Contents: Editorial, Folkus on Marc Gittelson, Klil Blues

Editorial: Let the Brats Sing

I suppose I could have entitled this Let the Children Sing, but that is so worn and used that I thought I would be original. Not to bother, you say! Enough! In these troubled times, one is tempted to try to find something, anything, to bring even a fleeting smile. So here is something really nice to share with you.

It all started when the JFC Folk Club held a Seeger family evening last November. Various artists performed, among other stuff, children's songs made famous by Pete. Some of these I knew, and others I didn't. Coincidentally, at that very same time, I read a biography of Pete Seeger, which, among other things, described his wonderful work in preserving and recording children's songs. I started to wonder out loud where I might be able to find his recordings for children.

One of the people who heard my prattling was Carol. One evening as we were brainstorming, she hit on the idea of organizing a children's program for kids of English- speaking families designed to contain all manner of children's songs, both old and new. What a wonderful idea! I was captivated and we started to plan. It seemed evident that whatever else must be done, the first project would be to create a pool of children's songs. Since I am most comfortable working with recordings as opposed to written lyrics and chords, we decided to start out with our own resources, which, as it transpired, were quite considerable.

To begin with, Carol had some old scratchy albums of popular children's songs. She had a delightful worn out record all about Strawberry Shortcake and the Country Jamboree.

Most important, she had a couple of albums by an artist of whom I had not heard: Raffi. Yes friends, my acknowledged erudition notwithstanding, I had a serious hole in my education. To make a short story long, I became an immediate convert to Raffi. Oh my gosh, what wonderful stuff, some witty, some ridiculous, all charming.

Next, I proceeded to my own record collection. I found albums I had bought in Disney Land. (Donald Duck is alive and well, you all should know.) I found a whole bunch of tapes that I had recorded for my two wise-guy kids shortly after their birth, so as to keep them in touch with a little island of English Culture in a sea of Hebrew. These included a four record set of every fairy tale and nursery rhyme imaginable, and some beyond imagination. Not to mention a tape filled with old stand-bys from Yankee Doodle to Buffalo Gals.

However, to this point, I hadn't found what I really hankered for: Pete Seeger stuff. Cyrelle to the rescue. If I gush about Cyrelle in these pages, she probably won't like it so I will endeavor to be dispassionate. Nope, can't do it; she's just plain wonderful. I stood next to her in her living room, and she showed me a huge wall, covered with record cabinets. The treasures in them!!! I mean, stuff before they invented the wheel. Needless to say, she had Pete Seeger, Woody Guthrie, the Baby Sitters, the Weavers, and more and more and more. I guess I ain't speechless, but I am the verbal equivalent thereof. I forgot to mention Burl Ives and the Little White Duck, and Danny Kaye and the same Little White duck. But you've got the point.

Ok, so I had a library of songs as a starting point. Now came the actual planning of a program. We sent out e-mails to various folks. Enter Eli Rockowitz and his lovely daughter Dina. I hadn't known it, but Eli is a veteran performer for children. In fact, years ago, he performed with Ann Limor and Betsy Rosenberg. He volunteered his services, as did Rahel Jaskow. We all met together in a little crooked house, I mean in his apartment. We discussed, planned and rehearsed. He brought to bear his considerable knowledge of how to keep little kiddies involved and focused. We put together a marvelous program, he said subjectively.

Initially, we had hoped to do our first performance at the Jerusalem Biblical Zoo just before Passover. Unfortunately, this was not to be because of a thwarted car bomb right in the area. But the work has been done, and if all goes well, we will try to get it out on the road when the times get better.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank all of the nice people who have encouraged us and expressed wonderful support, as well as those who actually provided material. If you have children's records, tapes or disks which you think you might like to share, please do contact us her at IFS.

--Larry Gamliel

FOLKUS - UBIQUITOUS MARC: A MAN FOR ALL SEASONS

If there is someone with a knack for being omnipresent in our folk world, it must be Marc Gittelson. With his pockets bursting with voices including his recorders, his Ray-customized bass guitarone from Tijuana, his rich baritone voice and ever- ready jokes, he's been seen here coloring the music with the Unstrung Heroes, Jill Rogoff, Ray Scudero, the Lewises, Laurie Ornstein, Sandy Cash and many more.

