h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

After supper, we were watching an old Jack Benny show. Jack was tormenting his neighbour, the great Russian-born composer Dmitri Tiomkin. Tiomkin was trying to get out of Jack's house before he had to listen to any more of his violin playing.

I had to find out more about Tiomkin, who won numerous Oscars for his film scores. Tiomkin was very well educated in St Petersburg, having some of the same teachers as people like Shostakovich and Vladimir Horowitz. After the Revolution, he got tired of staging passionate dramas for May Day - there's only so much you can say about the triumph of Bolshevism, I imagine - so he moved to the US. The stock-market crash and a broken arm sort of put an end to his piano-playing career, and so he became a cinema composer.

And what a composer.

Among other things, Dmitri Tiomkin gave us this beloved song:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QKLvKZ6nIiA

For fun, check out all the patriotic yahoos on Youtube carrying on about how quintessentially American that is. Uh-huh.

Musicologists have noticed a strong resemblance between 'Do Not Forsake Me, Oh My Darling', and 'Dem Milners Trern':

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K_WwFGTRtac

No wonder Cole Porter said he needed to compose more 'Jewish tunes'.

Tiomkin also gave us just about my favourite 'cowboy' tune:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a-CFpiszqA4

(Yeah, that's Clint Eastwood with no shirt on.)

Cowboy tunes REALLY needed a better composer, preferably not from the West. Do you know what REAL cowboy songs sounded like? Like this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4cfhQFL2ePw

And that's one of the GOOD ones. At least it's being sung by a gen-uine son of a Texan. But there's really no excuse for that sort of thing. Thanks to Arlo for giving us the Socialist interpretation.

Of course, the Scots got to 'Rawhide', with results I can only hope Maestro Tiomkin would appreciate;

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GXIkL82hJtg

Oh, I guess you might like to see Dmitri Tiomkin himself, and his beautiful dog Irving. Here he is. Jack Benny's having some work done in the cellar...by Mel Blanc.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jaX1GfEmFfQ

Okay, musicological discussion over. If you still want some Dmitri Tiomkin, here's a video that should become a cult favourite.

'Rhapsody of Steel': Tiomkin composed it, the Pittsburgh Symphony played it, and US Steel paid for it. It's sort of a scifi theme.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HbuQCsOos9g

The plot: a meteor strikes. Time passes. Man invents wheel...you get the drift.

I think I prefer the Yiddish cowboy songs. What's more American than being a Jewish cowboy? Like this fellow:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xvXQzL4uBBM

Or, of course, the world's most famous Jewish cowboy can explain why ALL music is related, as he tells us how a black Communist taught a Jewish Texan how to sing an Irish Republican song:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nCD6ghdZ0p8

Okay, you want something a little less lachrymose? Here's Kinky in full flight:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-xGPwB_dvMg

I have only read one single Kinky Friedman book, but I liked it. It's odd that I never thought to check YouTube for him and his music... thanks for sharing!

Oh, yeah, those books...I forgot to mention he was a writer.

While you're listening to the music, be sure to check out Kinky's campaign ads for governor of Texas.

That was neat!

I once somehow got Rawhide all mixed up in my head with Tzadik KaTamar, and ever since then my brain keeps mashing them up together. What's Tzadik KaTamar, you ask? Well, it's a staple of Israeli folk dancing (which, as one might expect with a country as young as ours, is somewhat 'manufactured folk', but that's another topic for another time), a song based on a few verses from Psalms 92 - mostly 92:12, 'The righteous shall flourish like the palm tree; he shall grow like a cedar in Lebanon' - with people dancing in a circle in a rather silly way. Here, check it out:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-qe5sHxkqzQ

I can't tell if there really is a musical similarity or if my brain is just being weird, but to me they're just inseperable now. And it always makes me laugh.

Head 'em up, move 'em out, Move 'em on, head 'em out... ka-erez ba-lvanon yisge, ka-erez ba-lvanon yisge, ka-erex ba-lvanon yisge yisge

Thank you for sharing Lady PW

I think the similarity is more in the beat, rather than the notes.

I find it interesting that the two girls are in the centre. Most of our folk dances are either boy-girl, or two lines facing each other.

Here is a popular line folk dance in the Southern US:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g8OlL9LhJNM



FS

Well, that's actually part of the 'manufactured folk' bit. I'm not an expert on the history of Israeli folk dancing - far from it, really - but as far as I know, they pretty much started in the early 20th century, and mostly among the people in what later became kibbutzim; so there's this socialist 'everyone together' aspect to them. For example, Hora circles might have a boy circle and a girl circle, or they might all dance together. Something like that. I'm probably over-simplifying it quite a bit.

And it became a sort of industry, in the sense that 'folk dances' can be completely new - they continue to be created, either to folk songs like here, or to modern songs. It's all a bit complicated...

I remember dancing that reel in Pittsburgh, minus the hoop skirts on the ladies. And we did a lot of circle dances in Greece.

Mostly, in Greece, the ladies dance together, and the men dance together, though occasionally everybody just piles in.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H3WIHZea-U4

Have you ever watched the film 'Fiddler on the roof'?
It is the story of a Jewish family in Russia, just before the revolution. The plot involves the old traditions meeting the new ideas of the 20th century.

