OT: Roumanian Gypsy bass and processions

[Gifford, Paul <pgifford...>]

This was on the list last week, but due to technical problems, I couldn't
respond. Actually I'm responding to the comments because I just
happened to read the "Rough Guide to World Music." In it, the author
describes the older and younger Clejani lautari playing different music,
the younger ones playing "jazz bass," etc. He doesn't get it.

Although the style is reminiscent of jazz, it's altogether its own thing,
and unrelated. The player from the "Taraf Haiducilor" has his own ornaments, 
but the basic style is the normal Gypsy style from the region, using a
3-string bass, without a bow. This is primarily used for weddings. In older, 
more genteel urban groups, and with the organized song-and-dance ensembles, 
they bow the bass (as the village groups in the former Hungarian regions in 
Romania do). The pizzicato bass is part of the sound to accompany the hora 
lautareasca, the typical dance at lautari weddings, just as the bowed bass is 
necessary for the right csardas sound.

My friend Nicolae Feraru says that some village lautari used to use a cello 
held by a neck strap, in order to lead the wedding parties from the houses to 
the church and back, stopping here and there for dancing. This is probably the 
older style, and they probably got it from Jewish klezmorim (as they did with 
the tzambal). But the plucked bass style isn't new, either.  Gypsy musicians in 
Detroit (whose ancestors came from Slovakia 1880-1900) play in funeral 
processions in front of the hearse carrying the casket, and someone holds the 
bass by the endpin in front of the player (I've done this). There might be a 
couple of basses, 5-10 violins, a viola, a couple of guitars, etc. They play a 
specific tune and never play it except at f unerals, because if they do, they 
think it will bring on someone's death. 

Paul Gifford

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