RE: lie-lie-lie vs. die-die-die (vocables)

[Itzik Gottesman <itzik...>]

Surprisingly, Idelsohn is silent on the vocables question in his tenth
volume of his Theasaurus, "songs of the Chassidim". Only two or three of
the songs include them. He does say at one point that Bom and Ay are usual
exclamations of the chassidic ecstacy. Perhaps he wrote on this point
elsewhere. Has no one else written on this?
Some basic fieldwork would reveal a lot, as would an e-mail/phone call to
Yakov Mazor in Jerusalem. Of course that would only tell us the vocables
today and not pre-war. One would have to search out the older chasidim for
that.
        Reyzl - I never said "lay-lay" was particularly Jewish. I never
heard my father sing a German or Ukrainian song (as opposed to my mother
and grandmother who know/knew many, many Ukrainian and German songs from
Galicia/Bukovina).  His tradition was Bukoviner chasidus, which included
Vishnitz, saduger, Boyan, Rizhin. And Chasidus from the Galician border -
Kapitshinitz (also stems from the Rizhiner dynasty.)
His "lay-lay-lay" may or may not reveal how those dynasties sang. The
nigunim on the available cassettes of Vishnits, Saduger generally support
the lay-lay but have great variation. And of course Viznits hasidim today
are "Hungarian", not Bukovina. There is the other Vizhnits, near Haifa,
referred to as "Seret-Vizhnits", whom I believe have maintained more of the
Bukovina tradition

Slonimer Hasidim, by the way, are a special group, and are not mainstream
Hasidic, partially by their own attitude (you can call it elitist if you
want). The day after I experienced an amazing shaleshudes in jerusalem with
the rebbe present, I went into a hasidic bookstore and asked about a photo,
or rebbe card, of the Slonimer. The seller looked at me, "Vus epes Slonim?"
[ Why of all things Slonim?]. I never had that kind of reaction before and
it indicated how marginal the group was. Also the Slonimer in Israel have
switched from Yiddish to Hebrew as their spoken language which may not get
them Brownie points from some of the other groups.  - Itzik Gottesman



-----------------------------------
Dr. Itzik Nakhmen Gottesman
Assistant Professor, Yiddish Language and Culture
Department of Germanic Studies
University of Texas at Austin
EPS 3.102
Austin, TX 78704-1190
(512)471-4123 work
(512)444-3990 home

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