The Jazz Mashroutka

Tonight I attended O Seară de Jazz at the Sala cu orgă in Chișinău. It was fantastic.

Mashroutkas are the microbuses that scurry all over the city carrying many, many passengers to their destinations. In Chișinău public transportation relies on mashroutkas and trolleibuses, all of which are always quite crowded. Mashroutkas are constantly stopping to pick up more passengers, while the driver tells everyone to move back until they are as full as possible. And then he stops to pick up more. It is no wonder that we all, including me, have the same cold and flu this week - fever, congestion, coughing, and general miserableness.

Tonight the Sala cu orgă was transformed into a jazz mashroutka. When I arrived for O seară de jazz at 6.30 people were already streaming into the hall. It was a free event, and obviously very popular. They continued to stream in until the hall was extremely full with at least half of the people standing in the aisles, and they kept streaming in until it was like being on a mashroutka bound for jazz heaven. The crowd was extremely varied, speaking Romanian and Russian as well as Gagauz and maybe some English.

The main performers were from former East Bloc countries now in the EU and NATO. They came together to celebrate twenty years past the end of Soviet domination and the cultural ties that they enjoy. The main ensemble consisted of tenor sax (Slovakia), piano (Slovakia), bass (Czech Republic), drums (Poland), and vocals (Hungary). They were fabulous, playing fantastic jazz and solos with beautiful riffs that were well-conceived and performed.They announced that none of them had ever been in Moldova before tonight.

Well, Moldova is not in the EU or NATO and will not be getting in anytime soon. Ongoing problems with the breakaway Transdniester region, political deadlock in the parliament, and a very poor economy make Moldova appear to be caught in an ongoing post-socialist dilemma.

The true wild card was Moldovan performer Anatol Ștefăneț, a violinist and violist from a Lautar and Roma family in the north of Moldova. He was just what the ensemble needed for some extra spice and life in their performance.

When he entered the stage I immediately knew the others were afraid of him. While they all wore very well tailored sports coats and slacks, he was in a wild shirt with wild hair. When he walked on stage he presented the tenor player with a clay jug of homemade wine, which the tenor player did not know what to do with, and immediately put under the piano. Ștefăneț finally made them all take a drink from it during the wild applause at the end.

Ștefăneț played two tunes with the band. The crowd loved him and so did I. He used an odd sounding distortion effect for both tunes, and the Moldovan scales he has used all his life. He played on the Ellington tune Caravan and then took charge of a theme and variations that he directed masterfully. The bass player looked intensely at him (and at the strings on the bass) as he listened and searched for the right rhythms and sounds to accompany him. The drummer was obviously thrilled, the piano player seemed happy to be looking the other direction, and the tenor player left the stage as the tune began. It was a wandering theme with constant changes in modality and sound typical of Moldovan village tunes. The band and Ștefăneț thrilled us all.

So the Jazz Mashroutka at the sometimes stately but always interesting Sala cu orgă was a great evening that I will never forget. While people coughed and sneezed all around me I was happy to be packed into that beautiful hall with Moldovans, enjoying the sounds of EU jazz and the wild card Moldovan, Anatol Ștefăneț.

Nai and the world of instruments in Moldova

These beautiful instruments are in the shop of a very famous nai maker in Durlești, a suburb of Chișinau. This is the instrument I am practicing for many hours every day.

Every music school has a hierarchy of instruments structured by many things that anthropologists love to study. For example, if I am practicing in a room with a piano and  a pianist comes to the door I always say - Vreți pianul? - which means - do you want to use the piano? If they need the piano I am happy to let them have the room. In Moldova, almost no one has the means or the space to have a piano at home, so piano students must practice at the Academy. Piano is the boss of equal tempered tuning around the world, which makes it very important for all of us. Țimbal players (cymbalom - Google it!) have a room all to themselves since their instruments are so large and must be tuned over and over again every day. Cobza players are pretty soft so they can practice almost anywhere.

