Budapest: The Hunt for Chinese Noodles.

Laziness. Procrastination. Call it what you will, I am guilty of it. This is the slowest summer that this blog has seen. I haven’t been posting because of… well, not much has been happening. Or a lot has that I don’t write about. Like writing, which is how the rent gets paid. I've been working on some contract writing this summer while trying to at least research some articles for paying publication, and the next thing you know – our lonely blog finds itself neglected, cast aside, forlorn, bereft of zingy little updates from the far corners of East Europe. Well, we haven’t been traveling as much this summer either. Fumie calls it our first “stay-cation" in Hungary, and it hasn’t been at all unpleasant. We’ve had a lot of visitors (Lemme hear you say YO! to the Cluj posse!) and endured the hottest summer in years without air conditioning, but we made it. My old bicycle – a half ton of ancient hardware nicknamed “the Maschina” by the local bike shop – was stolen from our building’s back yard in early July.I had this bike - an old junker rebuilt by a bike messenger friend - for almost a decade and it was nearly indestructable. Perfect for Budapest's streets. It was so unspeakably ugly that I had actually seen bike thieves look at it and walk away. But bike theft is big business and Budapest is not immune. Most bikes are broken down and the parts shipped out to the third world where bikes are what the car is to the first world. Thieves strolled into the building yard and wire clippped through the cable lock that had worked for so many years. I will miss the Maschina, but it has finally been replaced by the hybrid trek bike of my dreams from Bikebase in Budapest.I can now cruise Budapest shifting gears to my heart’s content. And yes – Budapest has some funky corners that even locals know virtually nothing about. I have written about the sprawling Four Tigers Chinese Market years ago. It is a world unto itself, part souk, part suburb of Beijing, hardly regulated by any local Hungarian law, but nevertheless it is an orderly place following its own rules. It is where all of the small shop owners of East Europe go to buy cheap underwear, discount toys, bad fishing equipment, cheap DVDs, and odd plastic hair clips and where Fumie and I go to find decent cheap Chinese and Vietnamese food hidden within the alleys and warrens of the back rows. Usually we go to the Vietnamese vegetable markets where you can get the cheapest frozen shrimp (Big frozen shrimp) and squid in Budapest, alongside Asian greens, sauces, rice noodles, and fish sauce.The Dang Muoi Bufe and Asian market is here (I will deal at length with the Dang Muoi Bufe in a separate post. It serves Vietnamese food - a world class noodle cuisine all on its own right - and deserves some in depth attention.) which I have noted is the Best Restaurant in Budapest. Sure it may not lok like much, but the food is the best deal in town. Located inside a small Vietnamese food market, they serve some of the most authentic Vietnamese lunches in Europe on picnic tables located inside the shop. Friends (the Cluj/Kolozsvar posse again) pester me to take them there, and nobody goes home unimpressed. They make not only the classic Vietnamese Soup of The Heavens Pho (Pho bo, beef, and pho ga chicken) but about a dozen other great Viet meals in a bowl of broth as well, like the excellent spicy bún bò Huế.If you are from Budapest, however, go find it yourself. (Back of the retail side of the market from the middle entrance, called gate 3 – across Kobanyai ut) The Four Tigers Market is merely the retail face of a whole world of Chinese business activity. On the other side of Kobanyai ut are a series of huge, dilapidated old warehouses and factories that have gradually been transformed into business centers called things like “Asia Center” or “Europa Center.” Set aside for large scale wholesale distribution, these shops are rarely visited by people strolling for bargains – they don’t sell single items. Trucks and vans with lisence plates from Romania, Poland, and Serbia load up on goods as porters wheel around on odd looking Chinese motorcycle trucks.But if you go into the back nobody stops you from browsing. Hell, nobody even notices you. Which is good, because signs at the entrances – manned by beefy Hungarian “secuity” guards with tattoos and shaved heads – expressly forbid photography, and if you are lucky a shop keeper may warn you about the rule before the security goons confiscate your camera. Of