Ligo,Jani and Skandinieki

The annual celebration of the summer solstice, known as Jani is generally viewed as the most important Latvian holiday. Jani is celebrated on June 23 and 24. The traditions and rituals associated with the celebration of Jani are deeply rooted in ancient Latvian folklore and continue to have deep symbolic meaning for the celebrants. Participants gather flowers, grasses and oak leaves which are used to make wreaths and decorate the farmstead, house and farm animals. Jani night activities include the singing of special Jani songs (Ligo songs) around a ceremonial bonfire. Home-brewed beer and a special Jani caraway seed cheese are an essential part of this colourful holiday ritual.
Skandinieki is a collective of singers and instrumentalists (a total of 23 are credited on this recording) that marked its 27th anniversary last November. The core of Skandinieki is the Stalts family. Dāvis, Helmi, Julgī, Marga and Ričards Stalts perform on their new CD(Dzied un spēle Skandinieki) Of note is that the Stalts are of Liv descent. Though their numbers have fallen through the years, the Livs are still alive and well in Latvia
Today there are only about 300 Livonians, most of whom have become Latvianised. Approximately 70 of them understand Livonian partially, maybe ten speak it as their mother tongue.
(read more...)

נפטר המשורר רומן באימבאיב

ביום (ה') המשורר רומן באימבאיב נפטר באופן פתאומי בגיל 55, עקב זיהום בגופו. באימבאיב אושפז בבית החולים איכילוב בתל אביב לפני מספר ימים כאשר חש ברע, ונפטר היום בשעות הבוקר המוקדמות. הלווייתו תתקיים היום ב-16:00 בבית העלמין קרית שאול.

באימבאיב נולד בצ'רנוביץ', אוקראינה, ב-1956. בתחילת שנות ה-70 עלה לישראל. בבגרותו למד הנדסת מכונות בטכניון, אך מעולם לא עסק בתחום זה, אלא בשירה ובאמנות פלסטית.

בתחילת שנות ה-90 שיתף פעולה עם האמן מיכאל רפופורט, ועבודות אמנות של השניים הוצגו במוזיאונים בישראל וברחבי העולם. בהמשך חייו החל להתמקד באמנות השירה, וב-98 פרסם את ספרו הראשון, "רומן באימבאיב מסכם את נסיונו" (הוצאת קונטרסט לשירה) אותו ערך המשורר נתן זך. בתקופה זו פרסם באימבאיב משירתו בכתבי עת שונים. ב-2006 פרסם את ספרו השני, "הלוואי וגודביי" (הוצאת אוריס מדיה) שלווה בתקליטור מוזיקלי בשיתוף עם האמן דני צוקרמן.

Lisa singing before The Fire in Ein Hod ... לפני השריפה בעין הוד

Niv Horovitz made this clip few weeks before his and our houses in Ein Hod burned in Carmel Fire
עין הוד לפני השריפה בעין הוד
ליסה ורכובסקי

Radio Mohsen

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Маёвка 1987 на Тивериадском Oзере

1.Маёвка — (в России до 1917 года) — нелегальное собрание революционно настроенных рабочих, устраиваемое за городом в день 1 мая; весенняя увеселительная прогулка за город.
2.истор. весенняя увеселительная прогулка за город ◆ Маёвкой тогда называли выезд за город на природу, но не для политики, как было при царе, а для отдыха. Михаил Хайкин, « Уха из пескарей. Истории Гончарной улицы» // «Вестник США», 2003 г. (цитата из Национального корпуса русского языка, см. Список литературы)

She decided to settle in the artists' village in Ein Hod...

in 1968 Lia (or Lea) Schubert arrived in Israel, after having served for eleven years as Artistic Director of the Ballet Academy in Stockholm. She decided to settle in the artists' village in Ein Hod establishing a school as well as a dance company in Haifa. The school attracted many students, young people and adults, dance fans and professionals, dancers and artists of various fields

In 1968, after having served for11 years as the Artistic director of the Ballet Academy in Stockholm, Lia arrived in Israel. In the first year of her stay in Israel she taught ballet at the Batsheva Ensemble, Bat-Dor Dance Company, the Music and Dance Academy in Jerusalem and at the Inbal Dance Theatre where she also served as the rehearsal director. In 1969 Lia established, together with the dancer Kaj Lutman (called Selling in Sweden), the major dancer at the Swedish Royal Opera who had international reputation, the Haifa Dance Center school and the Dance troupe Bimat Harakdanim (The dancers' stage) at the Rothschild Center in Haifa, based on a group of dancers that Oshra Elkayam-Ronen established already in 1967 (Eshel, 1993). Basing the aforementioned on two reputable and rich stage-experienced dance artists constituted a promise for the future.

