Female Speaker:
Good afternoon and welcome to the American Folklife Center [unintelligible] lecture.  We're very happy today to be presenting Ethel Raim is going to be talking about old cultures, new context presenting through traditional music and dance of urban immigrant communities.  And we're going to structure this as sort of an informal chat, but I'd first like you to welcome Ethel Raim.  

[applause]  

And as many of you might know, Ethel has been doing a wonderful job in -- let's start by calling it applied folklore, but we'll talk about terms in a minute.  She started off in New York City; she's a New Yorker.  She started off in the 50s as a performer, early 60s?

Ethel Raim: 
Late 50s.

Female Speaker:
Late 50s, early 60s.  She got very interested -- she was always interested in ethnic performances, but we'll talk a little bit about her career and then some of her thoughts on collecting and on presenting and also some of the people she's met along the way which is what's really interesting.  So do you want to start just with a little bit of biography -- and we're going to lead up to -- now she is the artistic director and she's one of the co-founders of the Center for Traditional Music and Dance in New York City, which has been a really seminal group.  It's actually had a number of different names, right?  It was originally the Balkan Art Center [spelled phonetically].

Ethel Raim:
And then the Ethnic Folk Art Center and Center for Traditional Music and Dance.

Female Speaker:
Do you want maybe just to talk a little bit about what you do now and then we'll go backwards.

Ethel Raim:
And then we'll back track.

Female Speaker:
Yeah.

Ethel Raim:
Well the center just celebrated its 40th and we're in the midst of celebrating our 40th anniversary.  And it was started by Martin Caning [spelled phonetically] as the Balkan Art Center.

Female Speaker:
Which year?

Ethel Raim:
That was 1968.  We have folk dance sessions, Friday night dance sessions, and festivals maybe two or three times a year.  And the way I connected with Martin, and then we'll go further back -- well we're starting sort of in the middle aren't we already into '68.  The way we connected is I had gone to Bulgaria in 1965, having started the Penny Whistlers, which was a group that I directed and performed with for, I don't know maybe some 15 years from maybe '62 to '76 something like that.  And I really had the good fortune to go to Bulgaria and firsthand see their National Folk Festival in Koplistitza [spelled phonetically], which was in 1965, and had a chance to connect with A.L. Lloyd through my work with Sing Out magazine.  I've had a really --

Female Speaker:
A.L. Lloyd the British folklorist?

Ethel Raim:
The British folklorist indeed and he was part of a group of ethnomusicologists who stayed connected during the whole Cold War period with Eastern block.  

Female Speaker:
Because there wasn't a lot of touring back and forth, was there?

Ethel Raim:
There was none.  You couldn't get visas or anything, but in '65 you could.  But they stayed connected and so through his connection with [unintelligible] I was able to go over to Bulgaria and record and learn more about the music and have a whole different connection to the music.  

Let me really go way, way back for a second because I think for myself, I know people end up in the field of either folklore, ethnomusicology, anthropology through so many different paths and streams and sparks.  And for me I guess it was really vocal music was the spark, and that was what captured me and captured me really at a very early age probably, I don't know before I was three.  And so it's been a very singular path toward and with traditional music and it led me to Sing Out magazine.  I was part of the folk song revival.  It led me to Bulgaria.  It led me to create the Penny Whistlers, sing with a number of other groups on the way.  One was an interesting group called The Villagers with Guy Carowan [spelled phonetically], Frank Hamilton, who's the other banjo player who played with the Weavers?  Erik Darling.  Fred Gerlack.  What a motley crew.  Two of them or three of them ended up playing with the Weavers.  I was 16 at the time so that was really the path and it led me actually to the Newport Folk Festival by 1968 and I already had connected with Martin because he went to Bulgaria in '66 and I gave him all of my contacts.  

Female Speaker:
Well just to back up all the way.  You're originally from where?

Ethel Raim:
From New York City, Manhattan.  

Female Speaker:
And you grew up, how did you hear vocal music that young?

Ethel Raim:
Actually I heard it in my own community.  I'm East European/Jewish heritage and people would gather in my parents' home and they would always at some point in the evening start singing.  I went to a Jewish progressive camp, Camp Kinderland.  There was a camp, The Lakelanders or the parents of the campers were right next-door, and they would sit around before dinner and just sing and it was just very, very beautiful.  I mean it was singing really for one's own regeneration and pleasure, it was beautiful.  So I really heard it growing up and coming up.  

So there we were in 1968, I'm at Newport Folk Festival, the Penny Whistlers are performing --

Female Speaker:
And the Penny Whistlers was a group that you started?  

Ethel Raim:
Mm-hmm.

Female Speaker:
About when was that?

Ethel Raim:
1962.  

Female Speaker:
And what led you to -- were you singing with -- it's a women's group, right?

Ethel Raim:
It is a women's group and it's actually it was a group of friends because I had the nasty habit of -- whenever I was with a few of my women friends, I would give them a part to sing and a text to sing and we would sing.  And actually it's funny in terms of some of the Bulgarian repertoire because I did not speak Bulgarian; this was 1964 or '63 and I would transcribe the music, that part was easy, and whatever the harmonies were.  And then I would transcribe the syllables of the text.  Then I would run over to the Bulgarian Consulate and say, okay can we make words of this? [Laughter] And low and behold they did.  And they were wonderful texts and they didn't know some of the words because they were really archaic forms of the words for the folk music and that's how we sang our Bulgarian repertoire so it was very special to go over in '65 and have that whole connection.

Female Speaker:
And at that same time you were working at Sing Out magazine, right?

Ethel Raim:
Yeah, I started at Sing Out I guess in '59.  

Female Speaker:
Because you had a music background, did you have a degree in music?

Ethel Raim:
I have my degree from City College.  I went to City College; it was free at the time.  I was incredibly lucky.  I did have a degree in music and the reason I had my degree in music was so I could transcribe folk songs, because I didn't have a little tape recorder at that time.  So the only thing --

Female Speaker:
People didn't have tape recorders, then.

Ethel Raim:
No one did.  My first tape recorder was this heavy little, and it was about half the size of that speaker.  It was a Sony reel to reel.  And I was determined to be able to capture these songs and hold on to them, and the only way I knew to do that was to be able to transcribe the music.

