What's wrong with this picture?

[Joshua Horowitz <horowitz...>]

Budowitz Website: http://www.budowitz.com


Some years ago I was digging around at a local flea market in southern
Austria, and happened to come across a postcard of Iasi, Romania created
around the beginning of the 20th Century. I bought the postcard and kept it
in a notebook at home, sometimes looking at it and thinking that this was
the Iasi that Goldfaden lived and worked in when so many Jewish artists were
gathering to take part in his daily productions of Yiddish theater. This was
also the same Iasi that housed so many klezmorim in the late 19th century
that they had their own synagogue on Pantilemon Street, not far from the
square that was pictured on my postcard.

Well, when I last went to Romania, I decided for some odd reason to take
that postcard with me. Since many of the early European 78 discs were
recorded in hotels, when I looked at that postcard I sometimes imagined
klezmorim recording at that particular hotel. I figured if it was important
enough to make a postcard from, maybe this was where some musicians gathered
to make klezmer 78s. I actually had no idea that I would be staying at the
same hotel at some point and didn't even realize it until it fell out of my
backpack when I opened it and saw the name of the hotel. It was like the
purloined letter, which you don't see anymore because it's too obvious.
Besides, I had already decided not to stay there any longer than necessary -
there was no toilet paper in the bathrooms, the plumbing didn't work and the
sheets had grease stains on them. I could hear the Securitat (Romania's
not-so-secret police) screaming at a prostitute in the room across from mine
with the door open and her on the floor in her underwear. Not the kind of
place you would take your bubbe on holiday.

When I walked out of the hotel to get a beer across the street, I compared
the postcard with the actual square and was amazed that it was exactly the
same place. I ran back and yanked my camera out of my backpack, went out
into the street and spent a fair amount of time trying to find the exact
position where the photographer almost 100 years before me stood to take his
picture.

Well to make a long story even longer, I did get a picture and was able to
match up the two so that you can see exactly how that square and that hotel
have changed since the first photo was taken.

But there was more to just taking that picture than just the fun of the
excercise: There is an implicit analogy to the world of sound there. If you
heard the music of the cafe across the street from the Hotel Continental 100
years ago, and compared it to the music you hear there today, you can hear
the same changes that you can see in the picture. You could build a strong
case proving that what this century has gained in technology it has lost in
decoration, but that¹s beside the point. If you look closely enough, you
could probably detect a lot of subtlety in the modern changes, though you do
have to look harder.The craftsmanship of the old square is self-evident. The
craftmanship of the new square in hidden. Take a look for yourselves and
play the game of "what's wrong with this picture." Go to this address and
then go to the bottom of the home pag...and don't forget the sound when you
do....

http://members.styria.com/budowitz/pages/whatswrong.html

Josh Horowitz

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