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Online edition of The Official Newsletter of the Jew's Harp Guild - The Pluck-n-Post -Updated 2/2005 - Volume 9 Issue 1 - Winter 2005
A Jew’s Harp Travelogue Part III: Hildesheim, Germany By Gordon Frazier
I met all of them at the Trump Congress in Norway in 2002. When I e-mailed Caro and Anna-Lisa from the States that I was planning a trump-related trip to Europe in January of 2004, they wrote back to say that I was welcome to stay with them, and that they would arrange for me to visit a music class and perform a concert while there. Also, they hoped that Stephan would be able to visit during my stay. So after visiting Austria and Hungary I headed north to the small university town of Hildesheim, where I stayed in the rambling flat Anna-Lisa and Caro share with Karen, Florina, and Otah the cat. I was in the midst of a musical odyssey of sorts, but I was also being a tourist, so one day Caro and Anna-Lisa gave me a tour.
We had memorable conversations on deep topics; we also talked about spit. Once while we were playing music Stephan leaned his head sideways at a 90-degree angle for a few seconds without missing a beat on the maultrommel. When asked about it afterwards, he explained that he was getting rid of a little saliva build-up. What a great tip! I then told them that when I was young I thought the name of the instrument was "juice" harp, due to the fact that after playing for awhile my mouth got all juicy, causing me to fling bits of spittle with every twang. This conversation took place during one of our many jams. Stephan played maultrommel, morsing, and harmonica; I played Jew’s harp and Clackamore, Anna-Lisa played jazz flute, a little didjeridu and once, just to make me feel that I was really in Germany, her accordion. So my time in this university town was spent studying music, history, and the culinary arts. But I also brushed up on a little science. My reading material on the flight from Seattle was a beginning textbook on musical acoustics, for I had been invited to visit an acoustics class at Hildesheim University and I wanted to be able to converse on the topic in a nominally competent way. As it turned out, I had no such opportunity, because I was just a source of raw material. The acoustics instructor wanted me to play various Jew’s harps so he could record them and make sonograms, which he then projected on a screen for the class to see. Although it was interesting to see the peaks and valleys of Jew’s harp harmonics rendered visually, I would have liked more tech talk. (I’d read a book on it, after all!) The sonograms did, however, look cool. While at the university we saw some of Anna-Lisa’s publicity materials. A born promoter, she had plastered the campus with posters advertising the concert that evening, and she had a seemingly endless supply of little flyerettes to hand out to everyone she passed, in the unlikely event they had not seen one of the posters. After seeing her efforts it was not surprising that the concert was well attended. It was billed as a gesprächskonzert ("talking-concert"), so I spent the first half expounding on and demonstrat- ing plucked linguaphones from around the world. I was aided by a huge world map, requisitioned from the geography department by the ever-resourceful Anna-Lisa. It was a great map, but I had one problem with it that I discovered while looking for Bali. "Hey, this is all in German!" I blurted, to the amusement of the crowd. The second half was a straightforward concert including a fiddle tune, some blues, and William Tell on the Clackamore. Then I asked Stephan up to the stage and we filled the rest of the time with improvisational duets. We had been playing together for only a few days, but meshed well, so sounded like we had played together for much longer. It was great fun.
