Di Naye Kapelye: A Mazeldiker Yid

1. Drey Dreydele 3:29
Prelistening:
2. Meron Tune (Shaffer's Nign) 2:48
Hasidic Tunes from Maramures:
3. Oyvey Rebbenyu 2:32
4. 999/Yom ha-Shabbes 3:33
5. Spoken introduction by Betty Tzarevkan Cohen 0:45
6. Platch Evrei 4:02
7. Goldenshteyn's Bulgar 2:31
8. Jidancutsa and Zsidó Tánc 2:43
9. A Mazeldiker Yid (A Lucky Jew) 2:15
10. S'iz Shoyn Farfaln / Grichisher Tantz 3:03
11. Wedding Processional from Ieud 3:22
12. Goldblatt's Freylakhs 2:21
13. Yearning Tune 3:34
14. Borey Olam (vocal version) 1:10
15. Borey Olam be-Kinyan 2:30
16. Jewish Hora / Buhusher Chusid 4:24
17. The Bosnian Nign (a cappella version by Cili Svarts) 0:35
18. The Bosnian Nign 3:17
19. L'Chaim Jó Testvérek 2:33
Prelistening:
20. Bride's Dance from Ieud 2:19
Prelistening:

total time: 53:59

Di Naye Kapelye
Bob Cohen: violin, mandolin, koboz, cümbüs, gadulka, vocals
Christina Crowder: accordion, vocals
Jack "Yankl" Falk: clarinet, vocals
Gyula Kozma: bass, cello
Ferenc Pribojszki: cimbalom, drum

with special guests from Muzsikás
Mihály Sipos: violin (tracks 11, 15, 19, 20)
Péter Éri: three string 'kontra' viola (tracks 3, 4, 11, 15, 19, 20), drum (track 2)

Recorded at Podium Studios, Budapest, August 2001.
Sound engineer and mixing: Csaba Sándor.
Mastering: Tibor Rostás
Produced by Di Naye Kapelye with Mihály Sipos.

Dedicated to the memory of Itsik and Cili Svarts.

This recording developed over a period of several years, during which we have continued scrambling around east Europe looking for contexts and traces of Jewish music, a good half century after the Holocaust nearly destroyed Europe's Jewish population and culture. The key word here is nearly. There are still Jewish communities in east Europe, and in the memories of this aging population lives a sense of Jewish culture - Yiddishkeit - that developed strongly local expressions of faith and music. Furthermore, the memory of Jewish culture is often maintained by non-Jews, those who choose to cherish the legacy of neighbors lost but never forgotten. From the peasant who tends the forgotten Jewish cemetery to the aged Gypsy fiddlers who play for an audience of Jewish ghosts, Yiddishkeit lives on in the lives of those whom it touched.
Northern Romania, in particular the regions of Maramures and the Bukovina, was once home to a large Jewish community unlike any other. Hasidic Jews first settled in the poorer mountain areas of the Habsburg Empire during the 17th and 18th centuries, in the aftermath of the Chmielnicki massacres and the resultant messianic confusion. Led by disciples of the Baal Shem-Tov, Hasidism's pioneering leader, these Jews coalesced into Hasidic "courts" (hoyfn) centered around rabbinic dynasties residing in Szatmár, Vizhnitz, Munkács, Sighet, Sadagora, and Shpinka (Sapinta). Free of the official oppression and pogroms suffered by Jews in the Russian Empire, they lived in a relatively healthy social atmosphere with their neighbors - Romanians, Hungarians, Hutsul Ukrainians, Slovaks, Zipser Germans, and Roma (Gypsies). Reflecting the strongly conservative nature of the region, the Jews of Maramures rejected the "Jewish Enlightenment" offered by the 1868 reorganization of the Hungarian Jewish community, and maintained an existence apart, Yiddish speaking and deeply Hasidic in character, until the Holocaust. After the war this same stubborn independence led to the rebirth of Carpathian Hasidic communities in centers such as Brooklyn, Antwerp, and Bnei Brak, where the culture remains as vibrant and quarrelsome as it did the Romanian mountains.
The music of the Maramures Jews stands apart from the generic term "klezmer" by reason of its strong religious context. Couple dancing among Jews never became popular here. Many of the klezmer "fads" emanating from 19th century Moldavia made little impression on the devout highland Jews of Maramures. On the other hand, Jewish musicians borrowed freely from their Hungarian, Romanian, and Hutsul neighbors - and often hired local Gypsies to fill out bands for a larger wedding.
The source of much of the Jewish music played in 20th-century Maramures was the Shloimovitch family band, a pre-war Jewish string band in the village of Rozavlea who were known locally as the "Shugareni band" (often corrupted to "Huber"). Led by fiddler Hersh Shloimovitch (along with his sons Motele, Berl, Zicu, Eli, and Shmil), the band's repertoire, played on two violins, cimbalom, bass and drum, influenced a number of Maramures fiddlers, especially those of the Covaci family, a clan of professional musicians of Roma origin who have contributed several masters of Maramures folk music - many of whom are all confusingly named "Gheorghe Covaci," such as "Stingau" of Borsa, "Ioanei" from Ieud, and "Cioata" of Vadu Izei, who was featured on a 1993 recording by the Hungarian band Muzsikás.
Through interviews with members of the Covaci family and other living musicians, we have tried to collect as many memories and anecdotes about the Shugareni band as possible. On this recording we make several attempts to "re-create" a Transylvanian string band sound that might give a taste of what the Shugareni band sounded like. Rather than draw the obvious comparisons between our parallel efforts to revive the sound of Maramures Jewish music, we invited our good friends from Muzsikás to join us, and so it is that Mihály Sipos and Péter Éri lend a hand to provide authentic Transylvanian harmonies and approaches to several old Jewish tunes.
Rozavlea was also home to a unique family of Jewish entertainers, the "Circ de Petici" ("Dwarf Circus"), a family of Jewish dwarfs who lived down the road from the Shloimovitch family. The circus troupe featured dancing dogs, did acrobatics, played the fiddle, and performed their show in Romanian folk costumes. When we interviewed aged Romanian peasants in the Maramures region about Jewish music, their most vivid memories - not surprisingly - were often of the Jewish Dwarf Circus.

