‘Stateless Peoples’ Find A Musical Home

By Jim Bessman, Reuters

NEW YORK (Billboard) – Readers of this column understand the fundamental importance of words and music in our lives. So does Maria Krupoves.

The internationally acclaimed singer/folklorist, who teaches at the Center for Stateless Cultures at Vilnius University in Lithuania, has just released “Without a Country: Songs of Stateless Peoples.” The disc (which follows her fully orchestrated “Songs of the Vilna Ghetto”) features her trio: her vocal and guitar work backed by New York klezmer mandolinist Joey Weisenberg and bassist Travis DiRuzza.

“These cultures belong to the weakest minorities, but they were still able to create new philosophical systems, mystical movements and, of course, songs,” says Krupoves, who recently fronted her trio at New York world music nitery Satalla before returning to Lithuania. Such songs, she notes, naturally tend to express “hope beyond hope, and longing for some place of rest and fulfillment.”

Also naturally, songs of stateless peoples are little known outside of stateless communities.

“Some I heard on CDs. Some I took from publications, like the Yiddish Hasidic song ‘Fun Kosev,’ from Yosl and Chana Mlotek’s ‘Pearls of Yiddish Song.’ Some I found from other folk singers or folklorists,” Krupoves says. “The Crimean Tatar song ‘Guzel Khirim’ I found in the archive of Lithuanian Radio, from an interview of the author, the Muslim mufti Nurij Mustafayev.”

Besides “cultural and humanitarian reasons,” Krupoves selected the songs “first of all for their beauty and powerful meaning, and also for my deep emotional attachment for some of these cultures — especially Jewish and Belarusian. When I sing them I feel as if I belonged to these cultures and share their destiny.”

Krupoves, who sings in 15 languages, is now preparing a program of songs in Ladino, the Spanish Jewish dialect dating from the Middle Ages.

Reuters/Billboard (03/02/05)