Re: Are hasapika Jewish?

[Carol Freeman <tsipra...>]

Dr. Martin Schwartuz in Berkeley California has been investigating the
connection between Greek /Turkish and Yiddish music for decades, and can
probably speak in a more informed manner than most on this subject.
Apparently, there are all sorts of interesting connections and
crossovers. However, this does not mean that all of the thousands of
Yiddish sounding hasapika ARE Yiddish.

By the way, according to Dino Pappas, there was a fair amount of
personnel crossover between Ashkenazic and Greek musicians (particularly
clarinetists) in the early Greek and klezmer recordings made in the U.S.

CF



Paul M. Gifford wrote:

> Why do some Greek hasapika (I think that's plural for "hasapiko") and
> hasaposervika sound Jewish? Are there particular examples that are
> definitely so, or is it just a convergence of something?
>
> I happened to be at a little Macedonian-American gathering last
> weekend for which I loaned a couple of records of a some '60s Detroit
> Macedonian-American wedding bands. When I heard the hasapiko, I
> thought it really was a klezmer tune. The recording of the other,
> related, group (which often played Romanian gatherings and whose
> personnel went back to Simion "Sammy" Duka, an ethnic Romanian who
> came from Iacobeni, Bucovina, to Cleveland, in the late 1880s)
> includes a "Polka din Bucovina" which definitely is a common klezmer
> tune, so the source for this group's hasapiko could be Jewish. I
> talked to Duka's son once, and he said that in the '40s, his group
> played for a lot of Jewish weddings in Detroit, as well as a lot of
> "mixed" weddings of different nationalities, not just Romanian.
> Apparently these groups are part of a tradition established by this
> Romanian Duka group and of Mato, a Bulgarian Gypsy clarinetist.
>
> Anyway, is there any reason to suggest an Ashkenazic influence in
> some of these Greek dance tunes, especially in Greece?
>
> Paul Gifford
>



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