Our gratitude goes out to all the people in Romania, Hungary, and Brooklyn who have shared with us their memories and music. To them we raise our glasses of pálinka (plum brandy) and offer a L'Chaim! To life!

The Transylvanian Jewish journalist Dezso Schön, writing of Maramures Jewish life in 1937, tells us:
"What was pálinka to Maramures? In one word: everything. Pálinka signaled birth and death. One needed pálinka for work, for happiness and for sadness. For a Maramures person, the road of life was filled with pálinka bottles … Pálinka did not recognize racial or national differences. What for a Romanian was a "petrecanie" was for a Jew "tikkun"… A Hasid never "drank" pálinka, but instead "made L'Chaim". When they drink L'Chaim - they say - you need at least two Jews, because it takes two "Yids" to make the Eternal One's name. When two Yids drink L'Chaim, the Eternal One's spirit is present. A good Hasid only drinks 96% pure pálinka, because the number 96 ("tsadik-vav") is the same number as His Unpronounceable Name ("Shem havay im hakoleyl"). And to honor a Jew's life, when he has finally left this life, his grieving Hasid brothers share a bottle of 96 next to his open grave … Hosanna to you, Pálinka, to remind us of our biblical state, in our stupor you conjure Canaan beneath the Carpathians!"

L'Chaim!

Bob Cohen and Yankl Falk

1. Drey Dreydele
Moyshe Oysher (1907-1958) was a singularly charismatic Yiddish singer. Born in the Bessarabian village of Lipcany, and descended from seven generations of cantors, Oysher made his singing debut at the age of six. After emigrating to New York, Oysher's vocal talents - a combination of rich cantorial melismatic and Moldavian village scat - brought him simultaneous success on the bineh (the Yiddish stage) as well as the bimah (the cantorial podium), where he served as cantor at the First Rumanian-American Congregation on Rivington Street. Through such Yiddish films as "The Cantor's Son," "Overture to Glory" (The Vilner Balebessel), and "The Singing Blacksmith," Oysher would soon develop a worldwide following. Oysher's passionate performances mirrored his real-life reputation (chronicled in J. Hoberman's history of Yiddish film, Bridge of Light) as "a lusty skirt-chaser who drank, smoked, and didn't necessarily keep the Sabbath."
We learned this tune from Moyshe's sister Freydele, who still sings Yiddish in New York. Oysher's original recording of "Drey Dreydele" (Spin, Dreydl!) featured the virtuosic Dave Tarras on clarinet.
"Bring me bread, bring me wine - let's all celebrate! Latkes, meat, fish, white tablecloths, and a shining menorah. When Chanukah comes around, it's all good! So spin, dreydl - and bring us good fortune."