course, we have been coming here for years so we are experts at surreptitious photography. The best way to cruise around this teeming urban market landscape in seeming invisibility is simply to ride a bicycle through it.It is, basically, an industrial suburb of some Chinese city, so everybody gets around on bikes. Some parts of the market are fashioned into malls, some parts look like Turkish shopping centers, and bikes are parked everywhere. You can, literally, ride your bike through the malls. Everybody does, and nobody seems to be bothered by it. Different rules apply here. The streets back here are named “Shanghai ut” and “Wenzhou ut” and “Kinai ut.” As if you need to be reminded. We were here cruising for lunch, and we found it hidden among the kolbasz stands and trucks serving regional fried bread things from China. When we were here a few weeks ago exploring with my old friend Rick and his wife, Xioarong (who is a sophisticated Szechuan woman) we came across a small lunch place advertising itself in Chinese as “Lunch. Shan.” Xiaorong poked her head in the doorway and asked the family there what kind of food they served. "Food from Shan county in Fujien province."If you ever ate around East Broadway in Manhatten's Chinatown - noodle soups and spicy fish at rock bottom prices - you will understand our addiction to Fujienese cuisine. But here? In the Budapest wholesale market? It was a bit early, and we had already eaten our breakfast soup at the Dang Muoi across the street, so we took note of the place and made a mental promise to return. A couple of tables, a cash register, and a family making dumplings. What more could you ask for? This time Fumie and I went straight for it (address: K-8. Apparently, the buildings are named K, D, B, etc. Live and learn, right?)We walked in, checked out the menu. Noodles. Soups. Dumplings. Nobody spoke much Hungarian or English. Excellent! The partons took no notice of us at all and all chatted in Chinese. the market is full of wei lo folks from Hungary and Romania, porters and workers and buyers who have picked up a taste for Chinese lunch - and even some who have learned to speak Chinese as well. Fumie pointed at the steam dish full of dumplings and expertly miscommunicated enough to get a dozen for FT 800. I simply said “Give me something good” And presto!Out comes a bowl of some of the best Chinese noodle soup with pork ribs and vegetables this side of the Danube. This is a real winner - a deep delicious broth with real Chinese noodles, not the spaghetti some places use as a substitute. Sometimes there is nothing that beats a good Chinese noodle soup. I grew up with them as the cheapest good meal you could get in New York. The lack of chinese noodle soups used to be one of my biggest complaints about living in Budapest, but with a bit of faith, perseverance, and the world's fastest growing economy, Chinese noodles have come to me.And dumplings. these were hand made, filled with meat that may have come from some kind of animal and oddly, carrots. Served with soy sauce and vinegar. They made Tokyo born Fumie happy, as did half of my soup. If Budapest ever gets a decent Japanese ramen noodle shop, these soup stands in the market may get a run for their money, but until then, they are safe. Now when the weather gets a bit colder and we need something more substantial, there are the traditional hand pulled Langzhou noodles you can find in another Chinese soup joint in a different part of the wholesale side of the street market. This is an unnammed hole in the wall lunch spot with one table located in a warehouse across the street from the main gate of the Four Tigers Market. This little unmarked hole in the wall is run by folks who really don't care about anything except perfect noodles - atmosphere? Service? Nope. Just noodles. Tell me: is this not the most evocative bistro in all of Budapest? No? Well, they may well serve the best soup in town.Service with a smile? Who needs all that extra stuff. They stretch the noodles by hand. If you want them, you will sit at a cramped picnic bench beneath a warehouse of cardboard crates and enjoy it anyway. To find it go to the doorway below the sign that says "Kapu" (gate) behind the sign that says "CHANGE" next to the Rong Rong market vegetable market, which is now just a guy hawking bitter melons and bok choy from boxes on the street. Its on your left about 25 meters before you get to the Hungarian sandwich/lunch stand where all the Romanian Gypsies and Syrian moneychangers hang out. Bon Appetit!

