Transitory repertoire in local and territorial traditions based on the example of Jewish melodies from Belarus used in the movie with digressions into a broader context
In the list of melodies in the credits of the movie, we see an interesting division: Jewish melodies | Dance and song repertoire | Belarusian melodies Jewish melodies include what we know from the records of folklorists who collected (in Belorussia) Jewish folklore, Belarusian melodies include what we know from the records of folklorists who collected (in Belorussia) Belarusian folklore (with an emphasis on melodies with names having something in common with Jewish ones – sherly/nozhni/zhydok), and the third category includes everything else.
Let’s take a closer look: we see in the list of “Jewish melodies” the volikh (Wallachian/Romanian). And in the list of Belarusian melodies, we see sherly/nozhni, which refers us to the name of the Jewish dance sherele (=scissors). Are these borrowings? Did the Belarusians steal the Jewish dance? Cultural influences, maybe? How are intercultural bonds organized here, and how can understanding their structure help us?
Nata: During the preparation of the soundtrack, the musicians worked with several melodies, which in folklorists’ records are called “nozhni”, “sherly”, “nazhnichki”. For the convenience of use, regional markers like Mozyr, Kobrin, etc. were added to the names of the tunes used by informants. More details about some tunes can be found in the Music section. Did the klezmers give any names to their tunes so as not to misidentify them?
Ilya: That’s a good question. I don’t know exactly, but if we look at the original anthologies of the klezmers who published their repertoire, starting with Kostakowsky, they have numbers. Freilekhs number 27, all that. In some places there were additions, proper names like “Selma Waltz”, or for those that had a vocal version (songs sung to the same melodies), the name of the song Bulgar 14 “Yurke fort Avek”
Nata: I’m curious, when they played at weddings, how did they know what tune they were going to play next? Or when guests would “buy” a melody, how would they name it? We know these tunes from published collections or from the notes of ethnomusicologists who collected them.
Let’s start with the names. Here’s one for example, the volikh. This name refers us to Wallachia, meaning Wallachian, i.e., Romanian. Melodies with similar names are known not only in the Jewish dance repertoire. We find the Vlashko kolo1 в in Serbia, the Vlashko oro in Macedonia2, the Vlashko horo in Bulgaria3, and Vlakhikos skaros (Vlash improvisation)4 in Greece. In the latter case, however, it is no longer a reference to the Romanians, but to the Aromanians5, another Romance-speaking people who live in Greece.
Nata: In the Magic Scissors movie, as the leitmotif of the “love theme” of the main characters, Volikh 9 from Zusman Kiselhof’s collection is used. This melody appears three times, the first one as a cappella in the “dream” scene, at 00:46:56 (see timing in the description under the video), then in the “declaration of love” scene at 00:50:01, and finally, the essence of this theme is revealed in the final scene of the movie, in the “Chuppah” scene at 00:57:44.
The corresponding reference can mean both a direct reference – “Wallachian melody”, I heard it from the Vlachs/Romanians/Moldavians… – and now I play it for you – and a style or stylization – a melody in the Wallachian style. Accordingly, the name Volekh/Volikh/Vulakh does not even define one specific genre in the Klezmer and Hasidic repertoire: it can be dance music6, or non-mensural music, music for listening or ritual music, such as the doina – “The Doina, or Voloch, is a Rumanian form, out of tempo and largely improvised (Pete Solokow);” | “Doina … Also known as vulekhl (Michael Alpert)”7 or nigun dveikut8. André Hajdu even cites evidence that the name Vulekhl was adopted for the melody accompanying the dance imitating the resurrection from the dead at the Lag Ba Omer celebration on Mount Meron9, that is, it became the name of the melody of a particular dance ritual.
This raises several interesting questions.
The simplest one is why Wallachian melodies turned out to be in demand in Belarus. The fashion for “Romanian” sounding – common for Jewish communities of different regions of the same time – could influence this. There is an example when folklorists collecting Jewish folklore in Belarus collected not just melodies “in the Wallachian spirit”, but specifically Romanian/Moldavian/Bukovinian material: compare the redele from Kiselhof’s collection recorded in the Belarusian town of Dubrovno with the hora mare performed by Colea Serban10 or the vivat11 from the village of Gura Galbenei from the collection of the Moldavian folklorist Petr Stoianov “500 мелодий де жокурь дин Молдова”.
