Welcome to the Schedule page! Scroll down this page to find information about our upcoming performances, and also about our new performance projects. We are currently rehearsing the music from our new CD, Panamerican Shanty, and will be performing excerpts from the CD at the San Diego Sea Chantey Festival on July 24th! To listen to music samples from the album (and, if you like, order the CD or singles), follow this link to CD Baby:
Panamerican Shanty uses traditional sea shanties and film noire-inspired originals to tell the story of the Nakai Nakai, a fabled whale-tooth scrimshaw piece. Poetry and narration, partly in Spanish, give the perspectives of a tango dancer, a late-night disc jockey, a private eye, and various mariners, while the singing of a chorus of rum-lit sailors
provides an abstract commentary.
The instrumental palette is also unique: string bass is the main color in this opus,
joined by bouzouki, drums, and trumpets. Piano and guitar are used sparingly, while antique bongos and Irish whistle add some culturally specific hues. Sounds of marine animals (mainly humpback whales, seagulls, and sea lions) are integrated into some of the pieces.
As music, this album is a unique combination of sea shanties and original fifties-style jazz. The sea shanty, a type of folk music which flourished in the nineteenth century, is itself a hybrid. On merchant ships, West African work songs blended with British and Irish melodies and verses, forming a rich tradition which gradually died out, as steam power and electricity reduced the need for coordinated group muscle. The album's nine sea shanties are arranged in a style reminiscent of British folk rock bands of the late 70's, such as Steeleye Span and Fairport Convention. These pieces are connected by original music which recalls the abstract, sparse tension of film noire scores and 'exotica' LPs.
Schedule 2011
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The Electrocarpathians will perform at San Diego State University's Smith Hall (in the music building) on Tuesday, Sept 27th, at 6:00 pm. The Electrocarpathians formed in 1988 to further the fusion of East European styles such as Klezmer, Polka, and Czardas with classic Rock and Latin music. They performed at Drowsy Maggie's throughout the cafe's existence. They appeared regularly at the Better Worlde Galeria until that venue closed in 1995. Their first album, 'Umpires of Straw', released in 2001 by Global Village Music (New York), was subtitled 'Slavic Music Collected in the Midwest performed by California Surfer Gypsy Punk Rockers'. 'Fighting for Harmony', their second release (2005), was fueled by a continuing search for Byzantine roots in dance music originating in South California and Tijuana. |
Ticket prices $10 for students, $15 for non-students |
THE PERFORMERS WILL BE: Jeff Pekarek, bouzouki and guitar Beatriz Basile, bass and percussion Francesca Savage, violin Richard Tibbitts, flute and percussion Mark Danisovszky, accordion
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THE PROGRAM 1. Ukrainian Tune
2. Jedna Ruzha A Slovak polka. The polka originated in Bohemia (northwestern half of the Czech Republic) in the early nineteenth century. Both as a dance and as a musical style, it spread around the globe in just a few decades, and can be called the first 'global' style. Traditional polkas are found in countries as diverse as Ireland, Mexico, Paraguay, and the Philippines. Within the USA, the polka continues to be popular in the Midwest, in distinct styles emanating from Chicago, Cleveland, and Texas. 3. Zaiko Kokoraiko (The Bug-Eyed Bunny') A Bulgarian/Macedonian folksong, sung over a drone. Folk songs which tell the story of a wedding party attended by a complete variety of animals are found in many European cultures. The well-known American example is 'Froggy Went A-Courtin''. Much East European folk singing was accompanied by drone instruments like the bagpipes (gaida) and the fretted zither (similar to our mountain dulcimer), or simple droning fiddles like the lyra and gusle. 4. Koroboushka Today, both globally and in the United States, the most prominent East European language is Russian. Russian is often spoken as a second language by immigrants from all corners of the former Soviet Union and 'Eastern Bloc'. This melody is traditional to Russia, Byelorussia, and Ukraine. It became familiar to Americans as the theme music for the game 'Tetrus'. 5. Hungarian Csardas (pron. 'chardash') The Csardas is a dance style which originated in the 'csarda', or roadhouses, of rural Hungary. Hungarians, Rumanians, Serbians, Slovenians, Slovaks, Moravian Czechs, and Banat Bulgarians brought this dance music to the United States during various waves of East European immigration, beginning around 1880. 6. Da Me Molat, Ne Se Zhenam A folksong of the Macedonian Roma.
7. Romanian Volakh A dance piece from Wallachia, in Rumania. The long, slow intro is called a 'doina' in Romanian music and Klezmer music. 8. Bulgar Freilakh The Bulgar Freilakh is a type of Klezmer dance piece (Klezmer music is dance music of Yiddish-speaking Jewish communities). This particular example is traditional, and was collected around 1920 in New York. 9. La Comida, La Maniana This Sephardic folk song is sung to a Turkish melody in 7/8. This is an example of 'Turkish 7/8' (2+2+3). The language is Ladino, a variety of Spanish with amounts of Hebrew and Turkish vocabulary which was spoken by Jewish communities around the Mediterranean rim, as far north as Bulgaria and Hungary. 10. Banjski Chachak A dance piece from Banja Luka, in Bosnia and Herzegovina. |
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