Chewing through the Netherlands!

It has only been a couple of weeks but I miss the Netherlands already. If anything can be said about the Dutch, it is that they are "nice." Yes, nice. The single most ambiguous adjective in the English language, but in this case, devilishly specific.They are nice. They are also tasteful, often extremely so.The the hidden benefit of being a touring musician: you get to know places that would otherwise probably have passed by. Like Tilburg, a small textile trading town that is home to a University and the scene of the Tilburg International Gypsy Festival. Having done several tours of the Netherlands in the last decade I can honestly say that I see no great reason to stay in Amsterdam, and that eating in Holland is like eating nowhere else. Which is to say, you can eat well and cheap, but not necessarily in restaurants. I’m sure there are good restaurants in Holland, but the ones I have been treated to tend to be pricy and bland. Indonesian and Surinamese places are widespread and entirely assimilated into the Dutch national cuisine, but in truth the national food seems to be various forms of fast food: gyros, felaful, pizza, and even hybrids like the mysterious “Kapsalon” – a frightening mess of doner kebab meat, fries, cheese and mayonnaise topped with salad that was featured in a recent column on the award winning Istanbul Eats blog. Then there is Febo. Anybody who has ever staggered home late at night drunk in Holland knows that glowing sign offering solace and fried goodies to late night stomaches in search of edible solids. And that is pretty much what Febos offers.Febo is a chain of automats, self contained and nearly robotic human feed suppliers that offer coin operated little doors to open and a nearly fresh hamburger or croquette comes out. And apart from the fact that nearly everything is deep fried or of the hamburger tribe, it is actually quite fresh and healthy. Kroket is a very Dutch food that, obviously, has not traveled much outside of the borders.Originally a French croquette, it is a roll of beef with thick gravy breaded and fried. Basically, leftovers fried. These are sold everywhere, especially in “Snakbars” where you can have a dozen different varieties of things on sticks deep fried for you and then slathered in mayonnaise sauces. When you look at this, you are looking at what food of the future will look like. Scary. But not bad at all. But there is yet another Dutch favorite that vies for the title of Unhealthiest Food in Holland, and that is the humble Flemish frites and saus. Tilburg is in the Brabant region, a mere ten kilometers from the Belgian border, and is culturally and linguistically a part of the Flemish continuum, and that includes the thing we English speakers have erroneously labeled the “French” fry.They should be known as “Flemish” fries, but by now nobody really cares who mastered the art of the twice fried frite and who discovered the mayonnaise saus, it is the cheapest thing around when you have no idea what to eat and you do not want to shell out EURO 4 for another stick of fried mystery meat. When you get to the south of Holland or the north of Belgium you begin to notice that the festival backstage staff are often comprised of hugely fat people, frighteningly mutated Belgomorphs and Flemonsters who grow to legendarily immense size on a diet of frites, mayonaisse, and trappist beer. Which, at music festivals around here, is what is for lunch!The Dutch, however, do have a few real delicacies hidden up their sleeve. It is not all hothouse vegetables and cans of white sauce. Cheese, for one. It is everywhere, and it is always good. Good Dutch Gouda cheese, either “jonge” or”oude”, is a pleasure and still made by hand in small artisanal farm operations. And everybody seems to have a cryopac sealing machine on hand just in case you wish to travel with your hunks of perishable local cheese. We bought a couple of good chunks from a cheese dealer in Tilburg who gave us a lesson in local cheese (“try this… and try this one… now taste this one…”)We learned that a huge wheel cheese is the mark of a good cheese, because the farmer is confident that he knows exactly how long it takes to age and ripen. Factories can’t take that kind of risk with their product, so their wheels are standardized and smaller. There was an aged Gouda with a crystallized texture like that in parmesan cheese that was unforgettable. And while they have a long seacoast and an active fishing fleet, the Dutch don't really have a rich tradition of cooking seafood. They have excellent fresh ingredients for it, though, and good smoked fish - including eel - is widely eaten. The Dutch have a wonderful way with herring: nieuwe harengs are halfway between sashimi raw fish and a fermented pickled fish. Doesn’t sound good, does it? But it is.Boneless, mild and meaty, they are unlike any herring you may have tasted, and it seems that shipments of Dutch herring are finally making it to New York and the City of Foodies is going wild. The best ones you can get are in the open markets and served with a bit of chopped onion – you hold them by the tail and drop them down into your mouth. They pop them in a bun for the national sandwich, as well.And Fumie made her big discovery: Dutch pastries and cookies. Especially almond cookies. Every nation in Europe has one sweet baking specialty in which it surpasses all other competitors. The French win at baguette and croissant. The Hungarians win at pastry and scones. The Germans know how to bake cookies, and the Italians win for apple tarts. But the Dutch win the prize for anything made with almonds, especially ground almonds.For some strange reason, they simply do not know how to make a decent loaf of bread. Most Dutch I asked will admit this openly. They have a dozen types of bagged soft white bread or varying shades of the kind of sandwich bread we know all too well in the USA as “Wonder Bread.” When we stayed here on tour we used to drive across the border into Belgium to gas up (cheaper) and buy bread (better.) You would know you had crossed the border into Belgium because immediately the bike lanes would disappear, the roads would start on the street crumbling beneath you full of pot holes, and there would be piles of stinking garbage left out to rot. Oh, and the missing children posters on the bus stops. No, we would be very happy to return to the Netherlands, who were bursting with pride for their team’s efforts to place in the Euro Cup football finals.The town was all decked out to support them, but they lost all three matches to Portugal, Germany, and Denmark, the so-called “Death Group” consisting of the best teams in the league. Even the Tilburg tennis shop faced the EU Cup match wears Holland's Orange colors with ironic aplomb.

