Cláudio Levitan uses music to tell stories of the Holocaust

Known in the south of Brazil for his humorous music, songwriter Cláudio Levitan has drastically changed his style on the second CD, Minha Longa Milonga - Doze Canções Para Keidânia , whose theme is the massacre of two thousand Jews by the Nazis in a small town in Lithuania, in 1941. "The Holocaust also happened in my house, and I had never realized it", says the singer, whose grandfather emigrated to Brazil with three children in 1926, leaving his brothers and nephews behind.

Six years ago, Levitan didn't think that he would eventually make an album when he started to write a long poem inspired by the episode, after meeting his father's brother in England. "More than telling the story of the massacre, I was interested in what those people had lost. It was a poem on pain", he explains, while revealing that he actually read the facts about the massacre on the Internet. "First, the people were locked inside a church; then they were shot dead and buried in a shallow grave. There were only two survivors. My dad and uncle didn't know exactly what had happened to our relatives. They thought everybody had been killed during the war."

Unveiling the mystery, Levitan started to write the songs. "I followed my intuition, a personal need. I wasn't planning an album, at first, just a song that would tell that story", Cláudio remembers. "As I wrote more, I figured the story should be told up on a stage. I built it up as a play". The first song was turned into a type of suite, divided into four parts that feature three songs each. In order to write the songs, which are combined with spoken poetry throughout the album, Levitan used the data he had gathered and the reports from his father and uncles, as well as photos and postcards sent by his relatives until shortly before the massacre. "I talked to the people who appeared on the pictures. It felt as if they were asking me to tell their story", the songwriter says. After almost a year, when the songs were ready, Levitan invited musician/journalist Arthur de Faria to write the arrangements.

Russian salad
"He goes from classical to popular and back with no difficulties. On the other hand, I already knew that klezmer music was familiar to him", Levitan says, referring to the Yiddish music culture that prevailed in Eastern Europe and was brought by the Jewish immigrants to North-America by the late 19th century. "Arthur's job was fundamental for the completion of the album, he is a true partner", claims Cláudio, praising the arrangements that combine typical klezmer instruments (violin, accordion, bass, drums and woodwind), regional music from southern Brazil (acoustic guitar, accordion and bombo legüero, a type of bass drum) and classical music (bassoon and percussion).

"That's the Russian salad itself", Faria jokes, in the nice text printed on the CD booklet, explaining that his intention was to merge two traditions: the southern music (from Brazil and Argentina) and the klezmer sounds. "My father and uncle always played that kind of music at home", says Levitan, whose family has many instrumentalists and singers. In fact, Cláudio took singing lesons from his aunt Elsa.

Writer of about 150 compositions, only now, at age 50, did Levitan decide to give up architecture and dedicate his time to music. "It is an anti-commercial album", he analyzes, claiming that he intends to distribute it on ABMI, the recently created Independent Music Association that gathers 31 labels (read article). Meanwhile, Minha Longa Milonga can be purchased on newsstands in Porto Alegre or on the Internet: www.claudiolevitan.hpg.com.br