Re: klezmer and Sephardic

[Joel Bresler <jbresler...>]

Hi, Carol. Thanks for this important post.

The Medley has been recorded, on

Mystère des Voix Bulgares, Le
Ritual
Elektra Nonesuch Explorer Series 9 79349-2
1993/1994
La Rosa En Floresa; A Señora Novia; Lamenta

Kaufman is also the moving force behind:

Voices of VITIZ
Jewish Songs from Bulgaria
GEGA NEW        GD 157
Bulgaria

Let's just say that listeners that didn't enjoy the Mystère des Voix 
Bulgares arrangements are really unlikely to enjoy this CD as well...

I'm betting that Judith was referring to recent CD releases by the 
Australian group The Renaissance Players, who take a Bulgarian village 
women's approach to some of the songs. But she'll have to confirm.

Best,

Joel


At 01:05 AM 1/21/00 -0500, you wrote:


>Joshua Horowitz wrote:
>
> > Now that you mention it, Hankus:
> > Koutev is not the only arranger of the Voix Bulgares stuff. Prof. Dr.
> > Nikolai Kaufman, president of the Bulgarian Composers' Union,
> > has supposedly collected about 30.000 folk tunes for the Bulgarian
> > Academy of Sciences during his field work. He's Ashkenazi and has
> > arranged of thousands of tunes including Yiddish + Ladino tunes, amung
> > them the choir Le Mystère des Voix Bulgares etc. etc. He lives in Sofia,
> > speaks English, Yiddish, Ladino, Russian, Hebrew.
>
>Kaufman, (who may have very well collected 30,000 songs, since I have 
>about eight
>or nine or his publications sitting on my bookshelf, each one with close 
>to 2,000
>songs in it - not indexed by title - yikes!) did arrange a medley of Sephardic
>songs for the Bulgarian Radio and Television Choir (Le Myst`ere des Voix
>Bulgares) several years ago, and my friends in this ensemble proudly tell 
>me that
>they sing Evrejski Pesni (Jewish Songs.) The songs, performed in these highly
>stylized choral arrangements, sound ridiculous, but then, in my opinion,
>Bulgarian folk songs sound ridiculous sung this way as well.
>
> >
> > Just a note
> > about the vocal style, too: at least one early music group has started
> > including Sephardic songs sung in Bulgarian village women's style. In my
> > fieldwork experience, Sephardic women didn't use that style. Not only
> > that, many of the ones I interviewed dissociated themselves from it as
> > being "village" "peasant" style. The few Bulgarian songs I've heard them
> > sing were more in the line of popular urban songs of the time they were
> > growing up. Cheers, Judith
>
>Don't know what group Judith is referring to, so I don't know exactly which
>Bulgarian women's style she means. (There's a really broad range of vocal 
>styles
>in Bulgaria.) I too have found that many Eastern European Jewish singers
>(Ashkenzic and Sephardic) look upon "peasant music" with disdain. However, 
>with
>regard to Judith's point that the Balkan Sephardic songs were often 
>performed in
>a style that was close to that of the urban songs of the time, I'd just 
>like to
>point out to those unfamiliar with this music that in most urban centers 
>of the
>Balkans one heard more influence from the East (Ottoman) than from the 
>West. So
>the vocal placement (how the sound was actually produced) for Balkan 
>Sepahardic
>songs was often the same as for village music (using a speaking or throat
>-centered voice), just lighter and differently colored. When women did 
>sing in a
>falsetto voice, it was a focussed falsetto, not the thin, airy sound that some
>revival singers are using today. And while scales were not the same as 
>those of
>the country songs, they were the scales of the urban regional songs (and 
>usually
>not Western scales.) And just as in the local non-Jewish urban music, lush
>ornamentation was generally an essential part of the song. So while singing
>Sephardic repertoire in a style borrowed from Bulgarian village singing is
>clearly not in keeping with tradition, the singing of these songs in a 
>operatic
>or airy voice with Westernized scales and without the proper ornamentation is
>equally removed from the original, beautiful sound.
>
>(Actually,the second half of that sentence holds true for Yiddish singing as
>well, but let me not get started just now.....)
>
>Carol
>
>
>
>



Joel Bresler
250 E. Emerson Rd.
Lexington, MA 02420 USA

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