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WINTER 1998/1999ARTICLES
COLUMNS
TUNES
ARTICLE EXCERPTSRandal Bays: An Authenticity of SpiritBy Larry HillRandal Bays comes at you like a summer squall: a little anticipation and suddenly you're drenched. He leads you through a complex musical experience: frolicsome, introspective, lamenting, and plain break-neck fun, and he leaves you with a sense of stimulated well-being. Widely known as the superb guitar accompanist on Martin Hayes' 1993 debut album, Randal first embraced the Irish fiddle more than twenty years ago, devoting both personal and professional focus to the intricacies and subtle nuances of this tradition. With the winter 1997/98 release of his own album, Out of the Woods (reviewed in Fiddler Magazine, Spring 1998), he placed himself clearly among the best Irish fiddlers of his generation. He teaches and performs full-time, both here and abroad. He produces recordings for his own label, Foxglove. Witty and engaging, he seeks the smaller stage and the more intimate setting, where performer, music, and audience merge. The following is condensed from a two hour conversation last spring. ... You read music, but you learn by ear? I pick up things pretty immediately by ear. I think in Irish traditional music that it's important to learn the music that way and not rely on written sources. I use written sources but mainly as reminders. Joel Bernstein and I both keep these little books that we note down tunes in. They're like little reminders, lest you forget what you used to play. You take musical dictation? Yeah. I used to go to sessions, and I'd sit in the background with a little notebook and write down tunes as they went by. It's better than taping because you actually get it into your head while you are writing it down. It is not anything like an inborn skill. It's just a matter of ear training and practice, hearing intervals and relationships. I'm confident that anybody who is a pretty good musician can train their ear to do that. I think ear training is really important. I've had some students who were trained musicians, classical musicians, who wanted to learn everything from printed sources. I used to write tunes out for them, but I got out of doing that because I'd find that they wouldn't actually remember the music. They'd go to sessions, and they couldn't play. Whereas, if I'd teach them the tune by rote get this phrase, get that phrase they'd have it in their mind, and build up a session repertoire, and take part in the world of Irish music, which is what they really wanted. ... So you were about twenty-six, you heard the Irish fiddle, and you made a big change. I had already quit the classical guitar. Basically, it just wasn't a big enough voice for me. It expresses a kind of gentleness, but there was also this more powerful voice I wanted to have. I didn't realize so much in those terms what I was looking for, then I got talked into going to hear a concert. Kevin Burke and Michael O'Domhnaill were working as a duo, and the music they played absolutely, totally got me. It was absolute magic. I was awake all night talking about it. So I got into the fiddle then. I was lucky because those guys ended up moving to Portland. Kevin was my neighbor. I never took formal lessons from him, but he was so generous with his time, and he guided me to a lot of great players who were a lot different from him. In particular, to P.J. Hayes and Paddy Canny. So I got on to them right in the beginning, and I'd been listening to them for years by the time I met Martin Hayes. It's part of the reason Martin and I clicked so readily. I already had his family repertoire in my brain. ... You are a traditional musician, and you write new tunes in the tradition. Is there a conflict? The Irish tradition is a living tradition, unlike some of those that died out and got revived. Irish music never died out. It continued to be a rural peoples' music right up into the present. I mean we're seeing the end of it now, unfortunately. So it has always been a living music, which means it has always been added to. What I've tried to do is to make tunes that sound as though they have the right sense about them. And you can't get too fat a head about it because if you're successful you'll have to come up with tunes that are original and yet have a lot of elements of other things in them that have already gone down. It just seems unnatural not to be making new tunes into a tradition. You are a professional musician, but do you have a larger purpose? When I quit the classical guitar, part of it was turning against that whole world of professionalism. I came to not like that paradigm of the performer being separate. You spend all your time: practice, practice, practice. You go up on stage at a huge distance from the audience put the music out. It's like spectator sports. I'm much more into sandlot softball. Well, I do go to Mariners games. Everywhere I go, I find a great group of people who are really interested in traditional music on a grass roots level. I play for those people. I find it's the same in Ireland. You have the really big gigs and the fame, but there is this