With a perfect pitch ear and an excellent eye for arrange- ments, he is always a welcome asset. Between acts he's an active board member of IFS and one of the hosts of the Jerusalem Folk Club at the Zoo. But how did all this come about?

Nature, nurture, and serendipity turn out to be the answers as usual. His mom played accordion and always had a piano in the house. Picking out songs on the piano by age 4, this potential prodigy was chauffeured straight to the Metropolitan Music School of Manhattan for piano lessons, music theory and chorus (the latter not pursued because of a distracting sleep habit persisting a lifetime). At 8 he shifted to accordion for a year and then back to piano until junior high where he did 3 years of viola and occasional bass in the orchestra. He was accepted into the High School for Music and Art in NY and moved on to percussion instruments with his good ability to tune the tympani and read the notes. Oh yeah, around 6th grade he picked up recorder playing from a kibbutznik fellow camper at a HaShomer HaTzair summer camp. Friends for life!

While the focus was strongly classical music all this time, it didn't escape him that his mom was a friend of Pete Seeger and it was, after all, the 60s. He began playing folk music on his bass with friends before the end of junior high, where he also helped organize a folk club featuring Phil Ochs and Dave van Ronk. In his early college years at the University of Hartford he was performing at the local coffeehouse with folks like Jack Hardy, and played bass for a TV series coming out of New Haven. Somewhere along the way he dropped the aspiration to become a professional classical musician and pursued liberal arts at Sheimer in Mount Carroll (joke deleted) Illinois and Oxford, England. On a spring break from Oxford he jumped over to Israel and knew this was the place for him.

It wasn't long before he was back in Israel "for good," taking ulpan at Beit HaEmek. With his recorders in hand he was playing in musicals and even entered a song contest in the summer of '71. Although he rehearsed well the words and grammar to thank them for First Prize, he never got to give that speech. He graduated to kibbutz volunteer driver and heard some American gareen was coming to Israel to found Ketura. With Marc's personal magic, he managed to hook up with this group and before he knew it he was in the desert picking and weeding. Sarah pranced into his life on horseback from nearby Yotvata and the next 6 years together were filled with music and the start of his growing family. There was no nurse in Ketura, so they packed up and he got his degree in nursing from Hunter College in New York and stayed on another year or two to gain expertise in pediatric nursing and to bring the bass back with him when he returned.

The rest is the history you, the folk community, have seen unfold before your very eyes. The special skill that Marc provides is to take a boring, repetitive folk song and embellish it with color, adding the quiet percussion and harmonies that keep the song flowing. And he does this so spontaneously that the audience is not distracted. It's not everyone who can sit up on the stage and not be a scene-stealer. Don't miss him at Jacob's Ladder together with Ray and Joanna, The Lewises and Laurie. Marc casts a giant shadow and we all treasure the shades of music he provides. Thanks Marc.

KLIL IN THE GALIL BLUES

With a mischievous twinkle in his eye, big bear Marc Miller slipped a shiny steel sleeve onto his finger and started sliding up and down an open G tuning. So I pulled out a C harp and started delicately embellishing his riffs. It was the surprise highpoint of one of MM's best ever gigs. That man can really blast the blues. Of course, the conditions were very conducive. First of all, there was a good amplification system with guitar plug-ins, so all the instruments could be heard properly. There was a well-stocked bar in a place called Gidi's Pub in a stunning location, but more about that later. The management (Gidi) was blues literate and had a Robert Johnson CD playing over the system between sets. Even the bar snacks and real super sushi contributed to the overall success of the evening that started out as a north-bound odyssey, but unfortunately turned into a southbound retreat.

After carefully studying the road map, I thought I had the flight path committed to memory, so we took a leisurely drive along the coast up through Haifa, and even wiped up humus while watching Maccabi TA beat the Turks on a big screen TV in a bay area joint. We even took the correct inland turning at Nahariya. I was warned that the road signs at this point would be inadequate to say the least. Even maps of the area are inadequate because that's how the residents of the "hidden" community of Klil wish to remain. Truly off the beaten track.

