Re: Jewish and Gypsy doinas

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

Joshua Horowitz <horowitz (at) styria(dot)com> wrote:
> 
> 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?)

This had to take place earlier. I have recordings of Grigoras Dinicu,
Nicholas Matthey, Fanica Luca, from the late 1930s, all with the 
diminished chord; a couple from the '20s (including a vocal version), 
and even one from 1906, in a medley arranged for a military band. Off 
hand I don't recall if the diminished chord appears in the earlier 
ones. On those early ones, it's not always easy to hear the chords. 
But some Romanian versions have a part in the relative major, just 
like the Jewish doinas.

But, not unlikely, it may date from the 1890s, as certain Bucharest 
lautari became formally trained and played to an elite audience, 
paralleling what had happened earlier in Hungary. Maybe leaders like 
Christache Ciolac and others who went to play in restaurants in 
Russia did that.  Until 1917, many Russian restaurants catering to 
the elite employed Romanian Gypsy musicians. I've proposed that this 
may have accounted for the presence of some Romanian music in the 
klezmer repertoire.

  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.

See above----the process had already begun. The large ensemble period
was actually fairly brief---1949 to 1965 or so. Supposedly Ceausescu 
preferred smaller groups. But what you say is right as far as the 
'50s and early '60s goes. They organized "Barbu Lautaru," 
"Ciocirlia," and regional ensembles filled with professionals; the 
idea was to take melodies, arrange them (but sort of in a jazz 
"chart" fashion), and have a conductor. 

 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. 

Right.
 
> 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).

Some of the leading singers, who recorded a variety of material, were 
Jewish: Dorel Livianu, and Gica Petrescu (still active---the "Frank 
Sinatra" of Romania). Also, I assume Harry Brauner, who introduced 
the best known singer, Maria Tanase, to village songs, was Jewish. 
And Alexandru Abramovici is one of the main arrangers. Maybe in the 
postwar period, classical music, theatre and pop music were more what 
Romanian Jews were involved in.

Paul Gifford

> 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
> 
> 
> 
> 

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