Klezmer

[The Bee's Proverbial Knees]

Has anyone had any luck playing klezmer on the concertina? If so I'd love to see any resources you have.

[David Barnert]

What type of concertina? I’m not sure I’ve heard Klezmer on an Anglo, although I wouldn’t be surprised if Jody Kruskal has some experience with it.

 

Many years ago someone in this group (I don’t remember who) described the English concertina as a “Klezmer dynamo.” I’ll bet Randy Stein has done a bit of Klezmer on his English.

 

Me, I play a Hayden Duet concertina, and my only foray into Klezmer was an entry into the “Tune of the Month” challenge six or seven years ago:

 

 

[Jim2010]

3 hours ago, The Bee's Proverbial Knees said:

Has anyone had any luck playing klezmer on the concertina? If so I'd love to see any resources you have.

 

I like David Barnert's performance above.

 

I did a youtube search for Klezmer concertina. This what turned up.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GUgB7e1tikM

Anglo (Luke Hillman, who is a member of this discussion group)

https://www.concertina.net/forums/index.php?/topic/21310-jeffries-38b-cg-anglo-reasonable-offers-welcome/&tab=comments#comment-204186)

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KtXp_qru_vI

Hayden

 

I imagine there are more, but the search brought up mostly accordion.

[Daniel Hersh]

This old thread might be helpful:

 

[jwinship]

In 1985 Bertram Levy (anglo) and Peter Ostroushko (mandolin, fiddle) released an album on Flying Fish called "First Generation" that had an eclectic selection of traditional tunes, including klezmer and eastern European.  It was a great anglo album, a great mandolin album, it had a tight and unobtrusive rhythm section of guitar and bass, it was well recorded.  It never should have gone out of print, but I don't think it ever even made it to CD.

 

What was the question?  Oh right.  Bertam Levy.  He's had luck playing klezmer on an anglo.

[Marien]

Here is how I played the melody of the hebrew song called "O de lo ahavti dai" on a C/G anglo (wheatstone layout).

Not every klezmer tune can be played easily on an anglo concertina, but this one suits my anglo.

Mostly, when I play klezmer on a concertina, it is on the Crane Duet or de Jeffries Duet concertina. 

o de lo ahavti dai on wheatstone CG.mp3

[jggunn]

I think Klezmer works very well on the English -- as all Middle Eastern tunes do -- such as Miserlou.

[Randy Stein]

My 10 piece Jewish Folk Band plays some klezmer.  I'm in the back on the left behind the singers

 

 

[soloduet]

It's maybe not real klezmer music, but as I also heard it played by klezmer bands I send this video recorded some years ago:

https://youtu.be/aHxPiZYjbVs

 

[maccannic]

On 5/13/2020 at 3:17 PM, jwinship said:

In 1985 Bertram Levy (anglo) and Peter Ostroushko (mandolin, fiddle) released an album on Flying Fish called "First Generation" that had an eclectic selection of traditional tunes, including klezmer and eastern European.  It was a great anglo album, a great mandolin album, it had a tight and unobtrusive rhythm section of guitar and bass, it was well recorded.  It never should have gone out of print, but I don't think it ever even made it to CD.

 

 

But some of the tracks were included on CD on 'Anglo International'.

[soloduet]

I wanted to post my video in this thread:

https://www.concertina.net/forums/index.php?/topic/15842-tune-of-the-month-for-october-2013-xotis-romanes/

But as I'm 8 years late and it's already closed I post it in this one about klezmer music. Thanks a lot to David for the sheet music and the inspiration to play this tune:

https://youtu.be/K7B5IAn35Ds

 

Edited October 9, 2021 by soloduet

[David Barnert]

2 hours ago, soloduet said:

Thanks a lot to David for the sheet music and the inspiration to play this tune

You’re welcome, and thank YOU for showing me the possibilities I missed in the tune.

 

Ahh, memories. That (10 posts above in this thread or in the expired thread Didie referred to) was my first youtube, 8 years ago. I opened my youtube account for this entry in “Tune of the Month” because others had already submitted audio recordings of the tune where they played both parts dubbed together, and I had to make it clear that I was playing both parts at the same time.

 

But it took me many takes to achieve a mistake-free performance, and to this day I don’t know if I could play the 4th measure (with the running 8th notes in both hands) flawlessly as many times in one take as you did.

 

Bravo!

[Jim2010]

Wonderful music, wonderful performance Didie. Thank you for posting.

[CrP]

There's a lively Klezmer music scene in the Washington, DC area. Recently (for about the past 3 years) there have been workshops and jam sessions with open invitation to come-all-ye musicians to learn from some of the best current Klezmer musicians in the US. The DC Klezmer group focuses almost exclusively on music for dancing [if you want to play a doina on concertina, you'd better really know the genre and the style inside & out]. Before the pandemic, a Sunday afternoon gathering could attract upwards of 20 musicians on winds, strings (bowed, beaten, and plucked), accordions, keyboards and me on concertina (not exclusively). I've been playing Yiddish songs (accompaniments for singing; dance tunes, amongst other things) for decades and find concertina works most admirably for much of this, both solo and in groups.

Briefly put, I can say that one needs a strong concertina (with the power of a Jeffries, say) to make a sound that carried over saxophones, clarinets, accordions, trumpets, and so forth.

My B♭/F Jeffries does OK, holding its own in small-to-medium-size band. Since so much Klezmer music revolves around keys of Dmin & Gmin, a B♭/F is probably the most useful to have. I do sometimes use a 34-button C/G that has additional reeds in place of the "novelty" sounds (baby cry, bird whistle), allowing easy switching between major, minor, modal key signatures.

So, (again briefly), anglo works well for this, but the player must really know how to navigate reliably, solidly in rhythms such as 3/8, 8/8 [several variants] and some of the Romanian/Hungarian/Balkan subtleties that infuse Klezmer music that has come to us from musicians raised in those traditions.

 

[Leah Velleman]

I tried some tunes recently and realized that the D freygish scale (as in Hava Nagila and Misirlou) fits impressively well on a C/G anglo: the F#, Eb, and Bb are all on the pull and laid out pretty conveniently, so you can play a whole melody on the pull, or catch your breath on the push on the "white keys." You can also do chromatic same-direction runs up to some important notes. C-C#-D and Bb-B-C are really comfortable and sound nice — not as good as a real clarinet glissando, but maybe close enough.

 

I don't know, who knows if it'll go anywhere, and it's a very different way of playing than I'd use for Irish or morris, but I've been having fun. 

[Roger Hare]

I can't see it mentioned here (I may have missed it), but there is a selection of Klezmer tunes in ABC format on Seymour Schlein's web site:

 

https://ifdo.ca/~seymour/runabc/top.html

 

Scroll down to the 'ABC files I have contributed' section...

[Moll Peatly]

16 hours ago, Leah Velleman said:

I tried some tunes recently and realized that the D freygish scale (as in Hava Nagila and Misirlou) fits impressively well on a C/G anglo: the F#, Eb, and Bb are all on the pull and laid out pretty conveniently, so you can play a whole melody on the pull, or catch your breath on the push on the "white keys."

 

That scale works nicely on the English when you want to give your middle finger a rest.