Re: Maramaros

[Joshua Horowitz <horowitz...>]

-- Budowitz Home Page: http://www.merlinms.dircon.co.uk/budowitz/

The style which all of the informants of Muzsikas play is called Mezöszeg
and Kalotaszeg, styles in the surrounding regions of Cluj Romania which have
a high Hungarian population density due to the fact that many of the regions
belonged to Hungary previously. The informants, Feri Berki Arus, Bela Arus,
Gyulu Boros, Samuel Fodor, Georghe and Vasile Covaci and Tony Arpad do not
play Jewish style nor do they make any pretention of doing so. The style
they play is Mezöszeg and Kalotaszeg. That's what they call it. That's what
they've always called it. Because some of them and their fathers played with
the Hubertus klezmorim before the war they learned some of the Jewish tunes
which this kapelye played (and the style used by the Hubertus klezmorim was
ALSO Mezöszeg and Kalotaszeg, NOT the style of klezmer music as we know it
today). They also play for the yearly pilgrimages of the Satmar Rebbe and
his Landsleyt. When doing field work with Bob in these regions, I made a
particular point of asking the same informants to differentiate between what
was Jewish stylistically and what was not. Only one comment stood out: the
lack of changing chords was typically Jewish. But before the war and the
arrival of the accordion, the Mezöszeg and Kalotaszeg styles ALSO used few
chord changes. The basic jist is this: "Jews and Hungarians both played with
few chord changes. Jews were eliminated from the region. We stayed. When the
accordion arrived, some contra players switched over to it. Because it was
so easy to play all those chord changes, they played them. The contra style
changed because of the accordion. Before the accordion we played pretty much
the same. Maybe Jews used even fewer chords, but none of us played
complicated then." When I played a Jewish tune with Bela that was in minor,
he played MAJOR chords, while I played the minor melody. That was an
experiment. Harmonizing like that is typical for the region. Anyone who has
played Bartok will recognize his mix of major and minor. Theorists make a
big deal about it. Bartok was only borrowing these rudimentary musical
characteristics of Transylvania.

The tunes that Muszikas took on from the old-timers are pretty much all that
those guys had to offer them: the remnants of their pre-war standards and
the tunes that the Satmar Rebbe requests year after year. Period. It never
went beyond that. No new tunes. No new styles. No development. No searching
out of the great long lost hermetic masters of Jewish style who have been
living on locusts and mamaliga in a cave in the Carpathians to learn their
secrets of ornamentation, bowing and improvisation.  But Muszikas has gotten
an amazing amount of mileage out of that repertoire. Years worth.

The whole hype has been built upon the desperate need of certain promoters,
organizers, journalists and sometimes musicians in the klezmer scene to find
an archaic missing link style which will justify the trendy world music idea
that Jews and non Jews made music together at the foot of a rainbow in the
Gan Eden east of Budapest and there are still enclaves of musicians that
carry on this long lost tradition. True enough about Jews and non-Jews
playing together and sharing repertoire. Full stop. It was a nice piece of
field work that Muzsikas did. But that's all, folks. Nor was it Judith
Frigyesi's fault nor intention that the scene would be misled into creating
a neolithic clique of historical revisionists who would retroactively stuff
this style into the specific complex of klezmer music.

In the end, Muzsikas got a CD's worth of repertoire and half a program of
Jewish music to put on the stage in a style which has a long tradition among
ethnic Magyar Christians but has nothing to do with Jewish style whatsoever.
Don't get me wrong. They're friends and I like them personally and they're
good musicians as well. If you talk to them, they make no pretentions about
what they're doing. But if people are making suggestions as to how they can
"improve their style to make it more Jewish or Klezmer" they can do it in
one sentence: Travel 412 kilometers to the east of Cluj and take on the
completely different repertoire and style of that region. Josh Horowitz

>>3) It is possible that the Muzsikas musicians were misinformed about
>>pre-wwII Jewish performance style by their informants. If this is the case,
>>it says nothing about the aesthetic value of the outcome taken in its own
>>context. However, since Muzsikas set out on a project of reconstruction of
>>a "lost" music, if they were misinformed, that would be relevant to the
>>significance, or success of their project.
>>
>>I take Ari's words: "Indeed, Muzsikas have continued to work on the
>>authenticity of their performances of this material" to indicate that, in
>>fact, the performance style used on the album wasn't so authentic, but that
>>Muzsikas is aware of this, and has worked to improve it. Ari could correct
>>me if I'm wrong about what he said.
>
> I'd agree with Matt's statement about the fact that the recording
> doesn't sound particularly Jewish, albeit very beautiful. (I'm a
> big Muszikas fan.) Bob Cohen, an American klezmer musician based
> in Budapest who has done a lot of fieldwork in the area, confirmed
> that the musicians got bad advice when they recorded, but, as anyone
> who attends their concerts can attest, they have definitely responded
> to criticism and done a lot of work to make the music more authentic
> to the sound and place whence it came. Bob has his own take on the
> dynamic, but he's not yet on this list and I don't want to presume
> to speak for him. I do believe other folks on this list are more
> closely familiar with the particulars, as well.
>
> ari


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