Gypsy Festival in the Netherlands!

Been home a week since playing the International Gypsy Festival in Tilburg, Netherlands. The Festival is one of Western Europe's best venues for Gypsy bands getting together for a long weekend of music, culture and dance organized by Albert Siebelink's Stichtung Kultoer music agency, based in Tilburg. Over the years they have toured many of East Europe's best folk and Gypsy music acts around the Low Countries and have a lot of experience dealing with the particularities of working with Gypsy musicians on the road. And working with local Gypsy communities, Albert has been able to promote a sense of cultural inclusion that would be welcome in the frighteningly anti-Gypsy political atmosphere we presently have here in Hungary. It all added up to a seamlessly organized festival, a great and enthusiastic crowd dancing outdoors in downtown Tilburg.

So what is a Klezmer band doing playing at a Gypsy festval... in the Netherlands? The theme this year was inspired by the work of a Dutch Gypsy classical composer, Roger "Moreno" Rathgeb, whose composition "Requiem for Auschwitz" reminds the world that Roma, as well as Jews, homosexuals, and political prisoners were murdered by the racist policies of the Nazis at Auschwitz. People don't usually associate Roma with Holland: under the Nazi occupation they were almost entirely exterminated alongside the Dutch Jews. Those that survive are determined to keep a vigil over their people in Europe, and the Festival is just one part of their public presence in NL.Albert asked that Di Nayes play alongside the Hutsul Gypsy band Manyo from the Ukraine, as we did on our last CD Traktorist. The band - known in Hungary as the Tecsoi Banda - learned a lot of Jewish music via their father, the fiddler Manyo Cheriavets, who played for Jewish communities in the Ukraine in the years after WWII. And so it was a matter of getting the band from Tjaciv to Budapest and on a plane to Eindhoven, NL. Not easy. But I love a challenge, and after taking these guys to New York two years ago it was fun to watch them experience west Europe for the first time. We stopped at a supermarket for snack supplies on the way in from the airport, and they were somewhat blown away by the free promotional serve-yourself coffee machine located in the middle of the produce department. In the west, they give coffee away... for free! At the hotel we were rubbing shoulders with some of the musicians from Taraf Des Haidouks and the Kocani Orkestar... Yes, thank you, dutch Hotel, for knowing exactly what Gypsy musicians want to eat at the breakfast buffet: mounds of greasy bacon and eggs, bread and cheese, and coffee. Yes I even met happy Gypsies (maladyilem baXtale romensa...)

The main festival was on Monday - Pentecost, a holiday known as "Pinkster" in the predominantly Catholic southern Netherlends - Taraf des Haidouks and Kocani Orkestar, as well as Olah Vincze's band and Lajko Felix from Serbia, and Amparo Cortes' flamenco inspired project from Spain, Temperamanto Gitano, which featured the violin of my old friend Tcha Limberger. Tcha is a Sinto Gypsy from Belgium who came to Hungary in the 1990s to learn music. He apprenticed under master fiddlers in Transylvania like Netti Sannyi and picked up the virutostic style and repetoire of the Kalotaszeg region. For the last few years Tcha has also been working with Alan Bern's Yiddish Summer Weimar program teaching Gypsy music and theory.

Born blind, Tcha is something of a genius, speaking at least a dozen languages (including several dialects of Romani, Hungarian, and Romanian) and playing Gypsy fiddle in a number of styles. When Yuri the drummer from Manyo met him he listened and then said to me in Hungarian "It is a pity he's blind." to which Tcha piped in fluent Hungarian "No, I can hear well enough!" Backstage you could hear musicians from all over speaking in Hungarian, alongside Romani, Serbian and Romanian. It was like we had never left home.Special thanks to our friends Hans and Vera for putting Fumie up and taking good care of the band, and to the Rom Baro himself, Albert, who managed to produce a festival of outstanding quality while facing a year of health concerns. As we say in Romani "T'aves but sastipe!" May you have much health!