2. Meron Tune (Shaffer's Nign)
This melody is from a recording by the great Israeli klezmer clarinetist Musa Berlin, the main living practitioner of the Meron klezmer tradition. The annual Lag B'Omer pilgrimage to Mount Meron near Safed was one of the few Jewish religious activities in the Holy Land that made use of instrumental music. In 1868, the Rabbinate of Jerusalem decreed that instrumental music was forbidden as an act of mourning for the loss of the Temple. Perhaps because of its distance from Jerusalem, or because the pilgrimage was sponsored by a Moroccan Sephardic rabbi, the Meron pilgrimage came to be characterized by a unique klezmer tradition featuring clarinet and drum ensembles. Yeshiva students often dance to this melody, which bears the name of Hayyim Shaffer, a Karliner Hasid from Haifa. Parts of the melody reflect eastern Turkish and Balkan elements, which led us in a distinctly Ottoman direction.

HASIDIC TUNES FROM MARAMURES
These three tunes come from a recording made around 1970 featuring the Maramures Gypsy fiddler Gheorghe "Stingau" Covaci from Borsa, playing and singing in something that sounded like Yiddish. It wasn't uncommon for non-Jews, especially Gypsies, to know Yiddish in Maramures. But we were having an impossible time trying to decipher Stingau's Yiddish until our friend Jeff Wollock (who had called the field recording "phoneme salad") solved the first part of the puzzle, tracking down a 1940s Bagelman Sisters radio performance (with a New York swing ensemble).
3. Oyvey Rebbenyu
In its initial incarnation, the tune (folklorized from two songs by the Yiddish poet Mikhl Gordon) was an anti-Hasidic parody. By the time Stingau recorded the tune, it had been transformed into an exquisite declaration of faith: "I want to be a good Hasid, a devoted one. Oy, Rabbi, I stand and tremble, and a fire burns in my heart. I'm no rabbi, just a simple Jew, and I pray with devotion."
4. 999/Yom ha-Shabbes
The second tune is a csardas with these mysterious lyrics: "No, no, no, it can't be like that. I've always been a Jew, and I'm a Jew once again."
The third tune is a common Friday night zemer (table song), although we didn't recognize it as such until we had Shabbos dinner at the Kings Hotel in Budapest with a room full of hasidim who were on pilgrimage to celebrate the bar mitzvah of their rabbi's grandson in the ancestral village of Munkács, now in the western Ukraine. Between courses, one hasid at our table began singing this zemer - familiar to us in melody but not in context - and as our jaws dropped, Isaac Gluck (father of our good friend Pearl) opened the prayer book and showed us the verse from "Kol Mekadesh Sh'vi'i":
"On the holy Sabbath be happy and joyous while receiving G-d's gift."
We have tried here to preserve the old style of harmonizing modal melodies using major chords that may have been used by the Shugareni band.

5. Spoken introduction by Betty Tzarevkan Cohen
6.Platch Evrei
In the 1970s, my grandmother, Betty Tzarevkan Cohen, recalled the role that hiring fine musicians played in establishing a family's yikhes, or social rank, in 19th century Bessarabia: "We were all born in Telenesti, I am not from Uriv (Orhei) … My father was very rich. When my mother got married, they went looking for musicians … the best musicians … They went all the way to Iasi to get the most famous musicians. They were called Lemesh."
The Lemesh family was instrumental in the early Yiddish theater of Iasi, and is remembered in association with a wide repertoire of archaic Jewish genres no longer played. Some of the Lemesh family emigrated to Philadelphia in the early 20th century, and even today trumpeter Rachel Lemesh carries on the klezmer tradition.
"Platch Evrei" is a rare example of a klezmer "classical set piece" for listening. This piece was recorded in 1911 by the Belf Orchestra, which is probably about as close as one can get historically to the sound of the Lemesh band. The Belf "Romanian" Orchestra appears to have been based in Lemberg (Lvov) and was the first klezmer ensemble to be recorded. They may not have been the best around, but they were the first, and were slavishly copied and plagiarized in recordings made by American bandleaders during and after the First World War. When we first started playing this piece, we didn't really know to approach it until the ghost of Frank Zappa appeared in a dream one night and said "Frankenstein's Bar Mitzvah!" Thanks, Frank!

7. Goldenshteyn's Bulgar
This is a bulgar that we learned from German Goldenshteyn, a Bessarabian Jewish clarinetist who emigrated from Mogilev-Podolsk, Ukraine, to Brooklyn in 1994. Born in Atache, Moldavia, German was orphaned during WWII and later trained as a musician in a band of klezmorim who had become the local Soviet Army band. German keeps his tunes in a notebook containing some 800 melodies from his years as a wedding musician in Moldavia and Ukraine.

