The Lost Jewish Music of Transylvania

A new release on cassette and compact disc by the well-known Hungarian folk group, Muzsikas (under the Hannibal label and produced by the record company Rykodisc), can only be described as 'aural' history in its attempt to reconstruct Jewish instrumental music from the Maramaros region of northern Transylvania (now Romanian Maramures). For, in Hungary, unlike in Russia, Lithuania, Moldavia and the Ukraine, in spite of evidence of the existence of musicians known as the klezmorim, no recording or notation of pre-Second World War Jewish folkmusic survived the decimation of the Holocaust.

The project began in 1988 when Muzsikas became interested in exploring Jewish instrumental music and were introduced to Zoltan Simon, a Hungarian Jew, from the rural area, Mako. While studying composition at the Academy of' Music in Budapest in the 1940s, Simon was encouraged by the Hungarian composer and collector of folk music, Zoltan Kodaly, to collect Jewish folk music from Hungarian villages. This he did in 1946, concentrating his research on the Miramaros area.