Female Speaker:
In fact you made a -- part of your job was going and transcribing folk performers, right?  Do you want to tell that story about Bob Dylan?

Ethel Raim:
Yeah, this was when I was a music editor of Sing Out magazine.  And I guess it was early '60s and we wanted to print Blowin' in the Wind; there was no recording of it and Bob Dylan didn't have a transcription of it.  So we went to the local Hun & Harden [spelled phonetically].  And Bob sat there --

Female Speaker:
Which is a cafeteria in New York, right?

Ethel Raim:
It's the automat where you put nickels in the slot and you got your little club roll for five cents, [laughs] three vegetables for 25 cents.  I sound like my parents.  [Laughs]  Yeah, so we sat at Hun and Harden.  He sang his song; it's a gorgeous song.  I transcribed it and then we put it in the magazine.  My dream come true.  So it was to be able to do that and then the Penny Whistlers, this is '66 already and we sang at the Newport Folk Festival.  It was a wonderful festival.  It was the first year that Ralph Rensla [spelled phonetically], who became the head of that festival and the division at the Smithsonian had crafts and it was just an exhilarating, fantastic experience to have all of this folk expression in one place.  And I remember meeting Almeda Riddle and Mississippi John Hurt and Doc Watson, it was wonderful because I had just transcribed their songs for years.  And all I had was their voice in my ear, so it was wonderful to be able to meet them.  

And they had an evaluation at that point and Ralph said, "Why don't you come along."  And I said okay.  And for those who know Ralph, you know, he could spot someone who had the "bug," who was excited and had passion about this and he'd target them.  So he said, "Come on to the meeting."  So they had an evaluation meeting. It was a wonderful festival and they said "Oh what a great job you did."  And it was.  It was wonderful.  And then Ralph turned to me and said, "And what do you think?" And I said, "Well I think it was a great festival, too.  The only problem that I had was that I didn't hear any of the accents that I grew up with when I was growing up."  And so they gave me $3,000 --

Female Speaker:
By accent you mean ethnic diversity?

Ethel Raim:
I mean the music and the immigrant traditions that I grew up with: Italian, Ukrainian, and Russian, and Jewish.

Female Speaker:
Because you're coming from an urban, very mixed, ethnically mixed urban tradition, right?  And these other people tended to be more rural?

Ethel Raim: 
Or their sense of traditional music was rural.  I don't know that, I think some of them also came from urban traditions, but there's a real difference to me.   People who are second generation American, immigrant American, or third generation -- and I found that a lot of the people like John Cohen, Ralph Rensla were third generation and they had a different connection and relationship to immigrant tradition than the people who are second generation.  So I really had one foot in the old and one foot in the new, and it was a real struggle to sort of have that come together.  And I was part of the folk revival and I was very much aware of the musics and the power of those musics and the ability to sustain people of those musics during that time.  So I was trying to bring them together and so I got $3,000 from the Smithsonian, from Newport, to go out and find them.  [Laughter]

Female Speaker:
And did they tell you who "them" was?

Ethel Raim:
No, I told them who "them" was. 

[laughter]

Female Speaker:
So where'd you go?

Ethel Raim:
So the Smithsonian was celebrating the State of Pennsylvania, and this was 1969.  Then I went with Ralph to Western Pennsylvania and cut my teeth on field research; I'm not a trained folklorist or ethnomusicologist, and so it was wonderful to have a mentor who had such sensitivity and interest and knowledge in the traditions.

Female Speaker:
Where did you even start?  So you're going to Western Pennsylvania and what happened?

Ethel Raim:
Well before we went to Pennsylvania we started in New York.

Female Speaker:
Uh-huh.

Ethel Raim:
And so the two places to go in New York, you know, were either the local record shops, which don't exist anymore, right?  So this was a little record shop on 14th Street, a two-block area from 6th Avenue to 8th Avenue that was all Spanish and we walked in and Ralph said, "Any recordings of local Spanish musicians?"

Female Speaker:
And this is Spanish Spanish in that neighborhood, right or was it Latino?

Ethel Raim:
It was not Latino, it was really Spanish.  And it was Galician.  Now there's Mexican, now there's, I mean it's very different times.  So this was '68 and immigration laws opened up in '65 and you had huge immigration to the U.S. from Southern Europe, the Balkans, and we benefited tremendously by those immigrations because it either replenished communities that were already here and gave new vitality to their traditional forms or new communities came.  So we went into the shop and he asked about local Spanish musicians and they said, "Oh, Antonio Moscara [spelled phonetically]."  And he's a Galician bagpiper.  We went out to Long Island and Antonio is a baker and a marvelous Galician bagpiper.  So it was sort of like how to connect with communities and where the music would happen.  And I remember we went to Kentricon [spelled phonetically] which is a Greek music record shop, doesn't exist anymore.

Female Speaker:
And where was that?

Ethel Raim:
8th Avenue around 47th Street.  We walked in and we said we would be interested in listening to some local group music and the guy said, "Well let's look in the paper."  And he opened up his big Greek newspaper and he ran down to, you know, all of the fraternal organizations have their annual gatherings and they used to meet at Crystal Palace, which was a catering hall on Broadway in Astoria.  The top hall might have [unintelligible] Greeks.  The middle hall would have Italians from the north maybe and some choral singing, and then Bohemians on the next floor.  That place was incredible; it unfortunately has closed.  So Ralph and I went to Apontic [spelled phonetically] Affair at Crystal Palace.  Ralph could be impatient. [Laughs] We walked in -- 

Female Speaker:
No, really. 

Ethel Raim:
-- and there were oh, it was some kind of Schlocky band playing some stuff.  There were two or three people on the dance floor and he said, "We're out of here."  And I said wait, wait, you know just smelled it.  And then all of a sudden a single lira player got up on stage --

Female Speaker:
A lira is --

Ethel Raim:
A lira is like an upright --

Female Speaker:
Little string instrument?

Ethel Raim:
It's a bowed instrument.  And the lira is actually played with the nails against the strings, four strings, sometimes three.  And there was Buzzy Mosbalios [spelled phonetically] playing lira.  Everybody got up on that dance floor; old, young, and the floor was vibrating and shaking.  I thought we'd end up on the second floor within moments.  [inaudible]

Female Speaker:
No, you're fine.