Budapest: The Kosher Butcher on Dob utca

I’ve been a fan of the blog “Save the Deli” for years. Writer David Sax followed the decline and revival of delicatessen food for several years while researching his book Save the Deli. A couple of years ago I got an email from David asking for some assistance on a story he was writing for Saveur Magazine on the roots of Jewsh deli food in east Europe. I was happy to help out. Part of my participation was arranging to spend a day at the Budapest’s kosher butchers at the Kovari Dezso Meat shop, attached to the Orthodox Synagogue on Kazinczy utca in the 7^thdistrict “Ghetto” district of Pest. We needed permission so I set up a visit with the rabbi of the local Orthodox Synagogue community on Kazinczy utca. Budapest is one of the few places left in east Europe with a real, fully functioning kosher butcher.

If any place is going to support a real Jewish community, then that place needs to have a good kosher butcher. Eating kosher food is so central to Jewish identity that even secular Jews like myself feel a lot more comfortable knowing that observant Jews can maintain the basic laws that underpin their religious commitment. Eating kosher is all about commitment: you can’t just eat partially kosher. I know a lot of people who avoid pork, or who do not mix meat and milk, or who are “New York”” kosher until they hit a nice plate of take out Chinese food. I have no problems with the shrimp fried noodles or with cheeseburgers, but I find it comforting to know that when the Great Wall of Baal Tsuvah arises on the horizon, there will be an all-beef hot dog waiting for me.The butcher shop is located on Dob utca in the Jewish Ghetto of the 7^th district in downtown Budapest. With us was David’s photographer, Landon Nordeman, who knows a thing or three about photographing food (see his photos in the Saveur layout) so part of our mission was to document the processing of meat into kosher sausages and salami. We were there early to await the delivery of the quarter sides of beef from the slaughterhouse. In order to be kosher the animals must be killed by a ritual slaughterer, called the shoychet in Yiddish,who uses a special knife that must be ritually sharpened in order that the animal dies as quickly and painlessly as possible.The shoychet works on site at the cattle yard. Once the meat is delivered the two mashgiachs (kosher butchers) lead a team of trained butchers in taking the animal apart and stripping the layers of unkosher fat and membrane from the carcass. The presence of trained, religious butchers is one of the keys that define how kosher the final product is: it has to be handled by Jews who are kosher themselves. This is locavore cuisine at its best. You want garlic flavor in your salami? No artificial garlic powder here. Hand clean and crush garlic.The end result is some pretty fine sausages, cold cuts, and salamis. I sometimes drop in to buy the kosher frankfurters, simply because being a New Yorker I have to have a hefty beef frank to register “hot dog!” in my brain, and in Hungary beef never gets near the hot dog recipe. The salamis are hung to dry on Tuesdays, and ideally should hang a week to be ready, but they never last that long.

A steady stream of orthodox Jewish travelers, visitors from Israel, and tourists buy the shop out by Friday. If you have ever traveled around Europe with somebody who maintains Jewish dietary laws, you know the drill. They live on canned food, kosher junk food from bags, cookies, hard boiled eggs, and vegan pizza until you come within an hour’s drive of a kosher butcher shop. Then they stock up on smoked sausages, salamis, packed smoked turkey wings.Most of the Dob utca’s customers buy several days worth of cold cuts at a time, packed in cryovac plastic for takeaway. In fact, when I had some Israeli friends living in Budapest they used to sing the praises of our butcher shop for the simple reason that they could buy fresh meat there – most of what they bought in Israel was kosher meat frozen and shipped in from Argentina and the USA.

Kaddish for My Uncle: Eli Cohen 1931-2012

Some of my best memories of being a little kid, say around four years old, was when my Uncle Eli would drop by at our house in the Bronx to visit. Eli was my Dad’s younger brother. Where my Dad had the gravitas of being the father figure (and was a New York Policeman to boot) my Uncle Eli had all the spark and flame of youth. When he showed up me and my sister would jump up and down and scream “Uncle Eli! Uncle Eli!” He told jokes, he brought gifts, his pockets would be full of candy. And best of all, he walked on his hands. He would empty his pockets (I can hear the jingle of coins and keys as I type this) and do a backflip and walk around upside down on his hands as me and my sister laughed and clapped our hands in delight. When you are four, it simply does not get any better than an Uncle who will walk on his hands for you. My Uncle Eli Cohen, sadly, passed away suddenly two days ago, at the age of 81. Like a lot of the men in my family, he never accepted the idea of retirement as an option, and he was working and active until the day he passed, so his sudden death came as a shock to those who knew him. He leaves my Aunt Norma and three daughters – Gerry, Hillary, and Madeline – behind, along with many grandchildren, as well as my father, who loved his little brother dearly. Eli Cohen leaves a legacy of influence, inspiration, and education behind as well. Uncle Eli was the striver in our family, the brother that valued education and learning and knew that positive reinforcement was the best way to inspire that quality in us kids. He was the Smart Uncle.

