Great post, Arle. Thank you!
Felicia.
On Feb 20, 2011, at 2:38 PM, Arle Lommel wrote:
I'm not going to argue that we should consider this great art, but a
bit of context may help explain it and show why it's valuable.
I can pretty much tell you this guy's story in broad strokes just
from the recording, which is very typical of ones in the Soviet era
from the 1960s–mid 1980s. He was a peasant who had played the
instrument in the 1920s or 1930s and then gave up the instrument
because nobody wanted that kind of music any more. (My guess is that
this particular player had never been particularly good, but he had
probably been much better at some point in the past than what you
see here.) He didn't touch it for decades until one day in the late
1960s or 1970s a bearded young researcher knocked on his door and
asked him if he played the hurdy-gurdy (because someone in a
neighboring village thought she remembered that someone had once
played it and it might have been this guy). If he was lucky he had
an instrument buried in about an inch of dust in his attic, but more
than likely he didn't have one anymore, having sold it at some point
to buy bread. So he either tried to get his instrument working or
was loaned one and asked to perform. He had to try to remember how
to do everything without any of the tools he once used and was given
little time to prepare. Depending on the circumstances, he may have
played for this researcher for a few weeks or only a few hours, and
he probably never had occasion to play hurdy-gurdy again,
disappearing back into obscurity since nobody but these long-haired
researchers wanted this sort of thing anymore.
That's why you get an abundance of these terrible recordings of out-
of-tune instruments. You really can't blame the players in most
cases. I've listened to a lot of these kinds of recordings, and, if
you can get past the tuning and the effects of decades of neglect,
many show genuine skill that just needs some cultivation. While it
sounds bad to us, these recordings are often all we have of once-
vibrant traditions that have vanished. I'm glad we have even this,
because without this sort of recording we'd have nothing.
Under the same circumstances, how many of us would have done any
better?
-Arle
On Feb 20, 2011, at 13:08 , Michael Opp wrote:
Has anyone seen this yet?
They mic the instrument, but not his voice. >.>
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SNF5Daew1Dk
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