8. Jidancutsa and Zsidó Tánc
Two dances from the Bukovina known as Jidancutsa - the "Little Jew Dance". These are non-Jewish versions of Jewish tunes performed as a costume parody at New Year's and Carnival time. Inter-ethnic parody is a well-established east European tradition, as can be seen in any large Hasidic community at Purim. Formerly a Habsburg province under direct rule of Austria, the Bukovina was a melting pot of cultures - Romanian, Hutsul, German, Polish, Jewish and Hungarian - in which the court of the Vizhnitzer Hasidim, as active patrons of Jewish and Roma musicians during the Rabbi's summer "court" at Vatra Dornei, played a prominent role both in borrowing from local traditions as well as inspiring tunes like these.
The first tune is a Romanian version of the well known "Reb Dovidl's Nign" and comes from Florin Mucea, a master fiddler from Bilca, Romania. The second melody, widespread in Bukovina (where it is sometimes called "Jidauca"), was recorded in Hungary by János Gáspár in 1960. Gáspár, who called the tune "Zsidó Tanc," was resettled in southern Hungary in the 1940s, along with other Szekely Hungarians from seven Bukovina villages near Radauti. Gáspár's second fiddler, Lászlo Lászlo of Izmény, Hungary (also known as "Uncle Twice Lászlo"), remembers sneaking into Jewish balls held in Radauti in the 1930s to pick up new tunes. Although increasingly rare, the use of the Moldavian lute - the cobza (koboz in Hungarian) - continues in the Bukovina to the present day in villages such as Arbore and Frumusica.

9. A Mazeldiker Yid (A Lucky Jew)
Little is known about the source of this tune, Nathan "Prince" Nazaroff. Born in Europe, a veteran of the Russian Ballet Theater in New York, Prince Nazaroff bequeathed to humanity one LP recorded in 1954 on the Folkways label, owned by his friend Moses Asch. The original is a riot of foot stomping, bird whistles, mistuned mandolin, broken accordion, hard luck lyrics, and other marvelous memories of the Odessa Jewish musical world transplanted to New York in the 1950s. In the liner notes, Nazaroff poses for the camera in a Catskills backyard dressed in an ill-fitting suit, with his foot up on an Adirondack chair, a tenor mandolin across his lap, a goofy straw hat perched unevenly on his head. His profoundly off-center sense of fashion was matched only by his defiant opposition to common concepts of pitch and tuning. We hardly knew he was here, and yet the world is much quieter with his passing.

10. S'iz Shoyn Farfaln / Grichisher Tantz
The first tune is an instrumental version of the Yiddish song "S'iz Shoyn Farfaln" ("Doomed"), recorded in 1913 by accordionist Max Yankowitz as an introduction to the popular folk song "Yoshke Fort Avek." The second tune, a terkish, was recorded by Mishka Tsiganoff in 1929 as "Grichisher Tantz" (Greek dance).

11. Wedding Processional from Ieud
A bride's processional that we learned from Gheorghe "Ioanei" Covaci of Ieud, Maramures, who in turn learned it from the Shugareni band of Rozavlea. Although modern Maramures music is characterized by the use of a four-string guitar tuned to an open chord and known as zongora, the older string band tradition usually identified with Transylvania has never completely disappeared from the region. Most Jewish tunes, having a more complex modal structure, were accompanied by second fiddle, kontra (viola), and bass, and there is no evidence that Jewish musicians ever used the zongora. Today the accordion usually accompanies such tunes, and although the modern generation of village musicians no longer recognizes their Jewish context or origin, they remain in the repertoire as listening pieces. In this piece we have arranged the harmonies in central Transylvanian style.

12. Goldblatt's Freylakhs
This little charmer comes from an old gramophone recording we got on cassette from Berlin bassist Heiko Lehmann. Apart from the name of the bandleader, we haven't a clue as to what it is. It is safe to presume, however, that Goldblatt ate matzo ball soup. Always prepare matzo meal by crushing fresh matzo with a rolling pin - commercial matzoh meal makes a heavy, dense, and rather boring matzo ball. Mix with one and a half beaten eggs for each crushed sheet of matzo, and one tablespoon of melted chicken fat for each egg. Salt to taste. Chill the matzo mix in the refrigerator for 20 minutes to firm up. Form into small balls and boil in salted water for 20 minutes. Serve with chicken soup.

13. Yearning Tune
This melody - as in many Hasidic nigunim, a devotional tune without words - is referred to as "Wallachian," in description of its rhapsodic nature, and also as a "nign gaaguyim" (yearning tune). This nign is still sung by Chabad Hasidim, whose dynasty was the northernmost outpost of Hasidic philosophy in strongly "Litvak" (anti-Hasidic) Russia and Lithuania.

