LAMUSIQUE
JUIVEISALIVE




MY DEBUT CD IS OUT NOW! "King David's Lyre; Echoes of Ancient Israel" is available from: http://cdbaby.com/cd/mlevyThis is my 2nd "unplugged" version on Youtube, of this simply amazing melody, "Khosid Dance" - a precious remnant of the Jewish music which once thrived in Hungary. It was remembered by gentile Hungarian musicians, who knew this to be a melody often played by musicians of the Hungarian Jewish community. These precious surviving shards of melody are literally all that remains of the CENTURIES of exquisitely beautiful Jewish music & culture which once flowered in Hungary; all of which which was so brutally crushed into Oblivion, during the pointless, mindless murder of the Holocaust... I heard it on a fabulous recording, called "Musikas;The Lost Jewish Music of Transylvania" -

http://www.muzsikas.hu/pages/jewish.htm



There are so many influences from Romanian Gypsy music that can be heard in these recordings - very often in Eastern Europe, there was a direct exchange of musical ideas between the Gypsy & Jewish communities which once co-existed together, both these communities being shoved to the fringes of society in Eastern Europe; before both these peace-loving communities were also almost erased from History altogether, in the pointless, bloody Barbarity of Hitler's Holocaust...Another fascinating recording I can recommend, is called "Like a Different World", by the late Leon Schwartz - http://www.amazon.com/Live-Different-...


In this unique recording, can be heard a Jewish fiddle player who was born in Poland in 1902, and was actually taught to play fiddle by the local Gypsy musicians who lived near his village...a fantastically beautiful fusion of styles!To TRY and emulate this (although I'm afraid that I'm COMLETELY self-taught on fiddle!), I have started & ended the melody with a bit of improvisation in the style of the "Doina" - a typical Romany style which was directly adopted by the Jewish Klezmer musicians of Eastern Europe.

When most people try to contemplate the almost unfathomable Tragedy of the Holocaust, they forget that it was not only the pointless murder of 6 million innocent souls - what was ALSO lost, were literally CENTURIES of exquisite Jewish Eastern European music & tradition, which was almost totally erased from History, along with the countless Jewish Klezmer musicians who were murdered along with everyone else in the formerly thriving, peace-loving Jewish communities of Eastern Europe.

Most Eastern European Klezmer musicians of old, by the very fact of simply being born Jewish (& therefore due to the stifling restrictions and prejudice they patiently suffered every day of their lives),were never were given the privilege or opportunity to even learn to read or write the music they taught themselves to play, and so they passed their beloved music down aurally, from generation to generation - this is why most of this amazing music died along with all the Jewish musicians who were so pointlessly murdered at the hands of Nazi brutal barbarity.

Most of the Klezmer repertoire we have today, ONLY exists, thanks to the fact that before the War, a handful of Jewish Klezmer musicians emigrated to America from Eastern Europe, carrying with them, a precious "invisible baggage" of the melodies they knew and loved from their respective homelands.With the formation of Klezmer Orchestras in America,(eg Harry Kandel's famous "Klezmer Orchestra"),some of these melodies were later recorded, mostly around the 1920s...it is thanks to the preservation of these beautiful old Jewish melodies onto these records, that Eastern European Jewish Klezmer music as we know it, has managed to cling to existence at all.In this arrangement,

I have ditched my frankly awful electric fiddle, in favour of my 254 year old BEAUTY,(made in London in 1753 by Remerus Liessem - and which I found for a just few hundred quid in a secondhand music store!). Which version do listeners prefer? All constructive criticisms are welcome!I apologize again, for the "rough edges" in my playing - like the Klezmorium of old, I am entirely self-taught...I never had either the money or the opportunity for some MUCH needed violin lessons!:o(If music can "Capture the Soul" of a People, then may this tiny, insignificant piece of Cyberspace be my tribute to the Jewish musicians of Eastern Europe who were so brutally butchered - at least THIS little melody which some of them once played, will now, forever, live on...