New recommendations on the "mailto" page
When I started the KlezmerShack, I would often get e-mails from other fans about concerts, local bands, and the like. These days, many people have their own websites to which I link, and longer narratives wind up as their own articles hosted here on the KlezmerShack. Many others participate in the Jewish-Music mailing list. That's all good, but I am sorry that there are fewer short messages about bands or concerts or other Jewish music experiences. A good example is this short message about three bands whose music he especially enjoys playing on his show, from Michael W. Atleson, who hosts a Jewish music show up in Portland, ME. You can view it as the latest entry on the "mailto" page, one of the very first KlezmerShack pages.
Comments
I found your page today and I'm not sure if I'm writting in the apropriate place. Anyway, I'm trying to explain and show my work/project which I'm playing here around my country Brazil. I'm brazilian composer and I did a big job researching and mixing klesmer and latinameriacn rythms in order to sing the tragic history of my relatives whom were killed in the little town of Keidainiai during the Holocaust. I'm showing my CD around the country and even in Switzerland last year. I'd like to include this project in iyour list as an example of research of music and history, mixing traditions.
As the release explain: "My Long Milonga is a result of a long research done by the composer {CLÁUDIO LEVITAN), blending the rhythms of Rio Grande do Sul (State of South of Brazil) and the rhythms of Central Europe that were brought by the immigrants, especially the ones of a Jewish origin who came to this area. This research resulted in the recording of a CD and several concerts, welcomed by the music reviews and and by music historiographers and researchers in Brazil. This performance was awarded prizes such as: the Açorianos and the Itaú Cultural Rumos Musicais. UNESCO has given institutional support to the bilingual version of the CD and the work has had remarkable performances at Theater São Pedro and at the III World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, at Theater of Itaú Cultural and Theater SESC Pompeia in São Paulo and at Theatre Saint Gervais in Switzerland. In the end of 2003, performances were made in different cities around the state of Rio Grande do Sul.Based on the format of the payadas from Rio Grande do Sul in which the singer/poet narrates a story around the fogo-chão (a kind of bonfire on the ground), MY LONG MILONGA tells the story of a tragic correspondence between two cousins. One of them migrates to Brazil, the other, who stays in his hometown, Keidainiai, dies in the holocaust during World War II. He was murdered together with other two thousand people. This saga is shown through 17 songs in a curious folk operistic monologue. A tale that talks about the human feelings facing loss and injustice, also about the weakness before the brutality of the states that are totalitary and kill people, situations in which society is not built in favor of all, but for the implementation of discord and racism. In the middle of this tragedy, nevertheless, there is the shining of the love between partners, fellows, friends, parents and children, men and women, there is also the kindness that exists among people."
Sincerelly, cláudio levitan
Posted by: CLÁUDIO LEVITAN | May 12, 2004 1:02 PM