Ethel Raim:
And it was extraordinary.  And we found when you work in communities there are always people that are very excited that people are discovering them and their music and so we had Tommy Tormendes [spelled phonetically] who was extremely helpful.  And --

Female Speaker:
Was he a musician?

Ethel Raim:
No, just someone who loved the culture and loved to dance.

Female Speaker:
Just a conduit person who --

Ethel Raim:
Yeah, good liaison person to the community and a real middle man as it were.  And someone who could smooth the way and vouch for you because the other thing that I learnt really quickly was if you can't establish trust, you won't get to first base.  And you establish trust in many different ways.  One is being true to your word the other is, you know, saying that you will pay for the musicians and whatever happens you pay and honoring that.  

Female Speaker:
And you're talking about hiring these people you found in the communities to come to more public, multi-cultural events like --

Ethel Raim:
Like the Smithsonian Folk Fest.

Female Speaker:
The Smithsonian Folk Fest, okay.

Ethel Raim:
Right.  And to give you an example of how long it can take to establish trust, we invited Tommy and a bunch of the musicians to come down in '69 and they never showed.  And we were terribly disappointed and had several conversations afterwards and then they weren't invited in '70 because 1970 was Maryland and there was Tommy with six people from the [unintelligible] community showing up.  And it was wonderful.  We put them on a stage anyway, but you know [Laughter] there's a little lag.  Another story that I have from gaining trust was when Martin and I were working in -- where, I guess it was Ohio and we walked into -- and this was a time so Ohio was, for those of you who know the years of the Smithsonian Festival, Ohio was 1971.  And we were working across a lot of different immigrant communities.  The Serbian community, the Hungarian community, the Tang [spelled phonetically] community, the Croatian community, and we walked in to a church basement and almost accosted by this guy who said, "Who are you, what are you doing here?"  And we explained that we're from the Smithsonian and we were looking for artists that we could bring to the Smithsonian to represent the cultural traditions of that community.  And he said, "What do you know about our culture?" 

Female Speaker:
And what culture was this?

Ethel Raim:
Serbian. 

Female Speaker:
Serbian.

Ethel Raim:
And Martin says to this guy, "Oh, she sings your songs."  And the guy just dragged me up on stage.  There was a band playing and fortunately we had just done our recording session with [unintelligible].

Female Speaker:
This is a Penny Whistlers.

Ethel Raim:
This is the Penny Whistlers and we did a number of wonderful Serbian songs and so I said, "Do you play [unintelligible]?"  And they said sure.  The band struck up [unintelligible], I sang [unintelligible], and the guy's jaw dropped. [Laughs] And he said, oh.  But we never had such access.  I mean it was extraordinary, you know so obviously you don't always have to do that and go that route, but you know lots of different things that gain access and gain trust.  So that was '71.  So I think Martin and I were with the Smithsonian.  I was there in '70 and I said there's no way I can do this many communities by myself, even two of us could hardly do it, but I got the Smithsonian to hire Martin as well, and we had four fabulous years of doing ethnographic field research in the various states that were featured.  Maryland was featured, I guess in '74 and we brought down half of the Olympian community, the island of Krakatoas, the village of Olympus, which is way up on top of Krakatoa.

Female Speaker:
This is Greece.

Ethel Raim:
And a huge community at the Dodekenes Island [spelled phonetically], a huge community in Maryland, in Baltimore.  And so we actually -- it was that festival that allowed us to really -- I mean prior to that we had brought, you know when we were doing work in Pennsylvania we brought maybe 10 people to come along with the musicians so there was some sense of context and community and synergy between dance, musicians, and the community people and dance.  And with the Olympian community we were able to bring down over 50 people.  We brought down two busloads.  At the last minute they said "No buses, you can't do the buses."  We said "No buses, no program."  So they brought the buses. [Laughter] The people came down and it was incredible because they basically did a glendi [spelled phonetically], which is a celebration down on the mall.  And participants at the festival could join in the glendi so it was a wonderful exchange of cultures and a sense of how it all unfolds from songs that are sung in order to get to the place of celebration to unload the sorrow.  And so they sing the montineves [spelled phonetically].  Oh, I remember and these texts.  Oh, I remember your father, he was a good man and he passed.  And oh, I remember your cousin or your brother.

Female Speaker:
So like they would've done in their own communities.

Ethel Raim:  
They do it all the time and that's the only way you can get in to a celebration.

Female Speaker:
So these are living traditions that were still going on.

Ethel Raim:
Absolutely and still today.

Female Speaker:
And still today.  So let's just move a little bit forward. So you worked in the Smithsonian and then you went back to your hometown.

Ethel Raim:
In 1974 Martin and I left the Smithsonian and brought our marbles back to New York City and worked in depth with communities, and what we were doing informally between '74 and '90, we formalized in 1990 and we called those programs community cultural initiatives.

Female Speaker:
So what would you do to -- what'd you say work for the community?

Ethel Raim:
We would put together a committee that would drive the project, mostly artists, media people, educators.

Female Speaker:
From within that community.

Ethel Raim:
From within the community, meet weekly sometimes bi-weekly and create programs that we would design together that would help sustain cultural forms within that community.  And the three pieces, that three directions that these projects would take almost all the time was presentation in the community was to share traditions outside of the community and to pass traditions on to the next generation.  And that is the trajectory to this day of what communities want to do in terms of their own traditions and how they want to see them supported and how they want to have them supported.  And out of the community cultural initiatives we've been able to help establish six community-based organizations.

Female Speaker:
Cultural organizations.

Ethel Raim:
Cultural organizations and doing this one in the Mexican community, the West African community, the Arab/American community and some of the projects have also created a sustained annual festivals like in the Albanian community or [unintelligible] and the Dominican community.  

Female Speaker:
All within New York, but these are becoming yearly events that really anchor the traditions within these communities.  Do you want to talk a little bit about working with the Albanians?  Was that one of the first groups you started with?

Ethel Raim:
That was, I mean by 1990 we realized the community that made the most sense to work with was the Albanian community because we had the deepest reach in ties and trust in the Albanian community.  