When we finally reached the Druze village of Jatt, a gas station attendant there was very helpful and explained that Klil was exactly 4 km away, but back along the same road. After more backtracking, we found ourselves in Kfar Yasif, a mixed community of Moslems, Christians and Druze. Realizing that a potentially dangerous booboo was unfolding (the radio constantly warned that this was a day of highest security alert), I frantically searched for the next gas station. A helpful army officer said that he would gladly get us to the turn-off. So we were back on the endless road again and finally found the sign-less side road to Klil.

Now on our own in the dark on a dirt road, we reached a fork and it was time to use cell phone technology. A friend, who actually lives in Klil, said I should flash my headlights. He then waved a flashlight up from a hill and after about five minutes of mountain goat driving, we found ourselves in a magnificent high ceilinged stone house with stained glass windows. Friends were huddled around the TV watching Hapoel Tel Aviv get trounced in the European quarterfinals in Milano.

Luckily, the weather was dry, but rain was expected. We drove over to the Pub in the hidden valley and found it a very lovely establish- ment, with some terrific original modern art paintings on the walls, unique wooden furniture all hand crafted by Gidi, and were given a quaint little house for the night.

Once settled in and our instruments in tune, we set ourselves up on the stage and played two very good sets of Marc's much appreciated repertoire of Dave Van Ronk, Kinky Friedman, Jim Croce, Mose Allison, traditional and original music. The audience, who were mostly hormonal high-schoolers, local Arabic speaking villagers and some Klil residents, enthusiastically applauded this fresh presentation of blues never before heard live in these parts. It was indeed a unique musical evening for both the audience and musicians.

During the break, a jovial Druze man told a story about a Kfar Yasif resident who wanted to surprise his wife and went to Tel Aviv to buy a new car. On his drive back home, there were police helicopters in the sky and a report on the radio that a crazy driver was speeding north on the wrong side of the road. His wife heard this and called to his cell phone and gave him the news about the crazy driver. He replied, "There's a lot more than one."

I was starting to identify with the guy in the story, as on the way back to our quaint lodgings a few droplets of rain moistened our foreheads. By 4 am it was storming heavily outside and we found our bed and accommodations flooded with rain from the leaking roof and windows. So we packed our things, cut a quick retreat to our dry car, and headed home. We made it from Klil to Tel Aviv in the pouring rain in only two hours. It's a lot faster when you know the way. Now that we know the way, perhaps we'll be back there one day, but don't count on it in the near future.

MILESTONES

Happy Birthday to: Esther Baron, Eden Clarfield, David Deckelbaum, Abe Dorevitch, Michael Greengard, Ari Meerson, Lauren Ornstein, Ora Paltiel, Steve Silberman, Dvir Spiegel, Asher Weill, Daphna Whetstone

Happy Anniversary: to Don & Judi Ganchrow

Belated Congrats: to Ari Meerson on his marriage.

NOT TRAD ADS - fee is NIS 10 (NIS 5 for members).

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**SHELLEY ELLEN - guitar lessons, also available for performances (03) 674-5356.

**Jill Rogoff's THE CELTIC CRADLE and ACROSS THE NARROW SEAS (ALC 129) are available on cassette and CD. Tel/Fax (02) 679-0410.

**DAY OF REST -- Rahel Jaskow's CD. Renditions of traditional and slightly off-the-beaten-track Sabbath songs. NIS 65 plus NIS 10 postage. Contact Rahel Jaskow: rjaskow@actcom.co.il

** Voice and/or flute lessons. Call Marcie Schreier: (053) 834-174.

**Computer Support. Free telephone support, and house calls. Very reasonable rates. Ben Hizak. (050) 280-644.

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FolkNotes is the official publication of the Israel FolkStuff Society. Views are those of the writers, not necessarily those of IFS. FolkNotes and all of the articles, photographs and material contained therein are, unless otherwise noted, copyrighted by IFS 2002. The disclaimer is so that people do not "steal your article." In every case that people turn to FolkNotes for permission, we refer them directly to the author of the article. Advertisement tariffs for FolkNotes are available on request.

FolkNotes Staff: Sherry Whetstone, Larry Gamliel, Carol Fuchs, and Cecile Panzer