As a little kid I remember him perking up as I would try to impress him with some bit of science I had heard on the Mr. Wizard TV show or some new dinosaur factoid I had picked up. He would engage me for hours, making me feel like adults actually cared what I was interested in. He knew how to make you feel that your interest was valuable to him. Eli trained to become a Geologist, and when I was a child he would describe New Jersey’s glacial boulders in a way that sounded like nothing in the world could be more fascinating than poking around ice age bogs in Morris county looking for granite outcroppings. Uncle Eli gave me his love of science, of explanation, of curiosity, and showed me how life is a lot more than it seems on the surface. Every family has its Einstein. Ours was Eli. Eli was also the anchor stone of our extended family’s Jewish life.  It was something he took seriously, and that is one of the strongest things he left as our heritage.

The Sabbath and Jewish holidays were taken seriously at his house, and he was very much the family historian of his generation, with a photographic memory of names and events that stretched back into the 19th century family history in Moldavia. Luckily, he passed on much of the family lore to me and his son in law Peter, but he knew so much more that is now lost. Eli was on the younger side of that generation who were formed by the Great Depression and World War Two, which has come to be known in the USA as the “Great Generation” – having lived through poverty, war, and then rebuilding in the post war era. Eli served his country as a Military policeman in England after the War, where he met my Aunt Norma.

Grandpa Morris Cohen, Aunt Norma Cohen, Gerry Onitskansky, Grandma Betty Cohen, and my Mom at shabbes dinner.

And like many of his generation, he took advantage of the educational opportunities offered under the GI bill at a time which is generally considered to have been the golden age of American education. And he was smart as a whip. He was always getting patents on inventions he would come up with – better mouse traps, a specialized paint brush for painting in corners, improved surveying equipment, you name it, Eli patented it. Eventually he patented and actually produced and marketed an air soled running and walking shoe. Eventually, Eli realized that his knowledge of geology could be adapted to the market for real estate in New Jersey, and when he moved to the Garden State, my father soon followed with us in tow.

The two sharpest cards in the deck: Jack and Eli Cohen.

And when my Dad needed help, my Uncle was there with a job for him – for decades they worked together in the gritty arena of New Jersey industrial real estate.And although Uncle Eli inspired my love of science, it was an unrequited love. I went in the other direction, towards anthropology. Eventually I focused on African and American Indian linguistics, and I learned some West African concepts that are not the usual line of thought for New York Jews, but they apply here. The Yoruba are constantly aware – in act as well as in speech – of their ancestors. When you reach that stage in life where you leave this plane, you family holds a funeral where your life is celebrated. A band is hired, food is catered, the neighborhood shows up for a party to see you to the other side. (This is where the grand tradition of New Orleans Jazz funerals comes from. Your friends don’t only remember your life – they never forget your passing.) Your role is now to be that of an ancestor, an inspiration for the living and a source of continuity between the past, present, and future. And one stays in touch with one’s ancestors through a kind of inner dialogue of memory and fondness (and if you are a Yoruba, a shot of spirits spilled on the ground helps. Spirits for the spirit.) The ancestors are not gone. They are always present. You just have to live your life keeping their spirit alive. Their love and ongoing guidance is their existence. Consider your ancestors, and feel their love. It comes back to you. And we will always love you, Uncle Eli. Legn zol in Gan Eyden.

Around 1938, New York: Aunt Fran, Aunt Gerri, my Dad Jack, Grandma Betty, Uncle Eli Cohen.

Dorel Codoban 1944-2012. Master of the Vioara cu Goarne.

Dorel Codoban, the master folk fiddler and instrument builder from the village of Lazuri de Rosia, who was well known as the best builder of the enigmatic Romanian folk violin known as vioara cu goarne, passed away on February 7 at the age of 67. Dorel was more than a simple folk fiddler. He was the center of a cultural scene that represented his region – the Transylvanian region of Bihor – and the unique regional culture that still thrives in the mountains there. Dorel not only built these unique instruments, he played them and encouraged other to play them, and he made sure that if you played one yours would be in working order. He walked around with his coat pockets full of spare resonators, tiny HO size screws, gramophone stylus jacks, ready for anything and everything that could go wrong with a metal fiddle resonator.

