Re: Glossary of Klezmer Improvisation Genres

[Joshua Horowitz <horowitz...>]

Elliott,

Since I don't how *musically illiterate* you are, I'm not sure at what
level to explain how to recognize a doina. They almost always begin with
a passage which leads to the 5th degree of the mode, so if we're in G,
maybe a motive like this starting below the root:
 D    Eb F# G A Bb C# D D D D 

next motive centers on the D (5th degree of the mode, which is actually
G A Bb C# D E F G):

C# D C# Bb A Bb   C# D C# Bb A Bb  C# D C# Bb A Bb   C# D D D 

etc., moving to the areas I mentioned in my last posting.

In Jewish music, this was often followed by a medium tune in 3/8. like a
Hora, also called Zhok (spelled Joc in Romanian) and then a Freylakhs.
Romanians often follow it with a *Vivat* which simply means lively
dance. Some musicians play a Geamparale dance in 
7/16, some play a 2/4 Sirba, whatever- there are no rules. I don't know
where the Jewish Doina-Hora-Freylakhs model got started. Southern
Romanians sometimes play a Doina-Hora Mare 
(in a fast 7/16 meter) grouping, whereby the 7/16 Hora Mare can sound
like the Jewish slow hora, due to the fact that when you play it really
fast, the bass and/or tsimbl and/or accordion accompaniment accent the 1
and the 5 of the 7/16 meter, which sounds very much like the beats 1 and
3 of the slower 3/8 hora. The Romanian genre of *Hora Mare* means *large
hora* exactly for this reason. When you speed a tune up so fast that you
can't play all of it's beats in the accompaniment, it takes on a slower
quality again, because you are only playing the *large* or important
beats that give it its outline.

Most of the free metered tunes you hear on those old recordings are
doinas of some type. Otherwise I don't know, it's hard to answer a
question like that. Maybe I should take the pizza and beer line that
Simon from Hatikva wrote me and say, *If you feel like davening, it's
probably a doina* Josh

Elliott wrote:
> 
> This is really interesting, but could you explain to a musically illiterate
> person like myself how I can recognize a Doina when I hear it. I have
> listened to many doines on recordings and think I know one when I hear it ,
> but now I'm not sure.


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