RE:Vibraphone/xylophone/marimba in Klezmer music

[Jonathan Simon <jonathan_s_simon...>]

Sorry for the delayed posting ... 

The strawFidl is the precursor to the modern xylophone. It was basically a
bunch of xylophone bars, less the resonators and suspension sitting on a bed of
straw. Therefore, the sound was probably pretty muffled. Most probably would
not have been marimba, they weren't that popular at the time. And the stuff
that was popular was vaudeville and marimba orchestra. (as a cool aside, check
out these pics from the 1933 worlds fair marimba orchestra
http://www.usma.edu/band/archives/pfpg1.htm) 

It would make sense that tsimbl players would have moved over to xylophone.
They were cheap and easy to get ahold of -- relatively. Additionally, several
countries have xylophones set up to play certain modes and scales like the
German xylophone, where the bars are set up in sort of a trapezoid. This is in
contrast to the piano-like chromatic layout we use now. Probably wouldn't be
too hard to make the switch. 

Interestingly, I'm currently going the opposite direction of my predecessors.
After playing classical persussion and drumset for a while, I got into playing
klezmer xylophone. Some stuff actually works pretty nicely -- especially fast
stuff like quick accordian tunes and not surprisingly some tsimbl music.  But
now Im going backwards and learning tsibml ...

Funny how these things work out. 

-jonathan







--- Vladimir Liberman <vovka0 (at) gis(dot)net> wrote:
> I Wonder---
> 
> Maybe these instruments are an homage to the famous 19th century Gusikov's
> strawFidl (bottles wrapped in straw) that Felix Mendelsohn heard on his
> travels to Russia and became so enamored of.. I wonder what the strawfidl
> sounded like..
> Vlad Liberman
> 
> 


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Jonathan Simon
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