Playing at Negreni around 1999.

Dorel was good friend of mine, and I looked forward to meeting him each year at either folk festivals in Hungary or at the sprawling peasant market that convenes every second weekend in October in Negreni. I first met him and his family in 1990, at the Budapest Dance House Festival. His group of Bihor folk dancers had been invited to represent Transylvanian Romanian culture, and I wound up recording some of his music in the basement of a sports stadium at an impromptu session that lasted at least two hours, during which we finished a two liter bottle of his famed home brewed Bihor palinka. Later, when his son-in-law Dan and wife Florica came to Budapest to buy auto parts they would stay at my flat. But the best memories of him were always at the Negreni fair.

Dorel and Florica Codoban.

Dorel and Florica would be busy selling shepherd goods out of the trunk of their car – the coarse sheepskin capes worn by shepherds, thick homespun wool winter coats, and, of course, the vioara cu goarne fiddles that drew the most interest from curious foreigners.Pretty soon a knot of fiddlers would gather around, a drummer would appear, and Dorel would lead the band around the fairgrounds to the beer tents. Vioara cu goarne are extremely loud instruments, and you could hear the thin metallic outpour of sixteenth notes from a half kilometer away. They are also very focused instruments – since the metal resonator is directed into a bugle bell, it is loud only in the direction you point the trumpet at.

Fiddlers habitually swing around while playing, creating a kind of Doppler effect, a natural wah-wah pedal depending on where the bell is aimed at. To counter this, fiddlers often played in pairs or trios, pointing their fiddle horns in different directions. Like other resonator instruments, such as National guitars, they are loud but their sonic profile is extremely hard to mike correctly – they are natural feedback machines near a microphone.  And if you are playing one, the trumpet is pointed away from you, so you can hardly hear what it sounds like when you play it, making it frustrating to record in a studio. I know – I have tried many times. Dorel was well known as a craftsman who dared to take chances designing his fiddles.

Dorel's fiddles. I own the older one pictured here.

At the request of a French musician, he began making fiddles with two horns (Pom Collins actually has one of these monstrosities)and fiddles using mica sheets for the resonator (instead of the usual sheet of beer can stamped flat using one of his specially made brass hammer presses. Some builders also liked to use the sheet metal from energy drink cans, claiming the tone is more energetic .) Dorel was constantly on the lookout for old gramophone Victrolas to scavenge for parts used in the making of the resonator mechanism, as well as old bugles dating from the era when Communist boy scout troops always employed a bugler. No more communists meant no new bugles, so Dorel experimented with sheet metal horns, used horns from camion trucks, and eventually, bugles ordered directly from a factory in China. When I first moved to this part of the world in the late 1980s, I was anxious to collect and learn the local traditions before the modern world swept in and replaced all this homemade traditional music with the commercial barking of globalized pop. Luckily, some of the tradtions are still strong, particularly in Bihor, where the trumpet fiddle has been adopted as the acoustic symbol of the regional obsession with the Oradea football team. Because of this, Youtube videos I have put up of Dorel and other Bihor fiddlers have immense viewer statistics that would make any indie pop band jealous. But with Dorel’s passing I know of only one other reliable maker of vioara cu goarne: Mircea Rostas and his son Adi in Bratca. There are lots of players, to be sure, but fewer makers.One of my fondest memories of Dorel was the trip we took from Negreni to Oradea, with Camille and Dejan in tow. During the trip we played the unsold fiddles that Dorel had brought to the fair as a fairly large group of Gypsies and peasants gathered in the hallway of the train, drinking beer and dancing. As you can tell in the video, we were pretty well though a Pepsi bottle of the good stuff as well. The next morning in Oradea Dorel was tremedously hungover, but that changed the moment he got in his folk costume. Dorel and Florica led the Rosia dance troupe in the annual Bihor folk parade through the streets on their way to a folk festival in one of the city parks.

Florica leading the parade in Oradea

You can see the pride in place that these people have, something Romanians really treasure, a sense of home and hearth and continuity that transcends a single lifetime. Dorel gave us something, he gave his culture something, and he gave his family something very special. He was a good man. And I will remember him everytime I hear those tunes. And Although Dorel has passed on, I will go back, because it is not just music that draws me to Transylvania, but the people. The ones I can proudly call my friends.

Obama and Solinsky. Again.