Female Speaker:
And with all due respect to the Albanian community, not an easy thing to do.  There are a lot of Albanians in New York and they almost always claim they're not Albanians.  The super in my building for many years was obviously Albanian and he kept claiming he was Romanian or something.  I'm not sure why that is, but it seems something endemic.  Was anybody here yesterday for that marvelous concert by, we had an Albanian group Merita Halili and her husband Raif Hyseni. Absolutely fantastic music, but how did you establish trust with the Albanian community?

Ethel Raim:
We had actually worked already in the Albanian community starting in 1976.  And we had produced a festival that included Macedonians, Albanians, and Greeks, which was quite a feat. 

Female Speaker:
There's some political tension there?

Ethel Raim:
A lot of political tension and everyone said we were crazy.  But the forms are all related and it made such sense.  And the communities live so close to each other, you know Park Avenue up in the Bronx is the Albanian community.  Macedonian community is just a little bit further north and what's now Little Italy on Belmont and Hughes Avenue.  And it was really tri-state and communities, Macedonian community from the Bronx from Patterson, New Jersey.  It was a wonderful festival.  And it really got across the similarities and the -- it's more than similarities the overlay of --

Female Speaker:
Commonalities?

Ethel Raim:
-- yeah of tradition of songs, of music, of instrumentation.  

Female Speaker:
And did these, your programs draw not only people from within the community.  Can you talk a little bit about the relationship to people outside the community?

Ethel Raim:
Well as I said in terms of the community cultural initiatives and before they were formalized.  It was -- it's very important for people to be able to tell everyone who they are and who they are culturally.  And so our job was to make sure that we had outreach well beyond the community as well as very deep reach into the community.  And we've always maintained actually that an audience that is comprised of people from within the community and outside the community is the best mix.  Because when you have an audience that knows nothing about the culture, it's very hard for the musicians to get a kind of feedback to what they're doing and so you get a performance, but you don't get "the performance." And as soon as you have people from the community and that complete circle, the synergy between audience and musician, you just have the strongest kind of performance possible.  So it was very important for us to make sure that we got people from within the community, from outside the community and important for the artist, because many of them were not even known in the community.  So that's a very important factor.

Female Speaker:
You mean they came over and they weren't being active musicians?

Ethel Raim:
They were maybe playing just on a family level, and so you didn't have a community that knew about their existence or what they did.  And I remember the festival in 1977; it was actually the first festival that we were able to get some NEA support for, and Bess was there, Bess Hawes Lomax or Bess Lomax Haws.  She was there and she was blown over by the response.  It was a 2,000 -- 700-person hall it was at Hunter College at the Kay Playhouse, and it was a mix of communities.  It was the Winter Folk Festival and this new community from, and they were new, I mean many of them had just come over between '65 and '70 so they were newly established community of maybe 20,000 from practically one small town in Montenegro from Ochene.  And instead of having a village that was horizontal, you had a village that was vertical because you had the grandparents on one floor and the cousins and nieces and nephews and parents.

Female Speaker:
You mean in a New York apartment house.

Ethel Raim:
In a New York apartment house, and that was the village.  And you went into that building and you knew you were in a village because people were going up, down, up, and down, you know and it was one family; it was one village.  So the festival was in '77 and the community, we had rehearsed in the back of a pizzeria on 174th Street because the community that the kind of tradition that happens at a wedding, you know how do you restage that for the Kay Playhouse?  And all of a sudden you know there were questions.  Well where do we come on?  You know at the wedding you just get up and you go on to the floor and you dance.  So here, you know oh, you have to come in from here and then this is the stage and you work it this way.  And how many times around will we go?  I mean it's like all the issues of presentation, but maintaining the form as it is in the community context.  

So there were these women with bouffant hairdos and spiked heels and chiffon gowns on the stage of Kay Playhouse doing their valla [spelled phonetically] which is a dance and it was unbelievably fantastic.  And musicians and singing it was -- and I remember there was a young girl in the audience who was probably a granddaughter of [unintelligible] a zumale [spelled phonetically] player from Ochene who also played at that festival and she couldn't get over all these Americans going gaga over her grandfather playing this tiny little double-reed oboe and it was such an eye opener for her and for us because we realized the importance of the affirmation that comes when people outside the community are excited and interested in the culture and the impact that has on people in the community, and especially young people in the community.

Female Speaker:
Now I know you brought some images of some of the groups.

Ethel Raim:
Oh, yeah that would be great.

Female Speaker:
That we'd just flip through because Ethel's worked with so many different groups that it's really astounding.  And important -- a lot of the traditions that she's documented over the years and they've all documented over the years are really ancient traditions that sometimes don't even -- are not even healthy in their homelands, right?

Ethel Raim:
Oh, absolutely.

Female Speaker:
Kenny Goldstein was a very famous American Folklorist.  You told me a story last night and you brought him what?

Ethel Raim: 
He wanted to have recordings of some of this immigrant music that we had been talking about and I said well let me give you recordings of three generations of one specific community, it was Croatian.

Female Speaker:
And this was what year?

Ethel Raim:
And this was, oh, Kenny it had to have been 1975.  And I made the recordings of three generations and I played it for him.  There were old timers and just gorgeous.  These people were from Aliquippa, Pennsylvania and then his daughter and then granddaughter.  And so I played it for him and he looked at me and he said, "This is recorded here?"  I mean he couldn't believe that this was recorded here.  You know and this is music that goes on all the time.

Female Speaker:
And continues to go on.

Ethel Raim:
And continues to go on.

Female Speaker:
If you know where to look for it.

Ethel Raim:
If you know where to look for it.

Female Speaker:
So can you just walk us through?

Ethel Raim:
Yeah this is Tony Bisade [spelled phonetically] they are Romanian/Banat gypsy musicians, and the interesting thing about Roma musicians in New York now and around the world -- when we worked with this group which was late 70s early 80s, they would never ever identify themselves as Roma or gypsies, and so they were Romanian, ethnic Romanians from Banat which was one of the, one of the two autonomous regions in the former Yugoslavia.  And now what's wonderful is they, you know say we are -- the kids of these musicians like Mobasa's already middle generation, but the guy on the left there is Zoran Munchana [spelled phonetically] who just passed about three months ago.  His son Lante [spelled phonetically] is a wonderful keyboard player and is so proud -- oops, I'm sorry.  

