Re: Doinas & taksim

[Joshua Horowitz <horowitz...>]

Yeah, that was a bit of a mouthful, Wolf, what you wrote about the
doina. I hope you all don't mind me becoming long-winded about this (so
what else is new?) I think the doina-kale basetzns subject is the most
fascinating musicological question of the whole klezmer complex, because
it points to the essence of how our music has changed. So let me go into
conjectural mode about a subject that will baffle us all as long it's
relevant. I'd been writing about this, because  a week from now Budowitz
records the complete kale bazetsns as it was done in Piotrkow Poland
with Majer Bogdnaski for our next CD: Wedding Without a Bride:

The kale bazetsns:
The whole ritual of seating the bride is called the bazetsns (some
called it badekns, baveynens or bazingens, too) In actuality, what
happens is the bride is seated (bazetst) , veiled (badekt), sung to,
(bazungen) and brought to tears (beveynt), so any of these words can and
do function separately to describe the entire ceremony. The ceremony
itself involves the badkhn and klezmorim, and traditionally the women.
The badkhn sings or ?zogt? (the musical ones used their voices partly to
sing, whereas the less musical ones used  Sprechstimme) a
semi-improvised text, which the klezmorim punctuate with chords. At the
beginning there was often an instrumental ?opshpiln? which served as an
introduction, and at the end a nokhshpil, which served to end this
portion of the ceremony, with interludes placed at the end of the
strophes. Sometimes the same procedure was done for the bridegroom
(called Khosn bazingns, in which case there might have been an escort
piece like a gasn nign which was played while walking to the groom, or
another opshpiln was played. There was no standard, as the mood created
was probably something which differed from kapelye to kapelye and
belonged to each kapelye?s original style. The character of the kale
bazingns was generally ?light?, instructive and in Yiddish, with very
little Hebrew, as it was not expected that the bride know loshn Kodesh,
whereas the character of the khosn bazingns was generally more serious,
with more quotes in Hebrew from the holy books, and could also have been
sung or ?gezogt? in a deeper voice, at least that?s how Majer Bogdanski
and Toyvye Birnbaum both performed it for us.

What you hear on the early recordings as a bazetsns (i.e., Brandwein and
co.) is generally a condensed version of what the badkhn would ?sing? or
?zogt?. There is a specific modality and basic modulation scheme he uses
which seems to be fairly standard and is closely related to synagogue
prayers, though, like the doina, the tempo and rate of modulation differ
from performer to performer. Since there is syncretic overlap between
the historically predated bazetsns (I don?t know how old it is, but can
tell you that I am fairly sure it is the oldest strata of klezmer melody
we have and goes back as far as any Mogen Ovos  and Adonoy Molokh
prayers) and the later doina, it would appear that the doina gradually
replaced the bazetsns and became a genre unto itself. Certain
characteristics of the doina did in fact make their way into the
bazetsns ceremony, though the VOCAL  portions never changed, they just
gradually disappeared as the function of the badkhen became outdated.
So, in fact what seems to have happened historically is: 

The instrumental OPSHPILNS which heralded the Badkhn gradually took on
characteristics of the doina. And when the badkhns ?hamule? was no
longer a fixed part of the ceremony, the  INSTRUMENTAL IMITATION of the
vocal portion could also have begun to sound more and more like a doina,
though a klezmer playing a bazetsns melody to the bride would be more
likely to sound like a badkhen than a doina, and his audience (up till
roughly the 1930?s) in eastern Europe would recognize clearly the
difference, as this is not difficult when you?ve heard both (typical
bazetnsn move between say D mogen ovos to F adonoy molokh to r and G
mogen ovos, Whereas the standardized doinas move from D mi shebarakh to
G mogen ovos to D Mi shebarakh to G adonoy molokh to A freygisg, etc).
The period of this transition whereby the doina was used for opshpilns
begins, in my opinion, around 1900 and not much earlier. The bazetsns
which uses the doina opshpilns seems to have already begun to disappear
from the repertoire of the klezmorim in the Ukraine by the time
Beregovski was doing his work. 

Beregovski writes a short paragraph about the sung part of the kale
basetzns being in minor (actually Mogen Ovos) while the extended
instrumental interludes between the verses were in freygish. Well, sure
enough, all the recorded examples of bazetsns I had showed this
characteristic. The texts were remarkably consistent in all the
bazetsns, and the interludes were almost always in freygish, though
varied in contour. ALMOST always. I had one bazetsns from Beresh Katz
with a different modality which indicated an older type - at least
that's what I think, because I think the FREYGISH interlude was the
overlapping link with the Moldavian doina particularly popular among
Jews around the turn of the Century, but not much earlier.