kind of kitchen and small gig oriented thing of people who really appreciate the art of the music. And there's more to it. It's making a connection with people. I travel around this country, and every community harbors people who will come to a house concert. You look out, and the room is full of people who play themselves. So there is generally some element of tune swapping and chatting. Often you're invited to a session with local people when you finish playing. You stay in people's houses. It seems sustainable. ... Tell me about Foxglove Records. It's a very low key thing. I made an album. It wasn't accepted by either of the two big East coast labels, so I decided I'd just make up a label. Then Dale Russ made an album, and we put it on the label. Same with the Suffering Gaels. Then Joel Bernstein and I as the Rashers. Then Jody's Heaven. It never was intended to turn into anything like a big business. I don't have the time or energy. I'm too busy making music and I don't want that to change. I don't want to be a business man sitting around selling albums. So, it's possible other people will get involved and turn it into a business, or it could stay a very minor thing. What this has done for those of us in the Northwest we've all been playing for a long time, and the quality of what we do is right up there with anybody else this has given us a chance to have a little credibility, visibility. Maybe it will mean that some of the people on the label will be able to move on to a higher level of recognition. But I don't expect Foxglove to ever become any kind of corporate entity. By way of closure, can you reflect a bit? When I got into this I had no attraction on an ethnic interest level. The music itself is what attracted me. I see so many people who are so passionate about it, so I ask myself, why is it? I find over the years, the dynamics of how this music works the music itself, the performance settings, the scene it has a lot in common with blues or jazz. It is a social music, an intense music, and it's a music that respects and honors wildness. That's really important. It's not necessarily always a nice music. In fact, that's another place where us Yanks get into trouble with it. We want everything to be democratic and nice. This music isn't that way. Sometimes it's wild and intense and fiery. I'd like to say here: we need to take this music seriously. Somewhere else put: we really shouldn't take this music too seriously. Both are true. I go into these sessions and see people staring intensely at the floor, I want to say, "Lighten up. Joke with the person next to you. Have some fun." On the other hand take it seriously because it's a precious heritage, whether you're Irish or not. When you play music, regardless of your technical level, the music that comes out is who you are. So, as you go into this stuff, years go by, you're refining your musical expression, but it's becoming more and more who you are. It is kind of like your character, your personality, gets into it and becomes part of the process. It's important to keep that in mind from the beginning. No matter how much of a beginner you are, what you are playing is expressing who you are to the world. You can't hope it's going to be anything other than that. It's just the way it is. Anyway, it's fun. Information on gigs, lessons, or recordings: (206) 706-3255; Fax: (206) 789-6301; fg@teleport.com; http://www.teleport.com/~fg/index.html Upcoming Workshop: March 19-21, Meadowlawn, Bowen Island, British Columbia. Workshop. For more information, contact Lois Meyers-Carter, RR #1 K-13, Bowen Island, BC, Canada V0N 1G0, (604) 947-2440. [Larry Hill writes from Seattle. He has played Irish music on fiddle, flute, and whistle for twenty years.]
Alicia Svigals: The Klezmer Fiddle RevivalBy Patrice GeorgeAlicia Svigals is the fiery fiddler in the center of the cutting-edge klezmer band the Klezmatics. With them, she appeared in the PBS television special, "In the Fiddler's House," hosted by Itzhak Perlman. Her distinctive style of fiddling fuses historical study with personal passion. She has been active as a teacher, composer, arranger, and soloist. She was named "Best Klezmer Musician" at the Fifth International Klezmer Festival in Safed, Israel. Her new solo CD, Fidl, is the first album of klezmer fiddle music to be recorded in recent times. In November 1997, this extremely busy musician found a bit of quiet time to discuss the fiddle's place in the world of klezmer today. The interview took place in Svigals' Manhattan home. Why did the fiddle in klezmer music have to be "revived"? How did the clarinet and other instruments become dominant in the klezmer ensemble? The interesting thing about the klezmer revival and the fiddle is that the fiddle used to be the quintessential Jewish instrument, and it was the main instrument of the klezmer bands for hundreds of years. It's hard to know exactly how it was used, because the sources are scarce. Old European Jewish communities were destroyed. The fiddle is a Jewish iconographic touchstone, appearing in folklore and stories. It was the most important klezmer instrument for hundreds of years. In little