Female Speaker:
There we go.

[laughter]

Ethel Raim:
So proud to say he's gypsy and talk about the Romani language and their heritage. So that's them.  Next.  

That's Dave Terez [spelled phonetically] that's a photo from the 40s.  He's the kind of Klezmer.  He's a guy who came over and it's so typical of immigrant stories.  He came over and said "What am I going to do for a living?"  He was a Klezmer, which is an itinerant musician playing Eastern European Jewish wedding music, dance music, and so he had a relative there said, "Oh, you'll become a furrier."  So he went and he worked as a furrier for a few years and was discovered soon after by one of the dance band leaders and Dave was very happy to turn in his furrier's knife and pick up his career as a Klezmer musician.  

Female Speaker:
But Klezmer music almost died off in the 60s and 70s.

Ethel Raim:
It pretty much --

Female Speaker:
So I want to talk about reviving, the revival of Klezmer because now Klezmer is a major form, but when you first started there were very few Klezmer.

Ethel Raim:
Almost none.  And there was Dave and Andy Statman [spelled phonetically] had started taking lessons with Dave.  Andy, the bluegrass mandolinst par excellent -- and was studying clarinet with Dave and really his protˇgˇ.  And they wanted to do a project with Dave, he and Zev Feldman [spelled phonetically], who actually claims he came up with the term Klezmer as the form.  A Klezmer is a musician, klezmerum [spelled phonetically] are the plural of a Klezmer musician.  But the term Klezmer as Klezmer music we put in a grant application to NEA and we said, I guess we'll call it Klezmer music.  

Female Speaker:
So you were involved with that application?

Ethel Raim:
Yeah, that was our proposal in 1978, 1977. 

Female Speaker:
And the term really stuck, didn't it?

Ethel Raim: 
It stuck, it held on.  And Ted Leven [spelled phonetically] was working at NEA as an intern that year and was very helpful in shaping the proposal.  We got funded and -- 

Female Speaker:
And the proposal was to do a tour?

Ethel Raim:
Was to do a major concert, which was, you know Dave coming back as a major artist.  We turned 400 people away.  It was at the old Webster Hall, which was I think Casa Valecia [spelled phonetically] at the time.  And then we did it -- for two years we did and Dave couldn't travel really long distances, but he did do I'd say maybe 20 concerts.

Female Speaker:
And he went on to become a National Heritage Award Winner?

Ethel Raim:
Yes, we had nominated him and on the rehearsal he collapsed on stage.  And Bob who played with Andy, thank God he knew CPR and he revived Dave and he had another five years.

Female Speaker:
How many people that you've worked with have got in NEA --

Ethel Raim:
Oh at least 15.

Female Speaker:
15?

Ethel Raim:
Oh, yeah Dave Terez, Adam Polpovich [spelled phonetically], [unintelligible], Simone Shahene [spelled phonetically], Fatima [unintelligible], Donny Golden [spelled phonetically], Liz Carol [spelled phonetically], I mean [unintelligible] as I said.

Female Speaker:
So you're relatively good at spotting talent.

Ethel Raim:
Mm-hmm. 

Female Speaker:
And nurturing it, yeah.

Ethel Raim:
Someone once called me a talent scout.  And I was offended, but I said well I guess I'm sort of one. 

[laughter]

Female Speaker:
Let's see some more images.

Ethel Raim:
That's Vincenzio Dimeco [spelled phonetically] he's from Calabria [spelled phonetically] and played with many of the Italian musicians.  Off on the side is someone that you can't see is Raphael and Gizeppi [spelled phonetically] DeFranco's son [spelled phonetically].

Female Speaker:
Who were very critical and they were from New Jersey?

Ethel Raim:
Mm-hmm.

Female Speaker:
And very critical in reviving Italian --

Ethel Raim:
Totally.

Female Speaker:
-- traditional music.

Ethel Raim:
Right.  Next.  This is from the Greek music tour, which was 1982 and 1983 and these are giant musicians here.  There's Lazarus [unintelligible] off on your left, lower row; he is deceased.  [unintelligible] a fantastic [unintelligible] musician who came over for the tour; he's deceased.  [unintelligible] who is a NEA National Heritage Fellowship recipient.  [Unintelligible] in the middle.  Oh, that wasn't, come back, come back.  That was [unintelligible] son and then [unintelligible] who was a National Heritage recipient, middle row on the left.  And then the three guys with the tupan [spelled phonetically] or the [unintelligible] the drum, and the guy behind him and [unintelligible] on the far left with three musicians that came from Alexandria and we have beautiful recordings of them.  And then [unintelligible] the bagpiper, the Galician bagpiper.  So in that photo alone there are only two musicians that are still alive; it's incredible.

Female Speaker:
But they're all recorded.

Ethel Raim:
They're all recorded and we have rich archives of their music.  Next?  Oh, Leon Schwartz [spelled phonetically] he's not with us anymore.  He's a violinist from Bochco, Vienna, beautiful and he's recorded.  And Cherish the Ladies.

Female Speaker:
Do you want to tell them about how that came about?

Ethel Raim:
Yes, I will.

Female Speaker:
Does everybody know who Cherish the Ladies are?  They're probably one of the top Irish/American groups right now touring the world.  They do major concerts throughout the world and they're just a dynamite group, really excellent group.  But how did they start?

Ethel Raim:
Well we started that -- it's nice that these two pictures are back to back, you know with all the men before that because we were sitting, Martin and I were sitting with Mick Maloney [spelled phonetically] who's done so much for Irish traditional music in this country and in the world.  And I was complaining that, you know I'm so fortunate to be able to work with so many wonderful musicians, but they're all men.  And he says, "Well, Ethel in the Irish community there are all these young women and girls and they play music and they're wonderful."  I said, "Fantastic, let's celebrate this.  Let's share it with the world."  And so we came up with a concert series that Joanie Madden [spelled phonetically] one, two, three from the left came up with a name; it's the name of an old Irish jig.  She said we'll call it Cherish the Ladies and she used to call me up and say, "But no one's going to come to the concert, Ethel."  And I said they're going to come, they're going to come.  And again we'd turn people away.  So the first three concerts were, you know, Maury & Glen [spelled phonetically] had the Kaeley [spelled phonetically] group out in Queens, Martin Molverhill [spelled phonetically] had been teaching young girls, mostly girls and some guys and they were going over to Ireland and taking, bringing home all Ireland championships.

