If you've ever seen a cellist with a stroke, then you can say you know what a good folk fiddler looks like. A brilliant cellist, that's perhaps the best way to describe the fiddler to someone who doesn't know, as he strikes the wooden pride of the masses.
There is no musical instrument in the world that can be played with less movement and more tension. Finger twitches are random evidence that the brain is firing properly; a monotonous stroke with a bow, as if cutting some dumb prosciutto that you won't get enough of, and all that served in smoky rooms, with booze and kebabs, the celebration has long since disgusted even the softest soul.
Many virtuosos say that they see their viola or clarinet as a physical extension of their own body, but the opposite happens with violinists. The one who plays turns into a fiddle, loses circulation, collapses like a wooden Maria and becomes horny to the extent that his mouth is on the diagonal. As he forces the nasal pronunciation, you get the feeling that he is singing from his belly and that the resonator is actually in his gut, without whose concave dignity, let's face it, there is no good fiddler.
All that ease with which music frees the body and transmits an impulse to the listener, does not exist with the fiddler, but the brain drop from the singer is passed on in a paralyzed attention so as not to miss who died. The fiddle comes to him as a musical obituary, so he doesn't play or dance with the fiddle, the fiddle player is alone in his sonic prison and harasses the environment that tries to see the worst of all worlds with him.
You see the Japanese calmly blowing those bamboo flutes, and sometimes they make them too fiiiiuuuu, completely break at the waist, as if they cut the hero. But with the fiddler, yok, it doesn't move because there is no rhythmic or melodic reason for it to move, he happens to be playing with musical expression, he produces tones that for some reason need to be produced, but while listening to the fiddle you don't really have a clear vision of why is it happening, are you at the beginning, are you nearing the end of the action, or have you sworn in the dentist's chair.
Let's face it, this is precisely why the fiddle is interesting, if it is interesting to someone. I recently saw a bride performing in parish homes with a fiddle, with atypical chants and even choruses as far as I remember, and I can say that it just looks horrible, that twitching with the fiddle as if they were some kind of treasure trove of rhythm. It's only fair that the fiddler acts as if he's on a stake while talking about this misery, because when I saw this girl dancing around the cheater, and plucking her bow like Lenny Bernstein, I realized that traditional fiddling may be awful, but at least it's not funny.
With its minimal and radical properties, fiddles are ideal for the perversion of contemporary art, so I am not surprised that the composer of Montenegrin origin, the Canadian Andre Ristić, uses the fiddle as inspiration for his works. There is also an American post-minimalist whose brother-in-law was killed as a journalist in Bosnia, so he dedicated the orchestration to him and brought in some fiddlers to freeze the blood.
Wandering around mixcloud, I also came across a rare recording by composer Žarko Mirković, the piece "Letters" from the mid-eighties - with a lot of choral tension, ringing and madness, the thing is unfortunately unlistenable, so I gave up before it flew into all that opulence of postmodern bonito and folk fiddler.
As a signal sound, and ambient discomfort, as a social sample and experiment, the fiddle can still be precious today. Let's say if they were a union siren, if fiddles were played on Labor Day from the surrounding hills, that would be better than burning those tires. Inventing some non-musical function for the fiddle would not be bad. But everything beyond that, including the current controversy over the priority of their name and song, really looks like an ugly mess with the truth.
It is nice for schoolchildren to know that good poetry was sung in the hills in the XNUMXth century. To admire the fiddle while looking at it under the glass, because it is really wonderful in the display case. There is no more beautiful visual atmosphere than a fiddle on the wall, until someone takes it in their hands, starts moving it in their hands, and then it suddenly runs into the supporting wall, for a while it is looking for a tone to start, but actually waiting for the host to bring the brandy. And then the herd gathers around the concert, grandmothers crouch like illegals around radio Moscow, only this time there are no illegals, but the whole street echoes and the neighborhood suffers, the nation suffers, and every fifty years, based on that sound, some regional or world war.
To summarize, let the fiddle hang above the TV, sofa, aquarium, whoever likes it, but listening to them is not easy and today's man can rarely afford that neurosis. It's not so tragic, anyway, fiddles are more easily listened to by nations than by individuals. So all the peoples who these days swear by the fiddle in front of UNESCO, actually prove that they are one nation, a nation of fiddlers who deserve their strange sound.
Bonus video:
