Whose Song Is This

Music soothes the soul. Music is supposed to bring people together.

That does not seem to be the case in the Balkans, that relatively small area of South-Eastern Europe that encompasses Greece, Turkey, Albania and the countries within the area of the former Yugoslavia. In fact, music can bring out the nationalistic sentiments in people—especially when it comes to certain songs. That’s what Adela Peeva discovered when she decided to track down the origins of a certain song and record her quest on film. At one point, Peeva was almost physically attacked at a Serbian bar. Another time, some Bulgarian thugs threatened to lynch her.

---

And all this over one song! OK, let’s back up a bit. What is my connection to this movie? For the past eight years I have worked as the Programming Director of the Toronto Jewish Film Festival. As such, I have come into contact with and become friends with people from many of the numerous film festivals that fill the cultural calendar every year in Toronto. I recently was invited to attend the Opening Gala film at the Macedonian Film Festival here in Toronto. Before I attended I decided to watch a short clip from the film on the internet. The film is called WHOSE IS THIS SONG. The filmmaker comes from Bulgaria and one evening she met a group of friends at a restaurant. The friends came from all over South-Eastern Europe—Greece, Macedonia, Turkey and Serbia. The singer at the restaurant began to perform a song and everyone of the filmmaker’s friends claimed that the song came from their country. When I saw the clip I said that the song was ours, i.e., Jewish, and here is a link to a recording from 1922 by the great klezmer clarinetist, Naftule Brandwein performing this song. He called it Der Terk in America. The filmmaker, Adela Peeva, decided to travel to the various countries in the Balkans to see whether she could track down the true origins of the song. She goes to Turkey, Greece, Albania, Bosnia, Serbia, Macedonia and Bulgaria. She finds a version of the song in each of these countries, usually with lyrics in a local language. In some countries it is a love song, in others it is a military march, and so on. Instead of being a unifying factor, the song tends to get people riled up at even the suggestion that it may have come from another country. At one point she plays the Bosnian version to a group of people in a Serbian bar and the people threaten to attack her. In Bulgaria, some people threaten to lynch her. No one, except for one Macedonian musician, is willing to concede that the song might have originated in another area of the region. Peeva films various version of the song and speaks to people who have sung the song or played it on their instruments. And all the versions are beautiful in their own way. Although the filmmaker does not consider the question of the Jewish origins of the song, at the end of the film, a version is played by a German group that is very much like the Naftule Brandwein arrangement. And the fact that Brandwein called it Der Terk In America does give us a clue of the song’s origin. It is no secret that the music of the Baltics and Eastern Europe often intermingled with the music of one another. Gypsy and Klezmer musicians would travel from one town to another and one country to another and would pick up fragments of melodies or entire songs from one place and take them to another. This song probably did originate in Turkey or Greece and was influenced by other cultures and played by musicians from all over the region. To be insulted on learning that the song is performed elsewhere or has become a favourite of another culture is ludicrous. Music flows from one area to another and often ignores borders or barriers put up by people. So let’s enjoy the music, no matter where it comes from. But I still think it’s our song. Listen to Brandwein play it and tell me otherwise.