Fishtank Ensemble: Notes on the FAQ

Notes on How the Recommended Music was Selected

1. First, there is instrumentation. Brass bands such as Fanfare Ciocarlia or Mahala Raï Banda have a very different sound than Fishtank, but play some similar material and both are amazing. Another example: some people just don't like, say, the sound of the cymbalon or the high E clarinet, so they will miss out a lot of excellent Romanian and klezmer music, respectively.
2. Some of these recordings are much more slickly produced than others--but does that mean it's better music? Even the great Taraf de Haidouks can be a little raw, and that also goes for Di Naye Kapelye--but they are not to be missed.
3. Another issue is "foreignness". The Macedonian gypsy Esma Redzepova has a very distinctive voice and sings in a folk style. But her fame as a singer is deserved. Another example: Yiddish vocals, have gutteral sounds not heard in English. Get over it.
4. Some of this music is more "conservative" and some more "innovative". But the tradition has always involved innovation. Unless you can predict the future, you cannot say whether today's innovation is tomorrow's tradition. The Balkans are famously a place where cultures collide. Nevertheless, it is fairly easy to say when a completely alien tradition--such as jazz--begins to dominate the music. For this reason you will not find Yuri Yunakov in this list, even though he knows the traditional music thoroughly, has played at thousands of Bulgarian weddings and is an excellent musician. Like jazz, classical music have its own structure, which is different than any of the various folk traditions. It's one thing to humorously quote classical music, as Mahala Raï Banda often do, but if you start composing in counterpoint, you have left the folk tradition.
5. The issue of ethnicity is sometimes raised. This one we dismiss. Both Roma and Jewish musical cultures extend beyond their ethnic groups considerably. It is not my business which musicians are "really Roma" or "really Jewish". Music and culture are not genetic. Rather, they are contagious, and those who study with traditional musicians can become traditional musicians, regardless of ethnicity.
6. Language authenticity is a different matter. Nobody likes to hear a language mispronounced by a foreigner. But music lovers have learned to put up with foreigners speaking their language in opera and art song, thought never too happy about it (if only all Wagnerian singers were really German!). Both Romani and Yiddish are endangered languages, spoken by small minorities (Yiddish is nearly extinct as a living language), so it's important to preserve samples of good pronunciation, grammar and vocabulary. On the other hand, it is crucial for survival that more people learn these languages. It is unreasonable to expect perfection, but it is reasonable to expect singers who choose to sing in a endangered language such as Romani or Yiddish to put as much effort into learning the correct pronunciation as they do into learning the correct notes.