Female Speaker:
But these people weren't really playing in New York, neither the fathers, nor the daughters were playing a lot in New York.

Ethel Raim:
No.  They were students.

Female Speaker:
If you knew the right Irish bar to go to --

Ethel Raim:
Yeah, sessions.

Female Speaker:
-- where there was a session, but they weren't playing large concert halls.

Ethel Raim:
At all and then that's why Joanie said no one's going to come.  And after the series of concerts we did another series.  We learnt that so many of the fathers who were wonderful musicians, Joanie's dad is a wonderful box player.  Is Mary in that picture?  Mary Rafferty [spelled phonetically] and Mike Rafferty's a wonderful flute player.  All their father's play, you know Mattie Connely [spelled phonetically] was a wonderful piper.  Diedre [spelled phonetically] was in the group.  And so we did a concert series called -- actually a large concert called Fathers and Daughters and did two recordings for Shanakee [spelled phonetically] Records of Cherish the Ladies and Fathers and Daughters.  And this year, which is our 40th; it's their 20th so it's like our baby is 20 years old.  And what happened is we worked with the group to put together a touring group, and they did a tour in '87 and '89 and they just took off. 

Female Speaker:
They're, you know the same sort of venues that book the Chieftans [spelled phonetically] for example.

Ethel Raim:
Oh, yeah.

Female Speaker:
Very often will book Cherish the Ladies.  And they're really, if you have a chance to see them, do.  They're great people.

Ethel Raim:
They're wonderful.  Oh, Tom Dougherty [spelled phonetically] that's right.  That's the box player and flute player in Cherish the Ladies.  That's her dad; he's no longer with us, wonderful musician.  And this is [unintelligible] and it was the community cultural initiative in the Arab/American community and Semone Shaheen [spelled phonetically] is second from the left, also National Heritage fellowship recipient.  And that's his brother on the right who's an ude [spelled phonetically] player as well as an ude maker.  George Vasir [spelled phonetically] who's no longer with us, [unintelligible], [unintelligible], beautiful Lebanese singer and Basan Saba [spelled phonetically] in the middle a beautiful nie [spelled phonetically] player. 

Female Speaker:
And most of these people were living in --

Ethel Raim:
Brooklyn.

Female Speaker:
-- Brooklyn, okay.

Ethel Raim:
It's a little bit New Jersey and Long Island. 

Female Speaker:
And they would play where?  In restaurants or for --

Ethel Raim:
We met Semone playing at the Tripoli restaurant in Brooklyn, and I remember having a conversation with him.  He said, "You know I don't want to be playing at the Tripoli restaurant for the rest of my life.  Semone came over in '82, and I think part of what our work, be the center and all of us involved in this is to really work with musicians to help fulfill dreams and aspirations.  And so we started Mahatajan Alfan [spelled phonetically] in 1994 and put together many of the finest musicians in Brooklyn, New Jersey, and did an all day Arab World Culture Festival at the Brooklyn Museum.  

And again the collaboration is an institution that has great meaning to the community that they don't necessarily feel welcomed by and at.  And our job is to forge that collaboration and to forge that partnership so that it opens up and there is, for those of you who've read Bob Graves book Cultural Democracy, it's leveling the playing field and it's making all of this music accessible to everybody and also allowing institutions to embrace larger communities.  I remember for Mahatajan, we went to the council member in Brooklyn to get a $5,000 grant for Mahatajan and he said, "And where do these people live?"  And I said, "Well you have about 250 in your district."  He didn't know.  And I remember Mary Hayes -- not Mary Hayes, she was the executive director, who was the council member?

Female Speaker:
At the New York State Council of the Arts?  It doesn't matter.

Ethel Raim:
Well, anyway, she came into a meeting one time and says, "Okay raise your hand if you know who your councilman is, who your council member is."  And very few hands went up and that's so important in this work to be able to work on all of the levels on the political level, et cetera.  So I won't even go there. Next.  

Bihu [spelled phonetically] dancer.  This is the Dance India Festival.  We were a little bit ahead of our time for this festival in 1996, because we had presented a Bongra group from Toronto because there was no Bongra group in the U.S. yet.  And D.J. Rayka [spelled phonetically] who is now, you know a basement Bongra; she's on NPR and she does a monthly dance at SOBs and got her start through this festival and through the Toronto group coming down and meeting her, but the audience, you know came for [unintelligible].  And what was this other stuff?  And we had a smoke machine downstairs, and we had a dance party downstairs for our basement Bongra party.  Next.

Female Speaker:
It was a success.

Ethel Raim:
It was a success.  Keyskay [spelled phonetically] Ohutchin [spelled phonetically] is a festival that's going into its 16th year started by the center and community members.

Female Speaker:
In the Dominican community.

Ethel Raim:
In the Dominican community and Hybridge Park.

Female Speaker:
New York City has over 200,000 Dominicans.

Ethel Raim:
Try half a million.

Female Speaker:
Half a million now?  It's a huge community.

Ethel Raim:
Huge.

Female Speaker:
And this was started in a park in way north in Manhattan that used to be a sort of rough neighborhood, it's gotten much better, but it used to be -- the first time I ever went to Hybridge Park as a New Yorker was to see this festival, and I wasn't sure I was going to make it back, but it was lovely.  It was great and the community turned out in huge numbers.

Ethel Raim:
Yeah, about 2,000 show up for the festival.

Female Speaker:
In its 16th year?

Ethel Raim:
16th year.  And Keyskaya Heights [spelled phonetically] is Washington Heights is renamed Keyskaya Heights, Keyskaya is the Taieno [spelled phonetically] name of the Island of Hispanola [spelled phonetically].  And this is [unintelligible] and this is a series, this is the initiative in the West African community of Mandan culture [spelled phonetically], Sinagal [spelled phonetically], Mali, [spelled phonetically], Guiena [spelled phonetically], and Bisal.  And this is a recording series that came out of the festival in 2001 which was the featured city was New York City that --

Female Speaker:
New York City was featured in it.

