BrianPerkinsMusic

Listing locally important fiddle tunes is a tricky and arbitrary activity. Both the tunes selected and the versions of the tunes presented represent highly subjective choices. The very act of presenting the tunes in printed form is problematic since much of the tune cannot be accurately notated. Engaging with the printed page can shut the musician off to the interaction with other musicians which is so essential in folk fiddling.  That being said there is a long tradition of presenting notated curated groups of tunes. Here are some which I consider to be useful in orienting musicians to the local fiddling traditions. They are presented as three graded groups of tunes ranging from Extremely Easy to Moderately Difficult. This is a work in progress so please let me know your thoughts. All of these tunes are notated in chart form. I’ll add them soon.

1-extremely-easy-fiddle-tunes-for-teaching

2-easy-fiddle-tunes-for-teaching

3-less-easy-fiddle-tunes-for-teaching

Rev. Elias ElHindi and Solomon Hindi

In the Archibald Street cemetery in Burlington’s Old North End there is a cluster of old gravestones carved with Arabic script. To the best of my knowledge, these stones and inscriptions mark the graves of the Simon/Handy family. The Vermont Handy family was founded by Souleiman “Solomon” Elhindi, who arrived at Ellis Island on December 11, 1896, with his nephew, Peter. The family of Maronite Christians fled Wadi Qannubine, in Lebanon’s  (then Syria) Qadisha Valley. This much is well established and I learned most of it from Ken Picard’s April 7, 2013 SevenDays article). One tantalizing link which still needs to be researched pertains to a 78 rpm record in the collection of Jewish Artist Benzion Black, another resident of the Archibald Street Neighborhood. Benzion Black’s collection of early 78s included the Yiddish and Russian recordings which reflect his Lithuanian Jewish culture. However among the disks is a 1915 recording of an Arabic song by “Nachim Simon.”(Naʻīm Samʻān) entitled “Waddahtoha wa yadol yamine becadmolin.”

The obvious three questions include 1) Whether this recording is connected to Burlington’s Simon family?  2) How this record found its way into the Benzion Black record collection? and 3) What connection there was between Benzion Black and the Handy/Simon family.   Hopefully more on this soon.

“Nachim Simon.”(Naʻīm Samʻān)  “Waddahtoha wa yadol yamine becadmolin.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NN_7ysg49rQ

Continuing with the Nottu Swaras. Here is a fun one sung by Prince Rama Varna. To my ears this sounds like it could be a tune from Irish Composer Turlough O’Carolan (1670-1738). I haven’t found a tune which matches this one nor has local authority Dominique Dodge. Dikshitar did revise O’Carolan’s tune Fanny Poer for his composition Dasarate so my little theory is not much of a stretch.