villages there probably was only one musician or fiddler. With two fiddlers, one would play rhythm and one would play melody. When the klezmer revival started here, the fiddle was supplanted by "hipper" instruments, associated with jazz, like trumpet and clarinet. Maybe the fiddle wasn't loud or urgent enough for bigger halls and bigger urban populations. ... When did the current interest in klezmer the "revival" start? In the late '70s a few groups started the revival, including Andy Statman, The Klezmorim, Kapelye and The Klezmer Conservatory Band. The Klezmatics were part of the second wave. We were the first to try to do something more than imitate the old recordings. Older groups took the old recordings and transcribed them, trying to achieve the sound that they heard. We really owed a lot to them, but were ready to do something else with the old material. We said: "This was our grandparents' music, but now it's ours." We're Jewish-Americans and this is our native musical language. We decided to integrate the music into something that made sense to us, as if it were Led Zeppelin, Philip Glass, or other music that we also identified with. We came together when each of us answered an ad in The Village Voice that a mysterious clarinetist put in, who then disappeared! We never heard from him again, but we've been together for twelve years now. Most klezmer bands don't have violinists, or haven't featured them prominently. The Klezmatics do, partly because there are only six of us. The fiddle really ended up being a big component because we are a collective, so everybody is a soloist with a voice. Interest in klezmer fiddle increased with the founding of Klezkamp. Unlike other camps which are in the summer, this is in the winter, in one of these old resort hotels in the Catskills. Around 450 people come, ranging from older folks to families. It's become the focal point for klezmer music all over the world. It offers a place both for students and the professional musicians to get together, exchange ideas, do collaborations, start new projects, and start new bands. It's a community that's very close knit and wonderful. Part of the problem with learning to play klezmer violin has been the absence of old fiddle recordings and older players to learn from. There was one older violin player in New York, Leon Schwartz, who died a few years ago at age eighty-eight. The violin didn't record well in the early days. There are more senior clarinet players, and also hundreds of old clarinet recordings. In the '70s most fiddlers who tried to play klezmer didn't have a concept for it, so would play in a schmaltzy gypsy style. In the old recordings you can hear that the fiddle is really imitating the old cantorial style of singing. It's a mystery until you unlock the key to exactly what to do with the violin to make those strange, sobbing sounds. I studied old recordings and worked with Leon Schwartz to figure it all out. I've fused those old fiddle techniques for Jewish music with the more virtuosic clarinet music. You reconstructed the style of playing from recorded information? I had a few old recordings, and Leon Schwartz to learn from. He wasn't able to explain what he was doing though. He would play and I would watch. There were a couple of other fiddlers who had figured it out, too, like Michael Alpert, then of Kapelye, now of Brave Old World. After developing the technique, I started playing the music associated with klezmer clarinet playing, which is much more involved than fiddle music was. Then I added a timbral concept, because you can't really hear what the tone or the timbre was like in the old music. Klezmer music is very much related to Turkish music, Greek music, Romanian music. There's a certain kind of non-western sounding timbre which is used in that kind of music, which seems very fitting for this. My sound is a combination of old fiddle style, clarinet technique, and this sort of Greek-Turkish timbre (I also play Greek fiddle). What I do is half reconstructed-half invented. This is probably true of a lot of ethnic music styles. I tend to pour on the ornamentation. I'm kind of a "baroque" player in that way. Those sounds imitate the cantor singing with a kind of wailing, very emotional tone. This music is extremely passionate, so I put that ornamented sound in the way I feel it. ... An important thing about klezmer is that it really grew up in this country. It's an ethnic American music form in the same way that Cajun music is or the way Irish music became contradance music. The whole European branch of klezmer music was killed off. It's had a hundred years to develop in this country. The clarinet as lead instrument, thought of as the klezmer tradition, really happened in this country. The notes on your CD mentioned a connection between Jewish and Greek music. The Greek-Jewish connection is still happening. Apparently there was a big Greek-Turkish-Romanian expatriate community in Odessa, as well as a large gypsy community. Jews lived and played music together with all of these people. The cantorial sound, which we think of as Jewish, originated in Odessa, influenced by Turkish singing. Dave Tarras, the