Ethel Raim:
-- you, yourself, curated beautifully.  And this was a recording that came out of the series from that and this is the second in the recording series with Global be to the Burroughs. [spelled phonetically]

 Female Speaker:
Again a huge, new immigrant -- relatively new immigrant population in New York is West African.  So you've gone and found people within that community who are musicians?

Ethel Raim:
It's amazing the number of fantastic musicians within that community because it's a relatively small community of maybe 20 - 25,000, and a huge number of spectacular artists.  And this is, we brought over Duduenji Rose [spelled phonetically] and he's from Senegal and he is doing saba [spelled phonetically], I don't have that right.  But at any rate this was a program that was done at Alice Tulley Hall, again, you know a thousand people, some from the community, from outside the community, and extraordinary affirmation.

Female Speaker:
And Alice Tulley Hall is where?

Ethel Raim:
Lincoln Center.

Female Speaker:
Lincoln Center, which is sort of in New York -- this is a bastion of high art culture New York.  So to get how many people out?  You just packed that hall, right?

Ethel Raim:
We packed the hall, it was sold out.  We had over a thousand people.  And this is at a Keyskaya Festival and this is Faficka Lagrande [spelled phonetically] fantastic meringue player and this is, she performed, I guess in 19 -- maybe 2000. 

This is Orsha Baliath [spelled phonetically] this is in the Bukhara  [spelled phonetically] Jewish community, which started out again like 3,000 in 1982 and today is a community of over 70,000, primarily in Queens.

Female Speaker:
And they're from where?

Ethel Raim:
They're from Bukhara.  They're from --

Female Speaker:
Which is Uzbekistan?

Ethel Raim: 
-- Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and yeah so Bukhara is the older area.  And this is a doyra [spelled phonetically] lesson and Ausher [spelled phonetically] who's a bus driver in New York and an extraordinary musician.  He's teaching a young kid to play doyra.

Female Speaker:
A lot of these musicians maintain day jobs, right, because they can?

Ethel Raim:
Almost all of them.

Female Speaker:
In fact yesterday Marita Lilly [spelled phonetically] her day job is --

Ethel Raim:
Marita is a medical bookkeeper, accountant.

Female Speaker:
Accountant, so.

Ethel Raim:
And this is [unintelligible] a wonderful Bukharin dancer.  She is from Tajikistan and this is at the Shorefront Y in Brooklyn, and this was a festival.  And this was a community cultural initiative in the Jewish communities from the former Soviet Union.  The initiative was called [unintelligible] Our Traditions.  And there's the late Yamen Goldenstein [spelled phonetically] off on the right, clarinetist whom we lost about two years ago, one of the few musicians in Europe who actually maintained the tradition of klezmer music through that whole period where it was dormant and, you know almost extinct here in the U.S.

Female Speaker:
Let's see a few more images and then perhaps we can open up the floor for questions.

Ethel Raim:
Okay.  This is KPAA, the Korean Performing Arts Association, and Su-Young Park [spelled phonetically], who leads this group, has just been awarded a National Heritage fellowship, which is fantastic.  Oh there I go again, next.  

Now this was Folk Parks and this is a sense of -- I'll tell a quick story.  For those of you who know when Henry Ford used to do his festivals, he would have his workers come out in their ethnic dress and then they would go behind this huge cauldron and they would all come out in their tuxedos, on the other side, to show that they were becoming and he was helping them become American.

Female Speaker:
So it was literally a melting pot?

Ethel Raim:
Literally and so very often people use the phrase and the term "melting pot" as a way of talking about our diversity, but in essence and in truth the melting pot was to melt it all away and to have Velveeta come out on the other side [laughs] and Wonder bread, so.  Oh, this is the Mariachi Academy, which got started in 2002 and was an outgrowth of the community cultural initiative in New York's Mexican immigrant community, which is huge now, next.  

And this is the Academy again.  There's Ramone Ponce [spelled phonetically] who started it in the green bow, and his dad.  I don't see his dad in the picture, next.  And this is the [unintelligible].  These are more recent community cultural initiatives.  This is [unintelligible] an initiative in a very new community in Jackson Heights, the Peruvian community and these are the kids and its -- this is, a lot of the emphasis here is education and passing on the traditions to youngsters in the community.  That's eating, you always have to eat.  And this is as PS 212 in Jackson Heights and this was at one of our festivals.  

Ah!  And this is a community cultural initiative we've started in the Chinese community and that is Yau [spelled phonetically] teaching students yungchin [spelled phonetically] which is the hammer dulcimer.  And this was New York World Festival, and this is [unintelligible] a wonderful, wonderful accordion player, actually from San Antonio.  And that's it.

Female Speaker:
So what communities are you working in now with the Center for Traditional Music and Dance?

Ethel Raim:
Peruvian is coming to an end, our role will be over next December and it will go on; it has now gotten its incorporation.  The Ukrainian community --

Female Speaker:
Ukrainian, okay.

Ethel Raim:
-- Chinese community, and we will be starting an initiative in the Columbian community in January.

Female Speaker:
Pretty impressive.  Let's -- can we open the floor for some questions?  We don't want to go too far over time, but yes?

Male Speaker:
You mentioned briefly in the beginning something about children passing on the tradition.  Can you say a few words about both the immigrant community and in the countries that they come from, they're reaction to the folk festivals and their excitement about that?  How does that feed their feeling about their traditions?

Ethel Raim:
The people in the mother country so-to-speak?

Male Speaker:
And the young people here.

Ethel Raim:
Well, I mean a lot of it comes from the concern of the first generation of adults that come and have children here and what's interesting is one could imagine that maybe these kids really aren't interested, and it's being kind of force fed, the kids are being force fed and what we have found is the kids come alive.  There's a magic that happens.  In the Peruvian CCI a kid that started at the age of nine, Anthony Apaza [spelled phonetically], you know is going to end up going into some music program; he is fantastic.  And he really is exemplary of the response of almost all of the kids of a huge pride in their cultural heritage and excitement about being participants.  And that's almost always the case, you know?