The distance from Gura Galbenei to Dubrovno is about 1500 km (and even less in a straight line). This distance is not that big for traveling melodies. For example, the melody of the song Tamganeydendiker nign (Dos Freylekhe Shnayderl)12 is known in Ukraine (as Jewish and Greek), and also in Iran – two times farther.
The second, more interesting one – what then does the knowledge or ignorance of this name give us? One can carefully assume that a triple-time melody with a “Wallachian” reference would be more likely to be in the rhythm of a Moldavian/Romanian triple-time hora than in the rhythm of a mazurka or waltz. But even this is more of a probability: for example, in the Uri Sharvit’s collection of Belz niguns, many three-quarter melodies have the name “nigun waltz”, including those with melodic figures that clearly refer to another form – for example, to a Moldavian hora13. So it is important for the performer to know the typical melodic elements and accents in a tune in order to “recognize” the genre of the melody by them.
Nata: For Reyzl’s romantic theme, the project’s musicians suggested using the Vilnia Waltz. It first appears in the movie soundtrack at 00:16:18, when Hirsch talks about his innocent sister Reyzl.
In post-folk recordings we find a note in the caption for this tune – from the repertoire of Ales Los (Belarusian multi-instrumentalist, folklorist). This is not a typical waltz for the local “musical language”. The origin of this melody is not very clear, but when listening to it, even a not too trained ear catches “Jewish notes”. Curiously, what are the chances of finding a “Wallachian” trace of this melody? Is it similar to a hora in terms of melody structure, metric signature, phrasing, etc.? What is it like generally? To my dancer’s senses, it’s definitely not a waltz.
Ilya: But Marysia Stępień, a violinist from Łódź, sees it as a typical waltz. It’s all rather subjective…
Nata: According to Ales Los: “The Vilnia Waltz came to my homestead from the distant Węgajty. It is a klezmer waltz, which was played in Vilnia in the 30s by a klezmer kapelye. I heard it in the 90s from Edmurta and Waclaw, my good friends, creators of the village theater “Teatr wiejski w Węgajtach”. And since that time this waltz has brought warm memories and good emotions to me and my friends.” (from Instagram). Here you can already start a discussion on “klezmer waltzes in Eastern Europe in the 1930s”… If there is someone to support it.
But still, the title is an important reference. And by not following the title we can lead the melody away from the function in which it was played in its place of origin. This is not always a bad thing and can be our intention, as in the case of the “Guzikov’s Psalm” in our soundtrack
Nata: Mikhael Iosif Guzikov was a virtuoso musician and composer born in 1806, son of a klezmer from Shklov (a Jewish township, now a town, in Belarus, in the Mahiliow region).
After becoming famous, Guzikov toured many European cities, and in 1835 he reached Vienna. There is a myth that socialite ladies wore curls at the temples “à la Guzikov” in imitation of his side-locks (see hairstyles of the Biedermeier era).
In addition to the xylophone, a “harmonica made of wood and straw” invented by Guzikov, history has preserved one of his compositions in sheet music- “Shir Наmа a lot” (Psalm 126). Which caused a lot of discussion while working with it for the soundtrack recording and afterward.
This tune was chosen as the leitmotif of the main character in the movie. The klezmer tutor suggested playing it in the genre of khosidl. This is how the tune was sent from a spiritual piece “for listening” to the dance genre.
More details about this tune can be found in the Music section.
What in these notes most strongly “hints” at the dance texture of the melody?
Ilya: Dance melodies often combine even values (creating a kind of a roll, general movement) in long phrases with accents emphasizing the peculiarities of the dancers’ movements. Here the second and fourth parts behave like this. But it’s all very conventional, not much will change in the sheet music when remaking a song melody into a dance melody. So it’s more of a rationalization of feelings.
And the third, most interesting question is how to play this melody, Volikh 9 from Kiselhof’s collection, if we want to reconstruct the sound of a Jewish volikh from Belarus, as it may have been. We could use some references, samples of how volikhs actually sounded in Belarus.