14. Borey Olam (vocal version)
15. Borey Olam be-Kinyan
A Hasidic nign whose lyrics are based on a zemer (table song) sung at the conclusion of the Sabbath, "Ish Khosid Hoyo" (there once was a hasid). The zemer tells of a poor hasid who went to the market to try and earn money to support his family. Elijah the Prophet approached the hasid and offered himself up as a slave to provide money for the hasid and his family. Elijah was bought ("with affection") by a wealthy merchant, who offered him freedom in exchange for building him a palace. In the middle of the night, Elijah called out to G-d: "I was sold as a slave for your honor, not my own. Creator of the universe, You complete this building!" The angels of compassion heard his plea and completed the work, and Elijah was set free.
It was not rare for Hasidim to adopt local folk and popular songs into their repertoire of inspirational nigunim, melodies that were revealed to the Tzadik as holy and leading to spiritual enlightenment. The first part of this nign is almost identical with the melody of the Hungarian song "Túri vásár." The second is the concluding part of the song "Már én többet a föutcán."
This rendition derives from versions played by "Stingau" and "Ioanei" Covaci. We play this tune in the style of the Szatmár region of Hungary and Romania, characterized by the use of harmony fiddle, as was used in the Markus Family band in Jánkamajitis, Hungary, before World War II.

16. Jewish Hora / Buhusher Chusid
Two cimbalom tunes from the repertoire of Joseph Moskowitz. "Jewish Hora" was recorded by Alex Olshanetsky's Orchestra in 1928 as "Yiddishe Hora und Sarba Maracinei," featuring Moskowitz on cimbalom and Dave Tarras on clarinet. "Buhusher Chusid," recorded in 1916, utilizes melodic quotes from Turkish fasil music.
Joseph Moskowitz, born in Galati, Romania in 1879, learned the small Jewish tsimbl from his father, Moyshe Tsimbler. After moving to America in 1908, he opened Moskowitz and Lupowitz's Restaurant in Manhattan, which became an establishment well known for its "Gypsy" music and Romanian atmosphere. His repertoire embraced classic Jewish klezmer melodies alongside Romanian lautar music, Hungarian café nota, and popular marches and waltzes of the day. Playing on a full-sized Hungarian Schunda cimbalom, Moskowitz's recording career ran from 1916 to his last sessions in 1954. His "spiritual" connection to Di Naye Kapelye is evident in the following passage from the book "Jews Without Money" by Michael Gold (1930):
"On a small platform, Moskowitz sat with his cymbalom. Strings of red peppers dried in festoons on the wall behind him. A jug of wine stood at his elbow and after every song he poured himself a drink. ... Moskowitz is a real artist, after twenty years he still makes restaurant music with his heart, and has never saved any money."

17. The Bosnian Nign (a cappella version by Cili Svarts)
18. The Bosnian Nign
This melody was learned from the singing of Cili Svarts, the wife of Itsik Svarts, the Yiddish writer, teacher, and former director of the Yiddish theater of Iasi, Romania. A schoolteacher, avid singer, and formidable baker of kosher soda cookies, Cili was born the daughter of a Breslover Hasid in Moinesti, Romania, in 1915. This was her favorite melody. She learned it from her uncle Alter Baris who worked as a forester in the Bosnian town of Zavidovich before the First World War. Whether Sephardic or Ashkenazic in origin, we play it as a slow hora. Sadly, Zavidovich was largely destroyed during the Bosnian War, as was my maternal grandmother's birthplace, the nearby town of Travnik. We hope this melody serves to honor the memory of Bosnia's Jewish culture, and as a loving tribute to the memory of Itsik and Cili Svarts.

19. L'Chaim Jó Testvérek
Vera Szábo, the Hungarian Yiddish researcher, learned this tune from Cantor Géza Hammerman of the Újpest shul in Budapest. Cantor Hammerman first heard it as a student in the Munkács yeshiva in the 1930s. The text, in a mixture of Hebrew and Hungarian, says "L'Chaim, brothers! Drink with me, may we live a long and healthy life … May the Messiah come quickly, and we shall be like kings and the wine will flow like rivers! Let's drink brothers, live happily, and meet next year in Jerusalem!"

20. Bride's Dance from Ieud
This melody was played at weddings for the bride's dance before the men jumped in to dance the husid dance. Gheorghe "Ioanei" Covaci of Ieud learned it during the 1930s from the Shugareni band in nearby Rozavlea. Ioanei rarely traveled beyond the neighboring villages, and his repertoire preserves many rare tunes - such as these Jewish ones - no longer current in the Maramures Romanian repertoire.

Dedicated to the memory of Itsik and Cili Svarts.

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