Monday, February 05, 2007
The Palatka Band plays for the table....
We were out at the Fono Music club last Thursday to hear the Palatka Band play. I consider this band to be the Alpha and Omega of fiddle music, at least on the planet known as Earth. This was the music that inspired me to learn to play the violin, and this is the reason I live in Hungary. The band is from Palatka, a village in the central Transylvanian plains about 25 km east of Cluj (it's called Palatca in Romanian.) Palatka is a village with a very mixed population of Hungarians, Romanians, and Gypsies, and the band (who are Gypsy) manage the local styles and repetoires accordingly. Here they are playing slow songs "at the table" for Pal H. of the Teka band and dance teacher Savanyu at around 1 am.... More on Palatka soon... (I just figured out that I can't post a youtube link and photos in the same post...)
Ah, natsukashii! Reminds me of dinner my wife and I enjoyed in an otherwise deserted restaurant in Poiana Brasov in April 1984, with a gypsy band playing just for us, with me translating for my wife as best I could lyrics that would often wander into bawdy territory. I think we left them two whole packs of Kents, a considerable tip at the time. We had venison, but the food was not near so enchanting as the music.
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