First of all, there is Sofia Magid’s collection. It contains audio recordings (wax rolls) of actual “volakhs/volikhs”:
- Volakh (roll 3642,1), Mozyr district of the Gomel region, performed by Bukhman, violin
- Volakh (roll 4574,1), Babruisk district of the Gomel region14, performed by Peysakh Moiseevich Milchin, violin
- Volokh (roll 1873,1) Prapoysk district of the Gomel region15, performed by Shaya Vulf and Meishe Salodkin, violins
Of these three examples, only Salodkins’ Volokh is a melody in ¾, as is Kiselhof’s Volikh 9.
Also worthy of note are the three-time melodies from the same collection entitled “Zhog” – apparently a modified spelling of the Moldavian word “zhok”, dance.
all four recordings are from Mozyr district of the Gomel region, performed by David Moiseevich Veksler, violin
Audio recordings (also wax rolls) from the Kiselhof’s collection, kept in the Kiev Academy of Sciences named after Vernadsky, are also partially published20. Among the published records, there is a volekh, though a two-time one:
- Volekh, (roll 1135,1)21, Babinavichy, Belarus, performed by Itzhok Avrutiner (voice)
Finally, there are volakhs in the repertoire of Belarusian Hasidim. Partly these are klezmer melodies transferred to vocal music. Here it is worth to turn to the repertoire of the Chabad (Lubavitch) Hasidim. Though today Lubavitchi belongs to Smolensk region of the Russian Federation, it was included in it only in 1919; before that Lubavitchi was in Mahiliow province in Belarus. Here are some Lubavitchi volakhs:
- Niggun Volach22, performed by R. Shmuel Betzalel Althous
- Volach’l23, performed by R. Shmuel Betzalel Althous
- Niggun Volach (Ach Tzabana)24, performed by R. Shmuel Betzalel Althous
- Ga’aguim Volach25, performed by R. Shmuel Betzalel Althous
- Niggun Volach by R. Nota from Pakhar26
- Niggun Volach27, performed by R. Shmaryau Feldman
- and several other Lubavitcher volachs are collected in a playlist 28 on Youtube.
In some of them, especially in the niguns “Volach (Ach Tzabana)” and “Volach’l”, I can hear a “klezmer” origin, primarily due to specific melismas.
These niguns are partly attributed in the Chabad tradition as originating already from Ukraine – Nikolaev (the first two) and Pakhar, near Chernigov (the third), and some of them have been already composed in the second half of the XX century. So these sources are already secondary: here we assume that the nusakh (conventionally, melos) was transferred by the Lubavitch Hasidim from Belarus.
We have a corpus of more than a ten melodies. The next step is to analyze this corpus and work on mastering this material. I would like to understand what regional peculiarities there are here, how exactly the Romanian/Wallachian repertoire was refracted in the prism of the performance by Jewish musicians from Belarus. Perhaps for this purpose it would be necessary to broaden the view: it would be good to understand, for example, what there is in the performance of these melodies that is not present in the performance of other repertoire by the same musicians; for this purpose we will have to listen to how they sing/play other repertoire, not volakhs. This is a big and difficult work, due to the scarcity of material. Nevertheless, having well mastered the material of this corpus, having learned to play volakhs and zhoks from Belarus in a style close to the way they sound in these recordings, we can already take up the Kiselhof’s Volakh with the intention to perform it in a similar style. There is still not enough information, but it is already a step in the right direction.
Let us move a little away from looking specifically at the volikh and examine the bigger picture. We can see how the cultural interaction between, in our example, Romanian and Jewish music is structured differently: it can be a melody that exists in both cultures, or it can be just a reference to a stylistics – as in klezmer music, the style of “volekh” appears, and for example in Polish music, the style of polka “zhidowka”. It is interesting separately that the transfer may not retain the function. A vivat (a melody for greeting the guests, for which the guests give money to the musicians) becomes a redele, and another melody suddenly acquires the ritual function of accompanying a dance imitating the resurrection of the dead.
Nata: “Zhydok kalyadny” is used in the movie soundtrack as a melody emphasizing the “broygez” (quarrel) scene at 00:51:42. You can read more about this genre dancing act in the Music section. From ethnographic notes it is known that this melody accompanied the actions of the “zhyd” character in the Belarussian caroling rite.