In 1974, after a generation of classical dancers grew and matured at their school, Schubert and Lutman decided to concentrate on the ballet genre and established the Haifa Ballet Piccolo, supported by the Ministry of Culture, the Ministry of Education and Haifa Municipality. The troupe provided stage- experience opportunity for young dancers, the school graduates, and fostered their artistic personality. The dancing troupe performed in Haifa, Tel-Aviv and Jerusalem as well as on several television programs. Among the dances Schubert created for the group: Cinderella (1974), Coppélia (1974) and the Hoopoe Legend (1976).
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"Hava Nagila" (Hebrew: הבה נגילה) (lit. Let us rejoice)

Many of us have danced to Hava Nagilah. But how many of us know where it comes from? Here is a charming excerpt from a forthcoming documentary (featuring the co-creator of "Friends," Harry Belafonte, and Leonard Nimoy!) that has the story.

http://www.indiegogo.com/Hava-Nagilah-What-Is-It
This video is a fundraising clip forfilm Hava Nagilah: What Is It? If you'd like to support the making of the film, please make a tax-deductible donation at:
http://www.indiegogo.com/Hava-Nagilah-What-Is-It
Everyone who gives $18 or more will get a credit on the film!

Lisa, Bach and Abu Gosh

מצא עוד סרטים כאלה ב-Ein Hod עין הוד

Lisa Verchovsky ( Ein Hod ) sings
J.S.Bach-"Et Exultavit Spiritus Meus" from "Magnificat"
abu gosh 2.1.2010
on piano eyal bat
The village of Abu Gosh has important Christian connections. Beginning in the twelfth century, Christians began to identify Abu Gosh as Emmaus, where Jesus appeared after the Resurrection (Luke 24:12-31). They imagined an old caravansary they found by the village spring as the destination of the disciples as they walked along the road about seven miles from Jerusalem (Luke 24:13).
The villages impressive Crusader church, in a tranquil garden setting, is built over that spring. Its walls are adorned with paintings of New Testament figures some of the oldest medieval frescos in the world.
Abu Gosh has also been identified as Kiriath Jearim, where the Ark of the Covenant was brought after Philistine captivity (1 Sam. 6:21); a church on the hill with a panoramic view marks that spot.
ליסה ורכובסקי( עין הוד ) שרה באך באבו גוש
ein hod עין הוד

Beating the Kos

It was the Turks who early on discovered the power of military bands to excite fighters while encouraging their warrior spirit, and to maintain discipline in unity during marches in times of peace. While the roots of this tradition reach back to the Hun Empire, Turks used music on the military field in an active and functional way. In particular, the morale of the army was boosted by the incessant beating of the large drum, "kos" (a large kettle drum) and by playing inarches.
A Chinese historian described a Chinese general who had come to the region of Balasagun to Central Asia while on duty. The general had brought an ensemble of Hun (Turkish) instruments to China upon his return and had them played at the palace. This proves that Central Asian Turks used military bands in centuries previous to the advent of Islam. Central Europe was introduced to the Ottoman military ensemble, known as mehterhane, in the processions of Turkish envoys. Due to the fact that this ensemble first appeared at German battle fronts, the name, "Yeniçeri mızıkası" (Janissary band) was adopted into the German language. German and various Central European rulers and princes had an incessant desire to have their own mehterhane, and attempted many imitations. Eventually this new kind of military band ensemble came as far as Istanbul. A French style banda (band) was first shown to Selim HI in Istanbul. The French diplomat Raymond de Verninac came to Istanbul in April 1795, The new things that he displayed as soon as he arrived attracted a great deal of interest. Upon his first visit to the Ottoman Sultan, his car was preceded by a band and a squad of French soldiers. The French soldiers had attached bayonets to the ends of their rifles, and the diplomat proceeded to the palace among this ostentatious crowd.


