Ramona Depares interviews orchestra director Alan Berne ahead of The Other Europeans’ performance in Malta as part of Valletta 2018 festivities.

The Other Europeans focuses on klezmer and lautari music. Can you explain  what these types of music refer to?

Originally, the terms klezmer and lautari referred not to a kind of music, but to the musicians themselves. Klezmer is the Yiddish word for a professional musician who played at weddings, celebrations and other important events in Yiddish culture, and lautar is the Romanian word for basically the same thing, but not restricted to Yiddish culture.

In former Bessarabia, which is now divided among Moldova, the Ukraine and Romania, there were mixed communities of Jewish and Roma professional musicians who shared the responsibility for playing for all local events. They could be called klezmorim or lautari, simply depending on whether one used the Yiddish word or the Romanian word.

The aim was to create music with real roots, independent of the clichés of the World Music market

Eventually, for reasons including both the Holocaust and immigration, only the Roma side of that community was left in that part of the world, although there were klezmer musicians living in the US, Argentina, Israel and other parts of the world. From that point on, let’s say the mid-1980s, klezmer came to stand for Yiddish music, and lautar came to stand for Roma music from Moldova and Romania. I know this is a little complex, but unfortunately, that’s the way history is sometimes!

How popular are these two genres in Europe?

Starting in the mid-1980s, a revival of Yiddish music known as the ‘klezmer revival’ started in the US. It quickly spread to Europe and, today, it’s known all over Northern and Eastern Europe and parts of Southern Europe. Lautari music is even more popular, but most people know it simply as Romanian Gypsy (or Roma) music. But popular is, of course, relative. Both kinds of music are regularly heard at world music festivals, but the audience is still very small compared with the audience for Beyoncé or Justin Timberlake, for example.

How did The Other Europeans come together and what was the aim?

Both klezmer music and lautari music are often promoted as something exotic in World Music and their real histories are often ignored. I thought it was important to explore those real histories and let the musicians tell their own stories. 

So, I proposed an artistic research grant to the European Union, and it was fortunately accepted. That provided funding for two years to find the musicians for the project, take research trips to Moldova and Israel, and perform concerts in Europe.

Just finding the musicians was a long but important process, and finally I chose 14 musicians from eight countries. In the end, the aim was to create music with real roots, independent of the clichés of the World Music market. I should also mention that there were three organisations that partnered to make the whole thing possible: my own organisation in Weimar, Germany, called Yiddish Summer, then the International Jewish Music Festival of Krakow, Poland, and finally the KlezMore Festival of Vienna.

The Other EuropeansThe Other Europeans

Is there a story behind the name?

Yes, and I’m glad you asked. From the early 19th century until the founding of the European Union, to be a ‘true’ European meant to have a national home in Europe. French people were rooted in France, Germans in Germany, Italians in Italy, etc. 

Where did that leave the Jews and Roma living in Europe, who had no national home? Well, they were considered visitors, or even parasites in Europe, but certainly not ‘true’ Europeans. But after the founding the European Union, the idea of European identity shifted away from national identity and towards a trans-national identity.

A ‘true’ European was someone whose horizons extended beyond national boundaries, someone who was transnational. Ironically, it was precisely the Jews and the Roma who had been thinking just like that the whole time. So, through a twist of fate, the Jews and the Roma suddenly became models of the new, trans-national European identity, instead of outcasts. For that reason, I called the project The Other Europeans.

You have already released an award-winning album called Splendor – what can you tell us about this. What has been the public’s reaction to this album?

Splendor is a double-CD, recorded live in concert during Yiddish Summer in Weimar. The music is 90 per cent improvised, because traditionally, klezmorim and lautari always improvised.

I created my own label for the CD, because I didn’t want an outside producer telling us what to do with our music. When we won the German Record Critic’s prize we had a great feeling of success and independence. I have only heard very positive reactions to the album, to be honest. Of course, we’ll have the CD with us in Valletta.

What are the biggest challenges in making The Other Europeans the success that it is?

Well, with 14 musicians living in eight countries, it’s difficult and expensive to get everyone together. The grant from the European Union made that possible for the first two years, but after that we are on our own. Another difficulty is language. There are six main languages spoken in the group: English, Russian, Hungarian, Romanian, German and French, and nobody speaks all of them! So we are constantly translating everything we say, and that slows down communication, to say the least. But that’s not always a bad thing, I guess.

You were also the subject of a documentary – The Broken Sound. What can you tell us about this?

A film team from Weimar accompanied the project every step of the way, They made hundreds of hours of film, which they edited down to two hours. The process was a huge challenge for them, because they were often filming conversations in languages they didn’t understand.

So, afterwards they had to bring in translators to explain what they had actually filmed. The film shows all of the ups and downs of the project and takes the viewer on trips to Texas, Hungary, Moldova, Germany, Israel and France. I think it was made with a lot of love. It’s available on DVD, and we’ll have copies of it with us in Valletta.

Who are the musicians that make up The Other Europeans?

I created my own label for the CD, because I didn’t want an outside producer telling us what to do with our music

They are all virtuosi and stars in their own musical worlds. To name just a few of them, Kalman Balogh is Hungary’s most famous living cimbalom player; Petar Ralchev is legend of Bulgarian accordion; Adam Stinga and Marin Bunea are respectively the leading trumpet and violin players of Moldova; Christian Dawid is Europe’s leading klezmer clarinetist... I could go on and on. The amazing thing is, with all of these stars, there’s no competition among us in the group, truly. We all love and admire each other as musicians and as human beings, and I really believe that you can hear that love in our music.

What can we expect from the Malta concert?

We’ll play a selection of music from the Splendor CD and we’ll talk a little about the music we’re playing. Some of the music is crazy fast, and some is very dreamy and emotional. Since we improvise when we play, the concert won’t sound exactly like the CD, but very similar. So, anyone who likes the CD will love the concert and, for everyone else, it will be an ear and heart-opening discovery.

The Other Europeans will perform at St Agatha’s Auditorium, Rabat, on February 3. Tickets are available online.

http://tickets.valletta2018.org/bookings/Shows.aspx?ProductionId=1

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