).  My father had one in the late '30s he
bought from a klezmer in New York City that was probably Moldavian.

Paul Gifford

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