All tracks traditional and arranged by Di Naye Kapelye
The musicians:
Bob Cohen (vocals, violin,
mandolin)
Christina Crowder (accordion, drum)
Géza Pénzes (bass, koboz)
Janos Bartha (clarinet)
Jack “Yankl” Falk (metal and wood clarinets,
vocals)
with guest:
Robert Kerenyi (Moldavian caval and flutes, drum)
Date of release: 10/09/98
total time: 66:44
20-page-booklet in English, French and German
Yiddish culture in east Europe today is but a dim shadow
of its history and legacy, but it is not dead. Jewish communities exist - in diminished
numbers - and Jewish life continues, not the least in the memories of an older
generation who remember a world which spoke Yiddish. Di Naye Kapelye means “The
New Band” in Yiddish. We play old time Yiddish music from not so long ago. The
klezmer music which defines modern Ashkenazic Jewish existence is the klezmer
of America - especially New York. Old gramophone recordings document changes in
instrumentation and repertoire as immigrant Jewish musicians adapted to new lives
in the new world. In east Europe, however, folk traditions are strong, and Jewish
music thrived as long as Jews had weddings. Our music takes its character from
east European kapelyes (yiddish for a small band) like the Bughici family band
in Iasi, Romania, the Markus family band in Hungary, the Lantos Orchestra in Maramures,
Romania, and other Jewish village bands who played in distinctively non-commercial,
local styles. In many cases the Jewish musicians played alongside local Roma (Gypsies),
and today in Hungary and Romania Gypsies are the main source for living practitioners
of Jewish music. Some, like the Transylvanian fiddlers Samu “Cilika” Boróss
and Ferenc Árus, played for Jewish weddings when no Jewish band was available.
Some, like András Horváth of Tiszakoród, Hungary, and Gheorghe
and Vassile Covaci in Maramures, Romania, worked in Jewish bands before the war
and learned the musical nuance of the local Hasidic courts (hoyfn). Hungary, due
to its location at the center of the world, is our home, and we come together
through a surprising set of circumstances, many of them soaked in pálinka
- Hungarian plum brandy. I met Géza Pénzes with his traditional
Hungarian folk group, Újstílus, in 1983 on their first tour of the
USA. I moved to Budapest from New York City in 1988 to learn Hungarian bagpipe
from Ferenc Tobak - alongside János Bártha - in Veszprém,
my mother’s home town. Christina Crowder is from Portland, Oregon, where she acquired
an accordion from her Finnish grandmother, and more recently from Budapest where
she acquired an addiction to dizzying Transylvanian couple dances. Yankl Falk
is a cantor and klezmer clarinetist who lived down the street from Christina in
Portland, but didn't know it until he showed up in Budapest to study how Hungarians
brew plum brandy in their homes. Róbi Kerényi, the best Moldavian
flute player in Hungary and founder of the Tatros Band, lives next door to one
of the best plum brandy home-brewers in Hungary. Without pálinka, there
might be a Naye Kapelye. But not this one.
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