DESCRIPTION:
To celebrate my first FIVE THOUSAND subscribers to my Youtube Channel, here is a special celebratory video of a new arrangement of my first 'virtually viral' video of 2006 - a demonic electric Klezmer fiddle arrangement of an AMAZING tune, "Khosid Dance" - a rare surviving Jewish Klezmer melody from Hungary, only preserved in the aural memory of Hungarian gypsies who played this melody at Jewish weddings before the Holocaust...

This piece demonstrates the fusion of Jewish and Romanian-style Gypsy Music which existed in Hungary, prior to the totally pointless destruction of both these communities and their fabulous lost cultures, during the Holocaust...

I attempted to learn it by ear from a fantastic CD called "The Lost Jewish Music of Transylvania"(Hanniabal 1973) -

http://www.muzsikas.hu/pages/jewish.htm

This recording uniquely features the playing of Hungarian Gypsy musicians who played these very melodies with Jewish musicians, and also at Jewish Weddings in Hungary before World War II; thus preserving a precious remnant of the amazing Hungarian Jewish/Gypsy culture which once so wonderfully merged & thrived together.

Another fascinating recording I can recommend, is called "Like a Different World", by the late Leon Schwartz -

http://www.amazon.com/Live-Different-World-Leon-Schwartz/dp/B000008KH4

In this unique recording, can be heard a Jewish fiddle player who was born in Poland in 1902, and was actually taught to play fiddle by the local Gypsy musicians who lived near his village...a fantastically beautiful fusion of styles!

The melodies have familiar Jewish-sounding scales/modes, but show the Gypsy/Romanian influence in the both the forms of the dance music.

Above all the musical styles which influenced the traditional Klezmer musicians of Eastern Europe, the Romanian influence seems to be the strongest and most enduring. This fact is reflected in the dance forms found throughout the entire surviving Klezmer music repertoire, eg Horas, Doinas, Bulgars etc.

Also, the violin playing heard in these few surviving Hungarian Jewish melodies has a much "fuller" fiddle style/sound, than the much more ornamented, sinuous, almost "vibrato-free" fiddle styles of Jewish Eastern European Klezmer.

This fascinating cultural exchange of musical ideas is certainly not unique to Jewish Klezmer music - it seems to have happened throughout all of History, whenever two entirely different cultures find themselves living side by side eg, Cajun music - an absolutely amazing fusion, of quaint French Dance Music...and BLUES!?!

I apologize in advance, for the "rough edges" in my playing of it - I am entirely self-taught in all the instruments I play...just like most of the Klezmorium of old, I never had the money or the opportunity to take (much needed!!) violin lessons!

Special thanks to all my 5000 subscribers, for all your support in my multitude of musical mayhem since 2006...I appreciate each and every one of you guys!!!