click and play!
The American record company, G.C.R. (Gramophone Concert. Record, which was later to take the name "His Master's Voice"), began to make recordings in Istanbul in 1900. The company's first recordings became available in 1903. At approximately the same time. the German company, Favorite, entered production- While Turkish musicians were hesitant to lend their voices to recordings during these years, minority artists of Greek, Jewish, Armenian and Roma (Gypsy) origins entered the studios and made the first 78 rpm recordings- Among the features which are striking in the early period of 78 rpm record catalogues and collections are the presence of works such as polkas, waltzes, and marches, and the ensembles that played them. The ensemble entitled Garde de S.M.I. Ie Sultan which is presented to music lovers is the "Mızıkay-ı Hümayun" ensemble. There were 33 single-sided records made between the years of 1904-1911. Of these, 24 were marches with the remainder consisting of popular music of the day such as waltzes and polkas.

Андре́й Андре́евич Вознесе́нский (12 мая 1933, Москва — 1 июня 2010)

Ни славы, и ни коровы,
Ни тяжкой короны земной -
Пошли мне, Господь, второго,
Чтоб вытянул петь со мной.
Прошу не любви ворованной,
Не милости на денек -
Пошли мне, Господь, второго,
Чтоб не был так одинок;

Чтоб было с кем пасоваться,
Аукаться через степь,
Для сердца - не для оваций,-
На два голоса спеть;
Чтоб кто-нибудь меня понял,-
Не часто, но хоть разок,-
И с раненых губ моих поднял
Царапнутый пулей рожок.

И пусть мой напарник певчий,
Забыв, что мы сила вдвоем,
Меня, побледнев от соперничества,
Прирежет за общим столом.
Прости ему - он до гроба
Одиночеством окружен.
Пошли ему, бог, второго -
Такого, как я и как он...

Музыка Высоцкого на стихи Андрея Вознесенского для спектакля "Антимиры"
Andrey Andreyevich Voznesensky (Russian: Андре́й Андре́евич Вознесе́нский) (May 12, 1933, Moscow, USSR – 1 June 1, 2010, Moscow, Russia) was a Soviet and Russian poet and writer who has been referred to by Robert Lowell as "one of the greatest living poets in any language". He was one of Russia's "children of the 60s".

An Irredeemable Honk of Shit...nice review

Without dwelling on the complex socio-economic factors that can render a person homeless, really, Seasick Steve should have a bath, get a job and shut the fuck up. Of course, you can’t not dwell on such details; Steve’s shtick is singing about his time on the streets. Yet, 66 years old and four albums in, the former hobo ignores the abuse, the horror and the desolation that comes with not having a roof above you. Instead, Steve sings about life on the open road with no-one but his trusty hound for company.

In doing so – just like this review’s tasteless opening sentence – he makes a bad joke out of the misery faced daily by over 100million people worldwide. Despite this, you can’t open a music periodical without being engulfed with lashings of praise about Seasick Steve. And why does no-one offer anything other than unswerving praise (ie: lies) about him? Because we live in an age where so many people pretend to like music, obsessed with not falling behind the hum of the blogosphere

read more...
Seasick Steve - aka Steven Wold - is hysterically popular in the UK, where his first solo CD, Dog House Music, has sold 150,000 copies, and his second album, I Started Out with Nothin and I Still Got Most of It Left, debuted at number nine in the charts. Earlier this year, I saw 5000 adults of every age - but mostly the middle one - packed into a sold-out Hammersmith Apollo, dancing like drill bits, and howling back when Wold barked like a dog. It was like a revivalist meeting full of epileptic dentists.
When Wold came to Australia last year to play the Byron Bay Bluesfest, the crowd greeted him like they'd been waiting all day for a greybeard granddad with black tattoos to fingerpick songs on a one-string guitar while sitting on a chair. He returns to Byron next month, backed by enough record-company money to build a small hostel for the homeless, and his label, Warner, flew me to London to show me why.(read more...)