That puts the rest of us in the practice hall, which can get pretty noisy. On the day the trumpet teacher is at the school the hall is filled with trumpet players warming up on everything from Hummel to Moldovan Roma village brass band tunes. The accordion players get lockers for storing instruments and always need a chair. Last week one of my instructors kept going into the hallway to ask the accordion players to take a break while we had class, but if they left they were replaced immediately by more accordion players. I do love the sound of the accordions in the hall! The fantastic clarinet players and violinists in the Academy are often in the halls, attempting to ignore the sounds of everyone else. On evenings that the nai players gather for lessons they always greet each other sympathetically and wish good health and progress. Everyone likes to wish each other success.

One of the best things about nai is the way that people go on and on about how beautiful it is. Pianists and accordionists often tell me that it has a very beautiful and special sound and that it must be very hard to find the notes, and I agree. Saxophonists and trumpet players like it because they do not have to play soft for it to be heard. Music school administrators have been especially interested in my study of nai and tell me that it is the most beautiful instrument. I have heard some fantastic performances on nai in the four months I have lived here. I meet more and more nai players, each with their own style. My teacher and I sat for an hour today looking at various nai players on the internet.

My own experiences tell me that playing nai is often like the proverbial patting your head while rubbing your stomach. You create vibrato with the left hand or diaphragm, flatten notes by dropping your jaw, and play scales by moving the instrument side to side. The standard pitch at the Academy is A-445 or sometimes even higher, while the standard pitch at the Liceul Porumbescu where I go  for lessons is A-440. The first position notes on the instrument are a G major scale (sol major in Moldova) so creating all twelve chromatic tones means that sometimes I must drop my jaw to play a higher note.

I am happy to say that I now know all twelve major and minor scales and arpeggios, dominant seventh chords, and diminished 7th chords. I have started serious work on some of the elements of folklore playing like double and triple tonguing and ornamenting below each note. And I am constantly working for speed. After weeks of those six hour practice sessions in the dark at the Academy I am finally feeling like I will play in public pretty soon.

The main complaint from my presentation at the American Resource Center was that I did not play the nai, although I showed it. When I present music from the White House I will play nai to commemorate the time that Moldovan musician Lubomir Iorga performed for Bill Clinton. Maybe I will play the Sârba lui Pompieru - dance of the firemen......

Teaching World Music in Moldova

This notice appeared on a bulletin board in the Academy of Music yesterday. It announces my sessions every Tuesday to introduce sounds and musical ideas from many places around the world. The class will combine a  new approach to ethnomusicology in Moldova with a chance for students to practice their English language skills.You can see the announcement of the class along with a short bio for me and the schedule of topics for the next eight weeks - in Romanian.

Each week I will write a short presentation, give it to a student to translate into Romanian language, and prepare it for projecting onto the wall. That way the students can read the English text while I speak, and hear the text repeated in Romanian. In the middle of each presentation the students will see and hear musical events on DVDs. At the end of each session I will present some questions for discussion and ask for questions from them. Music students are very often shy about speaking English with me, although many are very proficient as they gain confidence. Almost all of the students know both Romanian and Russian already, but have had little opportunity to interact with a native English speaker. I enjoy speaking Romanian with them (and a little Russian) quite often, and they are very patient to explain things to me.

The serious and gifted ethnomusicologists I have met in Moldova have confirmed to me that their focus in the discipline has always been on Moldova itself rather than the broader scope of ethnomusicology that includes the whole world. I have enjoyed my colleagues' expertise in documenting, analyzing, and teaching about music from Moldovan traditions. They are thoughtful and insightful and I have learned many things from their intense interest in music in this region. They have all expressed interest in my presentations and we have enjoyed exchanging ideas and experiences.

The wonderful thing about the photo showing the announcement of the class is that everyone already knew about it. Word has traveled fast and I am anticipating a good turnout. It will be different from the classes I teach in Wyoming, but interesting and fun for all of us.