"My Grandmother, Mrs. Imre Zala, meets Finance Minister Győrgy Matolcsy"

It has been a slow month here in blogland. Hungary has been in the news in a big way, and as long time readers know, I tend to avoid discussions of Hungarian politics in this space. You want to hear my opinions about Hungarian politics? Take me out and buy me a few drinks. You will get an earful. But more to the point, other people do it better - check out my blogroll for Eva Balog's Hungarian Spectrum, or the newer Hungarian Contrarian and Andor Jakab's Blog. Paul Krugman has been examining Hungary's antic relationship with its new constitution via a series excellent posts by Princeton Proffessor of constitutional law Kim Scheppele. The Economist, Financial Times, and Washington Post have also kept our addled one-Party rulers in their sights. When you read the NY Times pieces, the Economist, or any of the other newspapers on stories about hungary, please do not fail to read the comments sections.They are infested by the uniquely Hungarian version of internet troll. Now, Hungary is not the only country that pays PR hacks to troll for stories and 'correct' them in the comment sections. But it is fun to watch the language-challenged Ministry of Propaganda hacks try and take down a Krugman or a Princeton Law prof by labeling them a "post-commie" or attacking them for causing Hungary's serious economic ills. Because in Hungary, propaganda is very big business. FIDESZ, the ruling party, is nothing so much as a gigantic PR machine, driving home its talking points wit a grim determination and a surprising lack of ideology. FIDESZ prospered in opposition due to its skillful use of public relations firms and advisors to drive a wedge into the Hungarian public opinion, dividing every conceivable issue as one of "Us vs. Them." It is all done with mirrors. Here is a secret: public relations is the enemy of democracy, folks.

The Father of Modern Public Relations

It was invented by Edward Bernays, a cousin of Sigmund Freud who emigrated to the US in 1892 from Austria. In his main work "Propaganda" in 1928 Bernays argued that the manipulation of public opinion was a necessary part of democracy: "The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. ...We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized." Bernays was behind PR campaigns that convinced the American public that smoking was acceptable for women, that bacon and eggs was a healthy breakfast, that Calvin Coolidge was a nice guy, and that ballet was fun to watch. But beneath it all he was aware of the power that comes from lies. "PR must create news." wrote Bernays in his 1923 book 'Crystalizing Public Opinion'  "in order to appeal to the instincts and fundamental emotions of the public." If you have a few hours and want to spend them watching a highly disturbing BBC documentary about Bernays and his work, I highly recommend the three hour long "Century of the Self" on Youtube. Yes, indeed, it is all done with mirrors... no hay banda...no hay banda...Anyway, the reason I delve this far into politics at all was that I took a peek at my blog statistics and noticed a serious jump in readership in the last few weeks. Was it because of a sudden leap in interest in Hungarian politics? Looking through some of the clicks I found out that it was people searching for the name "Solinsky." Something even more silly and ignorant was to blame. The American Tea Party! Back during the 2008 presidential elections Sarah Palin accused Barak Obama of following the teachings of "Solinsky" - which was her addled attempt at conceptualizing the name of social activist Saul Alinsky. I posted a story about that. Tea Partiers were marching around with bumper stickers printed with the slogan "Solinsky=Communism." Josef Solinsky, however, was the name of a Klezmer violinist who recorded several rare Jewish fiddle pieces on gramophone records back in the pre-World War One era, all of which have become basic to the recreated style of traditional klezmer fiddle.

Not Josef Solinsky, either.

That story died back when Obama won the election and I thought the American looney right wing would never again become riled up with a long deceased Klezmer violinist. But I was wrong. Never underestimate the ability of the wingnut to run with wrong information. For days now, I have been getting up to 500 blog visits a day looking for information on this nefarious "Solinsky." So here he is, in the original: Josef Solinsky on the violin. And given that the US Republican presidential race is narrowing down to a contest between Obama and either a lying billionaire who believes that the Garden of Eden was located in Jackson County Missouri, or a guy who was cheating on his wife while he was trying to have President Clinton impeached for a blow job. I'm sticking with Obama. He's a lot more my style - a fly fisherman. And so is Solinsky, at least style-wise on the fiddle. So if you want to complain about my lack of comment on the growing crisis in Hungary, I hear you. If things hot up I may change that policy. But for now I will stick to what I know. Want to tell me I don't know about Klezmer fiddle? I don't think sooooo....(Oh, and trolls? The delete button anxiously awaits you. But you knew that.)