Re: Jankowski Tsimbls

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

"Joshua Horowitz" <horowitz (at) styria(dot)com> wrote:
> 
> Mr. Jankowski's own playing was geared toward playing Polkas and the like.
> Lots of major key tonalities and an accompanying style which used a lot of
> dampening, making the bass notes go: doo-up, doo-up, doo-up, doo-up. On the
> old klezmer recordings you don't hear that effect, which, as I said before
> is mainly possible when you have dangerously short sticks. The whole Belarus
> school of tsimbl playing today uses a lot of hand-dampening. Since we don 't
> have any recorded examples of early Belarus klezmer tsimbl playing, it's
> impossible to say whether Jews used the technique, or even those hammers.

There is a big difference in the hammers used in the conservatory 
tsimbaly tradition in Belarus as opposed to the village tradition 
there. The conservatory practice uses very short sticks with padded 
ends. The village tradition uses notched, plain wooden sticks, with 
slightly curved ends, which are a bit longer than the conservatory 
ones. A book by I. D. Nazina has drawings. Iosif Zhinovich, who 
started the conservatory school and whose manuscript Nazina cites as 
the main source for information about the village tradition, wrote 
that the damping technique wasn't used in the village tradition in 
Belarus, as opposed to Ukraine, but obviously there were exceptions, 
as you point out with Jankowski. Zhinovich was ethnically Belarusian, 
incidentally, but one of the originators of this conservatory 
tradition was Khaton Shmelkin, who played in the band led by his 
father, Chaim Shmelkin, a clarinetist. The Lepyansky family of 
Vitebsk may have influenced it too, at least in having an all-
tsimbaly ensemble playing different parts (the Zhinovich family had 
such an ensemble in the '20s, not long after the Lepyanskys).

As far as Jews using the short wooden hammers (as opposed to the long 
padded ones of Hungary and Romania) characteristic of Belarus, 
Ukraine, and southeastern Poland, I would think that without question
they did----there are regional differences, but the overall 
pattern is still there, which is different from German and Bohemian 
or Hungarian designs. The dampening technique may not appear on 
Jewish 78s, but I have a lot of Ukrainian 78s and it doesn't 
necessarily appear on those, either.

> general, though hammers have gotten longer. Even hammers which I've seen for
> mid-sized Hungarian cymbaloms in instrument museums had shorter hammers in
> the 19th century. Long hammers, large instruments and foot pedals go
> together. With longer hammers, you can reach the high strings easier without
> bending over and getting permanent back problems, but you can no longer
> dampen the string you have just hit, because your hand is so far away it
> with a long stick.

The Hungarian dampening technique (at least what I've seen) is 
different than the Ukrainian. The Gypsies that lived in Braddock, PA, 
and came from Slovakia used the so-called 3/4 size portable Hungarian 
instruments around the turn of the century. Gus Horvath demonstrated 
this technique on one. On hallgato-s, for example, before each change 
of chords, he stopped them with his index fingers. The Ukrainian 
technique, at least the little I've seen, uses it as a variation, 
stopping the sound soon after striking. 

The Romanian hammers are longer and heavier than the Hungarian, but 
the Romanian ones used on the small ones are shorter, more like the 
Greek santouri sticks. At least that's what Nicolae Feraru and others 
I've seen use. 

Paul Gifford

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