I needn’t have fretted, as we really were in tune. Stephan explained later that he heard me go sharp, so compensated by gently pressing his left thumb to the base of his harp’s lamella, which sharpened his tone slightly to match mine. Nice: fine-tuning on the fly. Stephan was continually impressing me with such displays of maultrommel expertise. After the concert we invited the audience up to talk and look at instruments. Later, one of the instructors at the university approached us. He had arrived too late to hear the concert, but was interested in the instrument. He had a great recording of maultrommel music, he told me—had I, by chance, ever heard of John Wright? Yes, I know John, I said (from both the Yakutsk and Rauland congresses). "You know him?" he asked, taken aback. I grinned and nodded. It’s a small world . . . but the world of the Jew’s harp is even smaller. As he had missed the concert, Stephan and I played an impromptu duet for him. Just like Sundays at the early Jew’s harp festivals in Sumpter, I thought, when we regularly played mini-concerts for those who missed out on the Saturday happening. That’s us maultrommelists: always happy to oblige. However, I was not at all happy that my time in Hildesheim was almost over. But I had a plane to catch, so the day after the concert I bade a fond farewell to my German friends and hopped on the evening train. My original plan had been to spend time in Amsterdam on the way back to visit friends there, but I messed up. I had scheduled my return flight thinking the university concert was earlier in the week; also, I did not count on the trainleaving so infrequently, or, for that matter, to take so long. The gist: instead of extra time in Amsterdam I ended up with no time at all. My train arrived at 10 am and my flight left at noon. Which is cutting it way too close. I try to arrive at airports early because of the extra time it takes me getting through security, for once the screeners get an eyeful of the pronged metal in my carry-on it makes them, shall we say, curious. Amsterdam was no exception, but to my surprise, this time their biggest concern was my wooden kazoo. Apparently when looking through an X-ray scanner, if you squint and hold your head just so, you can imagine it being part of a dismantled handgun. As our plane chased the sun west across the Atlantic, I mulled over that incident, and what it said about the world—no, worlds—we live in. One of those worlds is the world of the Jew’s harp. Although it covers a lot of territory, it is a small world with no borders, where everybody knows everybody; it is an intimate world, where friends make music in pubs, or by a campfire, or around a kitchen table. And one of the other worlds we live in is the world of "security," an increasingly skittish place with sharply defined borders, where everyone is a stranger; a world where paranoia can transform a peripatetic musician into the owner of a loaded kazoo. Myself, I prefer the world of the pub, the campfire, and the kitchen table. The world without borders. The world where a kazoo is—sometimes—just a kazoo. I’ll see you there. —Gordon Frazier Note: The first two parts of JH Travelogue (Upper Austria & Hungary) appeared in the 2004 spring and summer issues of PNP. Send in your own travel stories—ideally this will be a regular feature. Just a quick note to let you know how much fun we
had at the Jew’s Harp Fest. Everyone was great!!! Wow! Feel like a fresh caught twanger. Stopped at
the festival on Saturday. Spent a couple of hours just hanging around enjoying the goings
on and the one-on-one with a world traveler and his boxes and boxes of Jew’s harps.
Perfect weather as the front porch jam grew in size and inspiration. Had combined this
stop with a business trip so only had a short, very enjoyable stay. Must thank Oregon Art
Beat for the TV show that started it all for me. Thank you so much. Dear friends, We are pleased to inform you our new on-line store
ETHNOMUSICA is fully operative now. It has a forum in which you can share with all the
friends, not just your musical interest, but things of a different kind. We also have a
newsletter you can subscribe to. Our web address is: www.etno-musica.com. Hello. I am a percussionist from India. I play a similar version of
the Jew’s harp called Morsing. I have been playing the past 10 years ... morsing and
Jew’s harp are very similar instruments. Morsing is played very widely in southern
India. Highly complex rhythm patterns are played during the concerts and a wide variety of
different sounds are produced. I strongly suggest the Guild should listen to morsing ... I
will send you some recordings of mine for your website. I hope the Guild will archive
these recordings as many samples of morsing I have heard on internet are far away from
what truly it is and don’t exhibit even a Great website, a pleasure to see and hear. Do you know of any
stockist/maker in Scotland? webmaster needed! - Contact the Jew’s Harp Guild.The Jew’s Harp Guild Pictorial Archive needs photos of your favorite ‘harps. Send (non-returnable) pics and info to: The Jew's Harp Guild Mongolian Jew's Harps
North
American Jew's Harp Festival
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Summary:Highlights 1998 - 2000 There’s nothing else like the
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See the JHG STORE for makers, sellers. publications & jhg products
| North American Jew's Harp Festival 1997 Highlights CD The CD features 20 of the
best Public Domain, spontaneous music, There are only a few left! US $12.00 each International - 1 item US$ 5.00
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