In the Belarusian folk dance repertoire there are also dances with the described choreography named Zhydok (or Hirsha-Moisha) and Zhydovachka.
I thought you said you met this tune in Lublin?
Ilya: No. But I watched Herody, a carol performance, in Lublin, where there was a figure of a Jew who came to King Herod. There is a lot like that on Youtube, for example: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=herody+koledniczych. And I have the texts and sheet music of the Lublin versions.
Hence – here I comment on the terminology used in our zoom meetings – it seems to me that we should not abuse the idea of “borrowing” melodies and dances, but rather talk about the local repertoire common to neighboring cultures; such an optic is more fruitful and helps to avoid hasty conclusions and even conflicts.
Nata: Within the framework of the project we had two discussion meetings:
1) Litvak Dialogue: How to extract diamonds from under the archival dust?
2) Litvak way to play music. Analysis of two melodies used to create the soundtrack to the movie. Namely – Guzikov’s Psalm and Mozyr Nozhni
Also: 3) Presentation of the results of the project
Say, the assumption that sherly is the Belarusan borrowing of the Jewish dance sher is only one of many equal possibilities. A dance with a similar name is known in different countries (Beregovsky mentions Ukrainian, Czech, Polish, Romanian, and Galician shers29). It is possible that all of them, as well as the Belarusian sherly, go back to one common source, but it is impossible to specify this source with certainty (for the Jewish shers, Beregovsky sees medieval Germany as such a source). Moreover, it is not excluded, for example, and we see examples of this in other cases of dances and melodies common to neighboring cultures, that as a melody is played in different traditions to different dances30, so a dance can be close in movements, but have separate, own melodies in the neighboring peoples (see, for example, the division of kolomyikas into Jewish and Ukrainian ones in the Kostakowsky’s collection). So we can assume, for example, that nozhni and sherly are melodies common for the Belarusan and Jewish repertoire of Belarus, but only the found examples of concrete structural or melodic parallels of Belarusan melodies with Jewish samples would make this assumption reliable.
But in fact the validity of such an assumption is not so important. The stylistics of performance, the auditory experience of musicians and their performing experience determine the “Jewish” or “Belarusian” sound of a melody to a much greater extent than the origin of the melody itself. So, instead of discussing the direction of borrowing, it is more interesting to immerse oneself in the material – Belarusian and Jewish – to the extent that allows one later, conditionally speaking, to play any given sheet music material in the necessary style. This is how traditional music has always lived (and “our” sound was determined): not by the notes of the melody, but by the way of its interpretation.
Nata: One of the tasks of the project was to search for the “Jewish” sound of melodies recorded from Belarusian folk musicians. And also to try to determine their original function. Well, or the one they had at the moment when they entered the Belarusan repertoire. I wonder if the post-folklore musicians managed to convey the Jewish sound in some melodies of the soundtrack?