Udmurts or Votyaks sing Beatles

The self-appellation of this people is udmurt, vudmurt, odmort, udmort, ukmort (in plural, -joz is added, e.g. udmurtjoz). The name for the Udmurts propagated by the use in the Russian language and now outdated is Votyak, which the Udmurts consider disparaging and offensive.
The Udmurts live in an area between the rivers Vyatka and Kama in the Republic of Udmurtia (capital city Izhkar, in Russian Izhevsk). About 2/3 of the Udmurts live in their Republic (42,100 sq. km.). The rest live mainly in the Perm Province, Bashkortostan, Tatarstan, in the provinces of Kirov and Yekaterinburg of the Russian Federation, and in the Mari Republic. Occasional Udmurt settlements are also in Siberia, Kazakhstan and the Far East.

The Howlin' Wolf Story: the definitive documentary

The Howlin' Wolf Story was directed by Don McGlynn, director of Charles Mingus: Triumph Of The Underdog and many other prize-winning film biographies. It was produced by Joe Lauro, whose company, Historic Films, Inc., supplied much of the footage for Martin Scorsese's blues series on PBS. Their in-depth look at Wolf's life and music includes astounding, rare film footage and never-before-seen photos of Wolf stalking the stage at the 1964 American Folk Blues Festival, on the TV show "Shindig" in 1965, at the 1966 Newport Folk Festival, and in the Chicago clubs in the '50s and '60s.

It also includes entertaining and revealing new interviews with Hubert Sumlin, Jody Williams, Billy Boy Arnold, Sam Lay, Paul Burlison, Wolf's stepdaughters Barbara and Bettye, Dick Shurman, and many other people who played with and knew Wolf in his heyday. This is the definitive documentary about the Wolf—the most complete, personal, and exciting look at the blues legend ever put to film!(via Boogie Disease)

1949 : Tel Aviv and Max Perlman (born in Riga)

(via Pardes)
A writer in the Revisionist Herut newspaper protested in 1955 against the use of foreign languages in Israel, "the willful slavery and emulation of anything that smells foreign." "אלטע זאכן" (alte zakhn 'used items') – the call of rag-dealers under the pale blue skies of Tel Aviv, he wrote, pierces the heart and is reminiscent of Warsaw. "Is this what we strove for when attaining our independence and putting all our efforts into discarding the Diaspora and everything to do with it? Did we strive to wake up every morning to this language of Jewish rag-dealers?" The writer was particularly upset by the fact that nine out of ten rag-dealers were in fact not of Ashkenazi origins, men who didn't even know Yiddish but nevertheless learnt these particularly humiliating and insulting Yiddish words "אלטע זאכן" (alte zakhn) .
In 1950 a daily newspaper published a letter "Against a Foreign Tongue," written by an IDF soldier:
(from Mendele Review)

 I do not intend to criticize those new immigrants who use their native tongue only when they first arrive. Obviously, they have to be aided by their accustomed language when they begin to acclimatize. However, there are some people who are considered "long-timers", who find it necessary to spice their speech in public with some Yiddish. Many cafés and amusement institutions in Israel conduct a large part of their programs – songs, jokes, and so forth – in Yiddish.
In addition to the national sentiment, which forbids us the use of any language but Hebrew, we should also consider the large part of our society that does not understand Yiddish. In the state of Israel we must free ourselves from any diasporic habit, including the diasporic tongue. 

Max Perlman (1909-1985) - Perlman was born in Riga, Latvia to a middle-class family. At age six he sang in the choir of Hazan Rosovski and soon began to play children's roles in the theater.He studied at the dramatic studio in the Riga Peretz Club and found work performing in Russian and Yiddish theaters. With the founding of the Riga Nayer Yidishe Teater (New JewishTheater), he turned professional, performing steadily in Kovno and Riga between 1928 and1934.  In 1939 he was invited to Argentina, where he stayed for 3 years before moving onto Uruguay and Chile and, in 1945, to Latin America. He toured South Africa in 1948 and 1951and came to the United States in 1952, where he performed regularly from his home base inIsrael. The consummate song and dance man, comedic actor and song writer, Perlmanr eturned to Argentina in 1966 and, in 1967 toured there and in Brazil with Yiddish comedian Shimon Dzigan.

just the straight, natural blues...