Well, then we interviewed Majer Bogdanski in London (born in Piotrkow,
Poland), and he sang still another interlude type. I looked at the
regions of the other bazetsns, and they all came from the Ukraine
(Beregovsky's region was VERY contained- west Ukraine, radius average
about 200 Km), so Beregovski?s observation that the bazetsns are sung in
Mogen Ovos, while the interludes are played in Freygish, while common,
does not represent an exclusive type. Since both the Katz bazetnsn and
that from Majer had NO Freygish interludes, we can assume that the
Ukrainian type was not omnipresent and there were others.

I think the bazetsns represents the oldest layer of klezmer music we
know, for these reasons:

1) The text and modality of the sung parts are the most static,
independent of region (according to my sources)

2) The static quality of the text and it's modality (Mogen Ovos- one of
the oldest of the Jewish modes) are religious in nature and content, and
therefore less subject to change.

3) It represents the only organic use of the voice in the wedding
ceremony.

4) It was the first genre to disappear on American soil, indicating it's
incompatibility with modern trends

So I think the key to understanding a whole pile of questions lies in
comparing the differences in text/modality of the sung parts (minimal
variance) AND the interludes (more variance than previously assumed).
The bazetsns ceremony has fairly dissappeared now, but the doina has
remained as its last vestige, ironically, since it probably wasn't
originally connected to the basetzns.
 
The syncretic characteristics of the bazetsns and doina are:

1) The typical doina used makes use of a simple and concise formula
which can be completed quickly as the badhkn indicates.

2) That type of doina was simply very popular and widespread (at the
expense of the more interesting ones, perhaps)

3) The modality of that doina corresponds sycretically with Mi shebarakh
prayers. 

The whole of our knowledge about whether or not Jews played Taxims is
based on a sketchy statment that Beregovsky made when one of his
informant stated that they were unfortunately not played anymore, and
Jews only play doinas now. What that was supposed to mean in musical
terms we'll never know, because we don't have a reference point for the
Jewish taxim. We don't know if they were played commonly, occasionally
or infrequently. Nor do we know what could have been meant by the term.
The nominal taxim is played mainly in southern Romania. The rest of
Romania plays doinas, and many different kinds. There are a few
different modulation schemes which were used by Jews, but these
represent a mere fraction of what was, and still is played all over
Romania (why is everybody talking about doinas in the past tense? They
are still quintessentially Dacian expressions). Because the Jewish
doinas were already standardized by 1920, they became known as the
*Jewish Doina* The schemes are limpid in comparison to what else exists
and what is possible. People seem to forget that, while the modal
modulation used in doinas is very limited, the motives used have very
specific functions, and while flexible, are also recognizable at any
moment. Therefore there are opening motives, connecting motives,
episodal motives, closing motives, and motives which signal a change of
modal area. This type of musical thinking is absolutely necessary to
complete the ritual portions of the wedding, where musicians had to
communicate non-verbally - another reason for adopting it. Gypsies still
use motives when playing to indicate anything from, check out the cute
girl to the left of the Primas, to watch out, here comes the Balaboste,
etc. 

If the doina were played at table, it's function would be emotional, and
I'm convinced that one of the long lost vestiges of the klezmorim was
the ability to weave zmiros motives into their improvisations in order
to please religious members of the audience (thereby of course getting
more tishgeld). In fact I would go so far as to say that many dances
which formed came out of these improvisations. The *sher* technique,
cutting and pasting motives from various dances to form a chain, uses
the technique, so you no longer have a typical AABB or ABCBA dance form,
but a chain form, AABBCCDDEEFF etc. Though the shertants is relatively
new, the technique used in it's construction is probably quite old. 

The doina was never a lullaby for sheep (why do I picture all those
fluffy creatures snoozing on a green pasture?) One of my field
recordings from Radioia Romania is a doina of violin and tsimbl. There
is virtually no difference between this and the myriad Doinas you hear
played by Jews on those old 78's. I would love to hear comments on this
theme, because in truth, I don't feel I know what I'm talking about-
just rambling on and on. So stop me, please. Josh Horowitz

---------------------- jewish-music (at) shamash(dot)org ---------------------+