Male Speaker:
This [unintelligible] passed on many more generations in this country?

Ethel Raim:
Yeah, yeah, I mean I think part of the -- and this is what the [unintelligible] is doing with his foundation is, you know, getting master artists to work with younger generation to learn the tradition to -- I mean it's like for those of you who've read, what is it The Olive Branch and Alexus, Thomas Previn [spelled phonetically].  You know globalization is like a bulldozer and it's just flattening out all of these traditions, and unless there's intervention and it's interesting that he says as a solution, as a way of warding it off is intervention.  And that's what this work is really about.  

Female Speaker:
Gentlemen back here?

Male Speaker:
I have a question about place.  Communities exist in neighborhoods and much of what you talk about today has been the urban communities in New York.  Where do the -- where do these communities celebrate their culture?  Is it at a church?  Is it in a YMCA?  Is there a community center musicians need a place to rehearse?  If people are going to eat or express themselves, where do they meet?

Ethel Raim: 
Often in church basements, community centers.  And that's part of our role in terms of when we widen the audiences for the traditions is to get new venues involved.  But peoples homes, the Banat community had the Banat Hall that could seat maybe and hold 200 people, and most of the community weddings happen there.  So church basements, community halls, people's homes, catering halls like Crystal Palace, they're all over the place and they get rented and you know it might just be an annual event that the community gathers at, or bi-annual.  

Female Speaker:
Yes, I wanted to find out which communities were the most challenging for you to work with?  I just know -- I write for a music magazine called Global Rhythm; it's out of New York, and I was in Miami trying to do some writing about the Haitian and the Cuban exile communities and I've found them extremely insular and not really willing to open up so I just wanted to find out from you what communities were the most challenging for you to gain the trust from.

Ethel Raim:
Right.  Well the Serbian community was hard that time that we were in Chicago, I mean in Ohio.  The thing about the community cultural initiatives, and the reason that they are effective is because they are multi-year.  If you're going to work in a community for one year, it's not going to work because one year won't gain that trust.  But it's the continued presence and proving one's honor on the part of your organization or the person working with the community that will gain that trust.  I would say that all of the communities -- they all present a level of challenge because they all have different issues, you know, and the Peruvian community they're so leery of working with anyone because their experience is that someone's going to work with them and run with the money.  You know so there's that piece and the fear of being humiliated, you know, by an outside group.  

So I think all of the communities represent, I really can't even pull out one.  I mean I can talk about the Filipino community because that was the most fractured community, and so that was a major challenge of trying to bring a cohesive group together.  So I guess on some level that was the most challenging community, but it was a surprise because that was the one community that came knocking on our door to say would you do an initiative with us, so a big surprise.

Female Speaker:
Maybe time for one more question.  Two more, okay.

Male Speaker:
I just wanted to follow up.  There's a question on where these activities take place is a really -- there's on one level it's where the people are comfortable performing, but what about the question of curb for audiences?  What I mean is if an advance is held within a physical community where those folks are comfortable and are used to coming out and doing events that's one thing.  If you move that to someplace outside that community -- do you usually try when they're presenting things to present physically within the community or what happens when you move it outside physically of one area to another area, to a public hall, to someplace where that community is not used to going?

Ethel Raim:
Right.  You need incredible marketing in both cases.  If you're in the community and you want to provide a window into that community i.e. to get people from outside that community to come in and participate, it's a lot of marketing.  And vice versa, if you're doing an event like the Winter Folk Festival at Kay Playhouse and you want community there, you have to really, I don't know of a better expression.

Female Speaker:
Like Kay Playhouse is at Hunter College in Manhattan --

Ethel Raim:
68th Street.

Female Speaker: 
-- and not terribly ethnic part of New York unless you live on Park Avenue, but to get people from the Bronx and Brooklyn to go there --

Ethel Raim:
You have to work hard.

Female Speaker:
-- you have to work very hard.

Male Speaker:
That was my question.

Ethel Raim:
Yeah, it's hard work in both cases.

Female Speaker:
And one more question, [inaudible]?

Male Speaker:
Well let's go back in history.  When I was a student at Overman College [spelled phonetically] at Indiana University in the 50s and early 60s I was sort of a campus wreck [unintelligible] both ways in Stinson Records.  And I used to listen to them a lot and play them on the radio, but one of my favorites of all those was a ten-inch Stinson LP by the young Jewish folk singers.  Were you involved with that?

Ethel Raim:
Mm-hmm.

Male Speaker:
It always struck me when I started hearing the Penny Whistlers on the record that there was --

Ethel Raim:
Now the Penny Whistlers preceded that because in fact one of the reasons that, I mean the Jewish Young Folk Singers were wonderful, but that was a larger group and for me it was so important to have a smaller group and to have the intimacy, you know, of five or six voices rather than 35 voices.  

Male Speaker:
But there were some of the same people then?

Ethel Raim:
None, or maybe Francine, yeah.  Francine was in the Jewish Young Folk Singers.

Male Speaker:
But you weren't?

Ethel Raim:
I was, yeah the two of us, yeah.  And that was Bob Dicormea [spelled phonetically] and then Guy Carowan [spelled phonetically] led the group for a while and then they had the Advanced Jewish Young Folk Singers that you had to try out for or something, but no that was the more arranged choral tradition that was not that resonant for me.  

Female Speaker:
We could probably go on for days here.  You have to go back to New York because why?

Ethel Raim:
Ah, Patchimama [spelled phonetically] is graduating.

Female Speaker:
Which is the Peruvian group we just --

Ethel Raim:
It's the Peruvian, yes and they're going to be getting their awards.  They have gotten their incorporation and they'll only go on for another six months, but this is the graduation of the committee so it's very, very important. 

Female Speaker:
So they're spinning off their own group or their spinning --

Ethel Raim:
They're spinning off their own organization. 

Female Speaker:
Well congratulations.

Ethel Raim:
Patchimama Peruvian Arts.

Female Speaker:
Congratulations.  Thank you so much for coming and talking to us.

Ethel Raim:
My pleasure.

Female Speaker:
And for all you've done for the field.

Ethel Raim:
Thank you. 

[applause]

[end of transcript]