In one scene they are dancing at a wedding with a rope separating the men and woman. The young, radical, university student drops the rope and asks the girl he is in love with to dance with him.

It you haven't seen this I think you might find it interesting

FS

The hoop skirts make it much more interesting and you must avoid stepping on the hem

FS

Seen it? My dear friend, my dad played Tevya in our elementary school's production of that play.


Pretty sure I've read the book, too (it's a bit darker than the movie, and not just because it doesn't have any of the songs), but I can't actually remember.

The syrtaki seems a little like debka:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=79Wo75Uwo_8&t=42s

Probably not by accident. Everything here is so close, things like food and dances all mix together - or tather, start at the same thing and then split to local variations.

I've read bits and pieces, as I recall it was titled 'Tevya's daughters' most of the storeys in the film were fairly accurate to the book. I do like the songs

FS

I know it as 'Tevya the Milkman', but it's a translation too, I don't know what the original Yiddish title was.


The songs are wonderful - and their Hebrew translation is great, sometimes even better than the original.
My favourite is probably 'If I were a rich man', which in translation turned into the incredibly apt 'If I were Rothschild' (very rich British-Jewish family who was very philanthropic to the Jewish settlers in the state-of-Israel-to-be, got a bunch of stuff named after them, and most importantly, got into slang as the generic 'rich man', same as in 'what do you think I am, Rockefeller?!' and suchlike). It's actually hard for me to imagine that song any other way.

...Well, I just watched that Virginia reel, and it's wonderfully similar to a kids' play-dance I know from my childhood (which probably means that whoever came up with that dance based it on that reel, or a similar line dance). It's called Yesh Lanu Tayish, literally 'we have a he-goat', and the words are:

We have a he-goat
and the he-goat has a beard
and he has four legs
and a little tail
Hey!
With a stick, with a ruler, anything at hand,
With a stick, with a ruler, anything at hand

[This last line is rather odd, I agree; as far as I understand, either the original song was about a 'cheider' teacher (who were rather infamous for hitting students), and later got euphamised into a goat, or perhaps the goat song got turned into one about a 'cheider' teacher, and then the two versions got mixed. Nowadays it just sounds like people are really enthusiastic about hitting goats.]


As you might perhaps expect with something like that, most versions on YouTube are pretty terrible, and tend to feature shaky cams, bad sound, and dancers who are either very small kids or very self-conscious adults. But here are two examples, anyway:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=czoXCSW6kyo
I liked this one mostly because it's a little less of a mess than others (probably due to that one over-enthusiastic guy leading the rest), but because of the large group, you can't exactly see all of it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_rS1ZGpW7pU
Smaller group, so you get to see it better. I still haven't deided if the fact that it's being done by a group of somewhat-gawky teenagers, at least some of them apparently American kids who were just taught the dance and are half-bewildered and half-amused by the whole thing, makes this better or worse.

But I'll stop hogging your thread now, Dmitri.

This is a most enjoyable conversation!

One point is the 'Virginia Reel' is not tied to a single song, although the tune 'Dixie' is one of the best imho it is the moves that are usually called by the leader of the band.

I liked your second 'Little Goat' link best

When I selected my Reel link I picked the one I did both because of the camera angle and the two little girls at the end of the line. In my experience adding small children to the line adds to the experience and gives us a chance to pass it down to the next generation.

I liked the fact that you included the Palestinian dance, I don't think that we in the West really understand the Israeli-Palestinian relationship. Please do not feel obliged to explain here.

FS

Back from loading the Post, and you two have been saying so many interesting things.

Yes - 'Fiddler on the Roof', or 'Anatevka' as the Germans call it, is based on the short stories of Sholom Aleichem. I found one version called 'Tevye's Daughters'. I've read some of it in the original Yiddish.

There's a story, maybe not true, that Sholom Aleichem and Mark Twain met, and each claimed to be the counterpart of the other. Which sort of gives you an idea.

Lady P, I agree: Mediterranean food, Mediterranean music, Mediterranean dancing, all share with one another.

My son and I were in a Fiddler on the roof production a few years back. One of my favourite musicals! If I were a rich man was played a lot on the radio when I grew up, so it feels a little worn to me. But when Tevye sings Chavaleh... Oy vey, my tears flow. And each time "Chava" came off stage after that number I had to hold her a little, because she was always so emotional after the scene. Poor little bird. (No, I wasn't Golde, just Mirala, another lady in Anatevka)

I remember seeing that musical in the film version for the first time.

In our most Jewish neighbourhood in Pittsburgh, on a Friday night. Yeah, we went then because we were students, and we knew the place would be empty, also the deli for supper.

There was nobody there but a trio of boys who must have sneaked out of the house.

I like the song 'L'Chaim'. Very rousing. Growing up, we always heard 'Sunrise, Sunset'. I've just done a Guide Entry on Fyvush Finkel - he was in the original 'Fiddler'. I believe Theodore Bikel has done it from time to time, too.

"Chava" is without a doubt the saddest song in the story. I think we all love her the best. Is there a reason why she is linked to a bird, is it the meaning of her name, or just a pleasant comparison?

FS

One interpretation of that name is that Chevaleh means 'little bird'.