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Poll: Tune Of The Month For October, 2013


Jim Besser

Tune of the Month for October, 2013  

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Welcome! Hope you have a chance to participate.

 

And thanks for the information about Xotis; I'd like to know more about this lovely tune and the genre from which it sprang.

 

Thankyou, definitively, it isn't an catalonian tune, as I told, but surely learned from catalonian musicians.

It is a klezmer tune learned from the repertoire of Akiva Ben Horin.

This is the sheet and a web page that

http://musicapelsdescosits.blogspot.com.es/2011/10/xotis-romanes.html

 

 

This information is so great; thanks!

 

I thought the tune had a somewhat Klezmer-ish sound to it, especially when swung a little.

 

Your information has opened up some new possibilities for me and my group when we play it!

 

jb

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The Xotis Romanés appears in this recopilatory of Akiva Ben Harin, released by Galpaz Music the year 2005, it is the 1st tune

The title is Nigun Roimani

http://www.galpazmusic.com/airs-ascent

Félix Castro

Thanks a lot, Felix, for all the info and links concerning a type of music of which I know nothing but find very appealing.

Cheers,

 

Dean

 

You are wellcome. Thankyou to all of you for your encouragement for recording. I think I shall try. I didn't know also about what kind of music were, I know about catalonian traditional music a little, and it didn't sound to catalonian music. It is similar to the case of Itzikel, the Eastern European Jewish tune learned by Kevin Burke from a Russian in Scandinavia. Many people play now that tune but almost nobody knows from where it came, but people as know more irish music they know that it isn't an irish traditional tune. It remembers me that Ricardo Portela, a famous galician piper categorized pipers (applicable to musicians) in two, he said that "some (pipers) play what they know, and others know what they play". in spanish "unos tocan lo que saben y otros saben lo que tocan". It isn't essential for the joy of playing a tune to know its source, but I like to know what I play, it adds value to the music itself, I think.

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I'm right with you there, Felix.

Really doesn't matter where a tune comes from but I too like to know it's origin...........it's interesting to speculate how it may have been played relative to how I would approach it on the concertina.

best

Robin

 

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Hello, researching in the web, there is interesting information about klezmer music in wikipedia.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klezmer

Nigun Roimani, could mean probably romanian song, as the wikipedia tells that.

 

From wikipedia link:

Nigun means "melody" in both Yiddish and Hebrew, a mid-paced song in 2/4.

 

Perhaps Roimani is romanian in yiddish.

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Nigun comes from the Hebrew word Nagah (nun-gimmel-eiyen) which means 'to touch'. It is often used in connotation to playing a melody on a stringed instrument.

As the Masorah movement added vowels and trope (cantillation) to the reading of Torah (the Jewish bible) from the 7th - 10th centuries, more and more of the oral tradition became musical. The Nigun is often used today as a wordless melody to enhance prayer and spiritual pleasure.

 

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Sorry David, I don't understand well the question. Could you explain it more?

 

The original title posted of the TOTM was "xotis romanes", the name that gave to the tune the catalonian musicians, Perepau Jiménez, etc. that recorded them and appear in youtube. As another musicians, the Carr Family, etc. probably learned the tune from that source, they named the tune also "xotis romanes", as I told xotis romanes means romanian scottische.

Searching more information about the tune finally I found (other kind people in a spanish facebook group about celtic music gave me the information), that the original source was the Nigun Roimani, from the musician Akiva Ben Horin.

And as I told perhaps the catalonian musicians that learned it didn't made a good translation of the yiddish, hebrew, name.

As I told in spanish romaní means also romany, gipsy, but romanes in catalonian language means romanian, rumano in spanish.

 

Catalunya, is a spanish region (or a region from the spanish State as some people says), one of the historic nationalities recognized in the spanish constitution (the other two are Galicia and the Basque Country), and they have their own language, culture, etc. and a strong feelings, emotions, of nation, it is also a economically strong region. Barcelona is the capital of Catalunya.

 

In Iberian peninsula the languages spreaded at the same time that christian realms occupied the land that previously the muslims had conquered, from north to south. As result of this there is the galician-portuguese branch in the west part (with Galicia as part of Spain and Portugual as independient nation), castillian (more known as "spanish") in the center, and the catalonian branch (catalán, valenciano, mallorquí, etc.) at the east, with I am not expert but with similarities with occitan language, lengua de Oc, and less with french language. The vasque language remained isolated at the north, and there are other ones more, but it is too long for explaining. The vasque language hasn't latin roots but the other ones they are all rooted in the latin language.

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Sorry David, I don't understand well the question. Could you explain it more?

 

I'm sorry. It is only explained by my relative ignorance on the subject and not paying enough attention to your informative posts.

 

I remembered that the tune was originally introduced on concertina.net as a Catalonian tune and then that was corrected to Klezmer origin. I did not realize that the title actually was Catalonian, as were the musicians in the youtube video. I have been to Barcelona twice. A beautiful city. Also Girona, Figueres, and Montserrat. I have studied Spanish, but it was clear it would be of little help in Catalonia.

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No problem David.

Spanish is spoken in all over Spain, I don't think that it isn't useful, another matter is that i.e. if you meet elder people with strong regional accent or that speak usually in galician, catalonian, etc. and almost don't speak usually spanish, it could be difficult to understand them, even for us, native spanish speakers or bilingual speakers. Even andalucian people that only speak spanish are also difficult to be understood.

Also there are some times un-polite persons that don't change the language spoken even if they note that you don't understand them, but it isn't common, it is a really minor percentage of persons.

I think about languages that it is a matter of acccent, and to get used to them. All these languages are latin rooted languages with many words, structure, etc. in common, with little variations, in fact galician and portuguese have some characteristics closer to italian than to spanish, but the accent, particularly the portuguese one, is very different from the italian one.

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