Jewish and Gypsy doinas

[Joshua Horowitz <horowitz...>]

Hi Paul (and all interested),

here is a delayed response to your thought-provoking mail from awhile
ago. You wrote originally:
 
"Can't we look at the Jewish doina as basically the same as Doina
Oltului, which Romanian Gypsy musicians think of as a particular tune,
like Ciocirlia, Fusul, etc., but with characteristics of its own, such
as ornamentation, etc.?  The Doina Oltului presumably was derived from a
peasant vocal doina sung in Oltenia, or at least with words about the
Olt River (Ca pe Olt). Naturally there is improvisation in its
performance----for example, when Nicolae Feraru plays the melody, the
accompaniment might be unmetered, or it might be a fast hora, and he
might put in a section in a major key (if the tune is in A minor, the
major key section would be in A major or C major), or leave it out. But
that's just typical of a lot of tunes. Also, the tune, as I've heard it
played by different Romanians, usually stands alone, rather than being
followed by another tune. Maybe there might be a pause, for audience
clapping, and then going right into another tune, which probably would
be a hora of some sort, but could be anything.  The Banat doinas I've
heard at weddings (mostly played by Pavel Cebzan in Chicago on the
taragot) also stand alone, whether sung or played instrumentally, though
in a restaurant or concert situation, they are apt to be followed by
dance tunes. But it's true, Josh; your recording of the duo in Moldavia
playing Doina Oltului sounds just like the old 78s of Jewish doinas.
Thanks for the great posts." Paul Gifford

Here's my response:

Doina Oltului, is for me, a popularized, stylized and standardized
expression of one type of doina - probably the most widely spread type
in Romania and belongs to the caste of urban cafe playing. I personally
think its a bit like comparing a blues by Robert Johnson and Elton John.
True, the doina recorded most often by Jews on 78 recordings uses
similar motives and the basic modal scheme of Doina Oltului, so the
parallels are there - also visible through the fact that, like Doina
Oltului, the *Jewish Doina* also underwent a process of truncation,
simplification and standardization to make it palatable for *mass
consumption* in those recordings. The basic modal/harmonic formula of
Doina Oltului is this:

Im - Idim - Im - IVm - V - Im
 
The diminished chord as the second chord was not typically played by
Jews, nor is the penultimate V chord found found in the early recordings
(maybe it is sometimes, but its not typical for those recordings). 

The typical so-called *Jewish*  harmonization (written with much
reservation, as the faux interview, below will show) would use for the
same phrases:

Im   -   I-   IVm   -   Im

Both the Idim and V chords of the former are pretty much post-war
developments which arose from 2 factors: Accordions and Communists
(sounds like a good name for a novel doesn't it?)  On the stradella-bass
accordions, the last button in the left-hand row is a diminished chord,
which makes playing it easy, because you don't have to construct it,
just press and kvetch and bingo, there it is; The communists' program of
elevating the music of the common folk to the level of classical music
included programs of wonderful old (and new) Romanian folk melodies,
played by oodles of strings and panpipes harmonized to the max by
well-schooled kapellmeisters who were forced to implement state ideology
in a 
*harmonize or starve* system. In spite of their resistive attitude
toward the state, Gypsies readily took to some of the harmonizations,
not because they had to, but because they learned to liked them - they
were modern, in spite of their ideological origins. Especially in the
cities, cafe players propogated a sophisticated style similar to the
state-ordered one, and even in the villages you could find more
sophisticated harmonizations. 

But by this time (post-war), Jews were no longer an integral part of the
musical landscape of Romania. The recordings of the early Jewish doinas
and the Romanian ones are simply harmonized, by virtue of the fact that
they were committed to disc before the music was infiltrated by
communist disciplined taste (-lessness).
Here's a synopsis of what a historically hypothetical response would
have been to the different harmonizations of the Doina:

Question: What do you think of the I-diminished chord and V chord
harmonization of the doina?

PRE-WAR:
JEW: Sounds very modern to me
GYPSY:Sounds very modern to me

BEGINNING OF COMMUNIST ERA MUSICAL IDEOLOGY:
JEW: Sounds very official to me
GYPSY: Sounds very offical to me

FROM ABOUT THE LAST 40 YEARS:
JEW:Sounds pretty Gypsy to me
GYPSY: Sounds pretty normal to me
  
Question: What do you think of the bare-bones harmonization of the
doina, without dimished and dominant chords?

PRE-WAR:
JEW: Sounds pretty normal to me
GYPSY:Sounds pretty normal to me

BEGINNING OF COMMUNIST ERA MUSICAL IDEOLOGY:
JEW: Sounds pretty Jewish to me
GYPSY: Sounds pretty old-fashioned to me

FROM ABOUT THE LAST 40 YEARS:
JEW:Sounds pretty old fashioned to me
GYPSY: Sounds pretty Jewish to me

Possible moral of story: History changes with our tastes. Josh Horowitz


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