Re: Very first klezmer recordings

[Gifford, Paul <pgifford...>]

Kurt Bjorling <KB (at) muziker(dot)org> wrote:

>I am confused about the main point(s) of
>this message, maybe because I am not following the whole thread.
>But given what I have here, I feel like commenting as follows:
>1. I am interested to know how the band on the early 'Viteazul /
Viteatso"
>recording is known to be clearly Jewish.  There is nothing in the
musical 
>or stylistic content which indicates this to me, but maybe there is
some
>history which I don't know.

Well, maybe I should back up and say that it could be Romanian
bandsmen playing it, but it has a different sound than the 1908
Grammophon recording I have of a Romanian military band playing
a potpourri of Romanian tunes.  In any case, the name "Mihai Viteazul"
is a pseudonym.

>2. Regarding the reference to the Belf Orchestra - "most of the 
>recordings" - Which recordings?  Is this saying that Belf's Orchestra
was 
>a Romanian gypsy band? or that they actually came from Romania? (They

>probably didn't) I think J. Wollock's article makes it pretty clear
that 
>Romanian
>(specifically Moldavian) music was very popular among Jews in Poland
where 
>the Belf records seem to have been made and that labeling them as 
>"Romanian" or "Oriental" was, at the time, a well-understood
euphemism for 
>"Jewish".

I meant that the Jewish groups in Wollock's discography, that recorded
on Sirena, etc., frequently had the euphemism "Romanian orchestra" 
(including that of Belf).  But the reason I mentioned it is that
before
1914 in Russia, Romanian Gypsy orchestras (mainly from Bucharest) were
very popular in Russia, playing at expensive restaurants in Moscow,
St. Petersburg, Kiev, Baku, etc., and that at least one of them
(Jean Goulesco) recorded on Grammophon, as "Romanian Orchestra of
Goulesco."  The reason that the Jewish bands were called "Romanian"
on these record labels may have been because of this popularity.  
Even though the titles were in Yiddish, perhaps by labeling them
as Romanian, the record company people might have thought they
could sell better to Russians.  

Paul Gifford

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