Maramaros

The lost Jewish music of Transylvania

The Concept

On some fieldtrips, Muzsikás had across tunes which were intruduced as "Jewish csardas". Members of hte ensemble had also heard of "Jewish tuning" but had paid no attention to these phenomena. They became involved in Jewish instrumental music leter on when they found  guidance in the teachings of Zoltan Simon. Simon, as a son of a rabbi in the town of Makó, was a student of Zoltán Kodály and carried out field work at the Maramaros region in1946, among Jewish people. 

Simon encouraged members of Muzsikás to continue searching for the remnants of Jewish instrumental music.  He believed that one could still find musicians who used to play for Jews before the Second World War. "Your task is to find the link between Hungarian and Jewish folk music," he said to Muzsikás members. That is how Muzsikás started their journey in search for Jewish folk music. The fruit of this search is this concert program and one of the most significant album of Muzsikás, Maramaros, the lost Jewish Music of Transylvania.

The music of this concert program can not be categorised as "klezmer" music, it is more closely related to the Hungarian taditional village music. The colorful and exciting concert programme is a mixture of Hungarian peasant music and European Jewish music.

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(c) Copyright Daniel Hamar, Muzsikás