All over -- Other Europeans video by Mark Rubin

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

Bassist/tuba player extraordinaire  Mark Rubin has posted a fantastic collection of his videos of the "Other Europeans" project, taken over the past three years in many places.

The band

is an international gathering of 14 leading klezmer (Yiddish) and lautari (Roma) musicians. Created and directed by Alan Bern, this new intercultural supergroup is creating powerful, deeply emotional and virtuosic music that restores a centuries-old cooperation between two groups who cohabited the same space in present-day Moldova before being torn apart by war, holocaust and immigration.

Bringing together some of the most distinguished soloists from seven countries, the Other Europeans Band is building new cultural relationships between two peoples who are often considered marginally European, but have played a major role in creating and transmitting European musical traditions.

Much has been said about the Jews and the Roma. Now musicians from both worlds have joined, researching and demystifying their connected cultures to create a new heritage, an exciting contribution to a shared new European and Cosmopolitan identity.

Moldova -- More Other Europeans On The Road

Bob Cohen is back in Budapest and posting his impressions on his recent trip to Moldova with the Other Europeans Yiddish and Roma music project. It's great and informative reading! Pictures and videos, too!

Moldova -- The "Other Europeans" project on the road

Several of the Jewish members of "The Other Europeans" project are in Moldova, traveling around the country to explore the lautari musical tradition.

I'm not on the trip -- but Bob Cohen is writing about it, with photos, on his blog -- he has posted some striking photographs of some of the Jewish traces in the town of Edinets, including its Jewish cemetery.

The Other Europeans project, directed by Alan Bern, is an intercultural dialogue exploring Yiddish and Roma music, culture and identity. It joins together Roma and Yiddish musicians -- they are exploring how music stemming from the same general place (mainly Moldova) is transformed by two parallel but related traditions.

I posted some material on the project this summer -- I took part in a symposium held at the start of the annual Yiddish Summer Weimar festival, and I heard the initial concerts by the two music groups, at Weimar and at the Jewish Culture Festival in Krakow.

"Other European" videos

Mark Rubin has posted some videos showing early rehearsals of the Klezmer and Roma bands involved in the "Other Europeans" project sponsored by the Yiddish Summer Weimar, the Jewish Culture Festival in Krakow and the KlezMORE Festival in Vienna. (And which I wrote about in my most recent Ruthless Cosmopolitan column.)

Mark plays tuba and bass in the Yiddish band. The videos shed fascinating light on the creative process as the two bands prepare similar but different/different but similar performance repertoire based on mainly Moldovan sources.

I'm posting a couple of them below, but you can access them all through Mark's youtube channel (click link above). He has also posted various other clips from Yiddish Summer Weimar.

Thanks, Mark!