He was born in 1904 in Rossville, TN, and was playing the guitar by the age of 14 with a slide hollowed out of a steer bone. His parents died when Fred was a youngster and the wandering life of a traveling musician soon took hold. The 1920s saw him playing for tips on the street around Memphis, TN, the hoboing life eventually setting him down in Como, MS, where he lived the rest of his life. There McDowell split his time between farming and keeping up with his music by playing weekends for various fish fries, picnics, and house parties in the immediate area. This pattern stayed largely unchanged for the next 30 years until he was discovered in 1959 by folklorist Alan Lomax. Lomax was the first to record this semi-professional bluesman, the results of which were released as part of an American folk music series on the Atlantic label. McDowell, for his part, was happy to have some sounds on records, but continued on with his farming and playing for tips outside of Stuckey's candy store in Como for spare change. It wasn't until Chris Strachwitz — folk-blues enthusiast and owner of the fledgling Arhoolie label — came searching for McDowell to record him that the bluesman's fortunes began to change dramatically.

When Mississippi Fred McDowell proclaimed on one of his last albums, "I do not play no rock & roll," it was less a boast by an aging musician swept aside by the big beat than a mere statement of fact. As a stylist and purveyor of the original Delta blues, he was superb, equal parts Charley Patton and Son House coming to the fore through his roughed-up vocals and slashing bottleneck style of guitar playing. McDowell knew he was the real deal, and while others were diluting and updating their sound to keep pace with the changing times and audiences, Mississippi Fred stood out from the rest of the pack simply by not changing his style one iota
(read more...)

IF IT WASN'T FOR THE IRISH AND THE JEWS

Last October, Moloney completed an album celebrating these Irish-Jewish relationships both within his own life and in American musical history. Growing up in Limerick, Moloney says, he knew “very little” about Jews or Jewish culture. He met Jewish people for the first time while at college in Dublin, and later learned that Limerick was one of few Irish cities ever to have a pogrom, in 1904. Moloney sees this project as “turning the circle, as it were,” celebrating Irish-Jewish cooperation. “If It Wasn’t for the Irish and the Jews” includes 14 songs, all researched and performed by Moloney, and products of the fruitful and nearly forgotten era of collaboration between Irish and Jewish songwriters in New York’s pre-World War I Tin Pan Alley.

Between 1880 and 1920, waves of immigrants from Eastern and Southern Europe shifted the makeup of New York City and its entertainment industry. In 1880, Irish immigrants made up one-quarter of New York City’s population and dominated the popular minstrelsy, variety theater and vaudeville scenes. First the Irish took to the New York stage and later the Jews did so, partially because of limited job opportunities elsewhere. The two groups were living on the fringes of society and in close quarters on the Lower East Side, where they often clashed along the rocky road to acceptance into mainstream American society.
Within popular culture, this reciprocity and competition led to fruitful cross-cultural pollination. Moloney points to upstart Jewish songwriters like Leonora Goldberg, who thought that to succeed, she had to “go Irish,” and so she changed her name to Nora Bayes. At the same time, farsighted Irish musicians were “hedging their bets,” worried that the only way to survive was to “go Jewish,” Moloney explained. Though he has heard thousands of songs from this era, Moloney still cannot guess the ethnicity of a song’s writers just by listening. “These were commercial songwriters,” he explained. “They knew what went over. Their genius was that they created these beautiful, crafted songs that just tugged at people’s heartstrings.”(read more...)

J.Viewz: Hot !

J.Viewz, an Israeli band founded by producer Jonathan Dagan, is taking Israel and the United States by storm with its unique blend of electronic music and soul elements with Noa Lembersky's vocals

Dear friends,
We're getting ready to start the release of the next J.Viewz album "Work in Progress".
This project is sort of changing the way we release music; basically going from albums to singles, but there's more to it as those singles will 'fill up' the album one at a time and the whole process will take place on the J.Viewz website.
check out this link for more details about Work in Progress
The first single of this project 'Come Back Down' (featuring folk vocalist Joshua James) will be released March 9th with a few different versions, all available for "Work in Progress" members.
You can listen to a sample of the song here
More news very soon,
J
and more

Rubbing the rim

Rubbing the rim of a wine glass with a wet finger will cause it to resonate at its resonant frequency. The glass is placed in front of a speaker playing a sine wave, created by the function generator, of this same frequency. When the amplitude is turned up, we can see by shining a strobe light at the glass that this resonant frequency causes it to oscillate. When the glass becomes too stressed, it will shatter, which we see very clearly on high speed video.
A few things to note: The scrolling effect seen in the strobe light footage is caused by interference between the strobe light frequency and the video camera frame rate. Also, the real oscillations of the glass are much faster than they appear in the strobe footage. Setting the frequency of the strobe light can make them appear much slower so that we can see the oscillations in real time without the help of high speed video.