great klezmer clarinetist, changed his name in New York to Tarras to get Greek gigs, in the first half of this century. He also recorded a lot of Greek clarinet music. I also spent five years playing in a Greek night club. Because the history of the music is so interrelated, a lot of melodies are shared. Has Itzhak Perlman's public television production about klezmer music, "In the Fiddler's House," changed the audience for klezmer music, and fiddle in particular? That's been really goodIt's brought klezmer into the public eye in a way it'd never been beforeSomeone at Channel Thirteen (New York's PBS affiliate station) approached Perlman with the idea of exploring his musical roots. He had been thinking of it already himself, so he jumped on it. He picked four of the groups that he liked the best to work with him on the project. The television show has led to several tours with Perlman. These tours are a reunion for most of us, who started our bands when we were young. Now we tour together with our small children. ... What is the story of Fidl, your new recording? I wanted to make a record of the klezmer fiddle music that I'd always wanted to hear, but was never available. It includes instruments generally not heard in contemporary klezmer bands, like the tsimbl (a hammered dulcimer). It's a beautiful, ethereal, magical instrument, once the most important accompaniment to the fiddle. Another neglected instrument is the wooden flute. Matt Darriau, the Klezmatics' clarinetist, played it on Fidl, and in the Klezmatics' score for "A Dybbuk." I also included arrangements for bowed-bass, tsimbl, wooden flute, and fiddle. That used to be a classic combination, but is seldom heard now. Multiple fiddles are another traditionally important, beautiful sound. In a contemporary klezmer scene dominated by drums, clarinets, horns, it is a completely different, but valid, klezmer sound. I've recorded duets, trios, and quartets with three violins and a bass. On some cuts I played both melody parts, recorded and dubbed in different octaves. The other fiddler on the album, Steve Greenman, plays rhythm parts. He is a former student of mine who has really come into his own as a klezmer fiddle player now. Another interesting person on the album is the drummer, Elaine Hoffman Watts. Her father, Jacob Hoffman, was the klezmer drummer that was on all the old recordings that all the revivalists have listened to and studied to learn how to do klezmer drumming. She learned to play from him, but was never allowed to perform in public because she was a girl. Instead she was the first woman accepted into the Curtis school of music, and became a symphonic percussionist. She sounds like she came out of a time capsule, just like those old recordings. She had to wait until she was a grandmother, to be allowed to play klezmer music as a woman. She's now formed her own all-woman band. It's incredible. ... Do you improvise much within a klezmer band? All improvisation is about taking a smaller or larger repertoire of licks, then mixing and playing the melody the same way twice, something in between a classical musician reading the notes the same way every time, and a jazz musician always creating new melodies on the same chord structures, the recognizable melody. It's a tricky thing there is a gray area about what is still the melody, and what has gone over the edge into a new melody. The rhythm of the melody is what varies the most. Then you can vary the melody a little bit by adding or subtracting notes. You also do a lot of arrangements, and compose original music. Do you compose on paper or keyboards, or on your fiddle? What I've done has mainly been within the context of the Klezmatics, and for commission situations like theater, dance and film. I have music going on in my head all the time, like a soundtrack to everything I do and it's all original! I don't compose on the violin. When I'm walking the dog, I take a little tape recorder and sing into it along the way. The real skill in composing is to capture a tune before it's gone. After taping I rework it, and may write the music out, depending on who I'm working with. If it's the Klezmatics I might teach them either by ear or on paper, depending on how big a rush it is to learn. For the string orchestras in Toronto, the arrangements became more elaborate, necessary to put on paper. These were classical musicians who had never played klezmer before. They weren't ear learners at all. It's tricky enough to get some style going and to teach a little bit about ornaments, not to mention the melody. Writing the music down is a conveniencethat's all it is. ... [For information on Alicia's solo album Fidl, contact Traditional Crossroads: (800) 422-6282. For information on Klezmatics albums, contact Green Linnet/Xenophile: (800) 468-6644.] [For more information on Klezcamp, please contact the not-for-profit organization "Living Traditions" at (212) 691-1272.] [Patrice George lives in New York City, where she plays fiddle and hardingele.] For full versions of these articles, please visit Fiddler Magazine store to order back issues. |
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