There’s a direct question 🙂
Ilya: Heh, it’s not within the scope of this story, I guess. In general, they managed to add elements of “Jewishness”, in some places, the beginning has been made. But what comes next…))
Nata: And next, we continue to work with the performance features of this repertoire as well, and with the immersion in it and its cross-cultural connections! Wish good luck to us and to all who make dancing Raisn visible. Including Zisl Slepovich, who has a book published in December 2024 of notations of Sofia Magid’s audio recordings collected by the researcher in Belarus (then Soviet Belorussia) in 1928-1938. You can order the book at https://Zisl.bandcamp.com/merch
Author of the text – Ilya Saitanov (Israel)
October, 2024
Questions were asked and the text was commented by Nata Holava,
coordinator of the Litvak Dialogue project
1 Дувачки оркестар Тимочани, Књажевац – Влашко коло #1 (Serbia)
2 Ansambl Čalgija – Vlaško Oro (Macedonia)
3 Благой Благоев – Влашко хоро (Bulgaria)
4 Ζαχαρούλα (Βλάχικος χορος) (Greece)
6 Art Shryer’s Modern Jewish Orchestra – Besaraber vulach
7 Volekh (Lexicon of Klezmer Terminology)
8 Reb Shmuel Betzalel Althaus – Niggun Volach
9 “In the ‘volekhl’ or ‘tekhiat ha-metim,’ that usually follows the the ‘beroyges’ dance, the first dancer attempts to revive with his movements and chants the one who is dead, until they dance together the final hora…’Volekhl’ (Wallachian) name given to a Romanian melody of the form doyne-hora to which the tekhiat ha-metim is danced (resurrection of the dead).” [Lag B’Omer, Meron, Israel, 1960s-70s]. Hadju 1971, “Le Niggun Meron” in Yuval: Studies of the Jewish Music Research Centre Volume II, 1971, p. 83. Cited by: Volekh (Lexicon of Klezmer Terminology)
10 Colea Serban With Orchestra Conducted By Harry de Groot – Doina En Hora Mare (@3:33)
11 P. Stoianov “500 мелодий де жокурь дин Молдова”, Кишинэу, “Карта Моловеняскэ”, 1972, p. 278
12 Nehama Lifshitz – Dos Freylekhe Shnayderl
13 נגון ולס (nigun vals) by El’azar Sharvit, from the Uri Sharvit collection @29:05
14 https://cloud.mail.ru/public/WDxz/pNR4UcrfM
15 https://cloud.mail.ru/public/yS1r/e2Tdh21E3
16 https://cloud.mail.ru/public/Rxzz/NRmjG2bQz
17 https://cloud.mail.ru/public/Asqz/B6cbMLapx
18 https://cloud.mail.ru/public/iTih/VPimbvtx4
19 https://cloud.mail.ru/public/QQru/KcUYj8Vjj
20 Матеріали з колекції Зиновія Кісельгофа. Фольклор і театр.
21 https://web.archive.org/web/20240206091005/https://audio.ipri.kiev.ua/CD3/Track_02.mp3
22 https://youtu.be/mq_w-0mp-Ls?feature=shared
23 https://youtu.be/5aaUJ0lxpP0?feature=shared
24 https://youtu.be/jdo81Dj7uMM?feature=shared
25 https://youtu.be/YQamGq65-4I?feature=shared
26 Performed by R. Shmaryau Feldman and a few performances here
27 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gNw5PhlQ8cQ
28 “Volach” playlist @Niggunei Chabad youtube channel
29 Sher (Lexicon of Klezmer Terminology)
30 see examples in the Eshkolot Radio podcast “Kazachok II”: “In other versions, e.g. Aurel Mandake’s [Kazachok melody] it is already the Ruszászka (Russian) dance of the Hungarian Csángós from the Romanian province of Moldova. Note the names: csárdás, ruszászka – do you realize what’s going on? The melody breaks away from the dance that was danced to it and is adapted to another, local dance. And not only is it now called differently, it is now danced differently – and the music adapts to the new dance. The ruszászka, for example, is no longer a solo dance, but a couple dance; in the first figure, the couples move from the edge of the circle to the center and back, and on the second figure, they spin each separately.”
Nata: Meaning on the territory of the Republic of Belarus, which, being a part of the Russian Empire, was called the Belorussian Governorate until 1918, and in the period from 1919 to 1991, the Belorussian Socialist Soviet Republic or Belorussia.
In the project, we work with records collected by folklorists mainly during this time.
The question of names matters. Who named it, when and why? What does it tell us about the time and about how that time and the particularities of the time affect the object we are investigating? Let’s consider the fact that in the already Soviet Belarus the official state languages until 1936 were Belarusian, Russian, Polish, and Yiddish. This means, at least, that there was something going on between all four languages, as well as between people who used them in their daily communications. By the way, music and dance are also languages…
And what did the Jews call Belarus?
Ilya: Quoting Slepovich from our podcast, “In the Yiddish language, these [Belarusan] lands were called Raisn (etymology of the word: Rus). The word “Lite” referred to “Lithuania” as a whole, as the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, and today we understand it broadly as the area of the use of the Lithuanian, or Litvak, dialect of Yiddish. However, there is also a narrower understanding of Lite – approximately as modern Lithuania. And in this row there is Lite, there is Raisn – roughly modern Belarus, and there is Letland – Latvia.