The Queen of the Piedmont

Etta Baker was a master of the blues guitar style that became popular in the southern piedmont after the turn of the century. She was raised in the foothills of Caldwell County where music was central in the lives of her family and friends. Both parents played several instruments, and Etta began picking the guitar at the age of three. "I was so small, I had to lay the guitar on the bed, stand on the floor and play on the neck," she recalled. Her seven brothers and sisters already played some instruments and soon she was making music alongside them at community entertainments and corn shuckings.
Mrs. Baker played the guitar and banjo. She rarely sang, preferring to let the instrument speak for her. Like most traditional artists, she played music for personal satisfaction and for the pleasure of friends and family. However, in 1956, her music was recorded on the influential album Instrumental Music of the Southern Appalachians. She was also featured on a 1972 recording Music From the Hills of Caldwell County. Her popular CD, One Dime Blues, came out in 1991 to great reviews.
In her last 30 years, Mrs. Baker carried her music far beyond the borders of Caldwell County. She performed at the National Folk Festival at Wolf Trap Park in Virginia, the 1984 World's Fair in Knoxville, the Kent State Folk Festival, and the Augusta Heritage Festival. In 1982 she and her sister Cora Phillips were honored jointly with the North Carolina Folklore Society's Brown-Hudson Award. She received the National Heritage Fellowship Award from the National Endowment for the Arts in 1991.
Etta Baker and her husband Lee raised nine children, many of whom carry on the family musical tradition. She also worked for more than 20 years at the Skyland Textile Company before retiring in order to pursue her performing career. Mrs. Baker passed away in October, 2006 at the age of 93, having achieved international recognition for her artistry and for North Carolina's finger-picked blues tradition.
(read more..)

Liquid Sky of Slava Tsukerman

Liquid Sky is an independent American film produced in 1983 with a budget of $500,000. It broke all the existing box office and duration records in the U.S., Germany and Japan (citation needed) and won a cult following shortly after its release. In New York, Boston and Washington D.C. the film played non-stop for more than three years and grossed more than a million dollars in each city. Liquid Sky was the recipient of five international film festival awards.

In April 16, 2009 Dan Person of current.com recalls that upon its release Liquid Sky "provoked heated arguments and, love it or hate, was required viewing for anyone who really cared about film." Dan Person considers the film "one of the formative forces of indie film."
Carlos James Chamberlin wrote in March, 2004 at senseofcinema.com: "It’s about time people started rendering into Liquid Sky. Its long lipstick trace is smudged through much of indie cinema."
Liquid Sky regularly plays at numerous international film festivals and every screening is completely sold out. The audiences are young and their reaction to the film is more fervent than it was when the film was first released in 1983.
Vladislav "Slava" Tsukerman (born 1940) is an Russian film director. He was born in the Soviet Union and emigrated in 1973 with his wife Nina Kerova to Israel. In 1976 he moved to New York City. He is best known for producing, directing, and writing the screenplay for the 1982 cult film Liquid Sky. He also directed the 2004 documentary Stalin's Wife (about Nadezhda Alliluyeva) and the 2008 film Perestroika.
Liquid Sky (Slava Tsukerman, 1982) Plot summary: Tiny aliens in a very small flying saucer (which looks like a cheap neon Frisbee) come to Earth, looking for heroin. They land on roof of a penthouse in New York's East Village (new-wave Manhattan) inhabited by a drug dealer (Paula E. Sheppard (the former child star of 'Alice, Sweet Alice')) and her female, androgynous, bisexual nymphomaniac lover, who is a fashion model (Anne Carlisle). The aliens are after the chemicals produced in the human brain during orgasm, which they have discovered is far superior to heroin, and the model's casual sex partners quickly begin to disappear, one by one by one.

This increasingly bizarre scenario is observed by a lonely, (sex-starved) woman in the building across the street, the German scientist, Johann Hoffman, who is following the aliens (played by Otto Von Wernherr), and an equally androgynous, and drug-addicted male model (also played by Anne Carlisle).