Re: Klezmer

[Joe Kurland <ganeydn...>]

>At 08:52 PM 5/21/96 -0700, you wrote:
>
>>With all due respect, "Klezmer" is derived directly from the Hebrew "Kley
>>Zemer," which means "musical instruments."
>>
>>Irving D. Goldfein, M.Ed., Ph.D.,
>
>Also with all due respect, the fact that a yidish vort derives from loshn
>koydesh makes it no less yiddish.
>
>-- Sherry Mayrent

Then I wrote:

>While Irving Goldfine is correct about the literal meaning of the
>derivation of Klezmer, the term in Yiddish refers to a person, not an
>instrument in the usual sense.  Kley Zemer, is like the term Kley Koydesh,
>a holy vessel, in other words one of the people who perform mitzves for
>the community.  For example, a shoykhet or ritual slaughterer who provides
>kosher meat, a baal tfile, the person who sings the prayers, a baal tkiye,
>the person who sounds the shofar.  The kley-zemer is the person who
>performs the mitzve of entertaining the bride and groom at a khasene
>(wedding).
>
>Thus "klezmer" is, as my colleague Sherry Mayrent writes, the Yiddish term
>for a wandering Jewish musician (if not Jewish, then a performer of music
>intended specifically for Jewish simkhes (celebrations.))
>
>Yosl (Joe) Kurland


>At 12:19 PM 5/22/96 -0700, Itzik-Leyb Volokh (Jeffrey Wollock) wrote:
>>The sense in which Dr. Goldfein intended his comment to relate to
>>Sherry Mayrent's explanation of klezmer music is not entirely clear to
>>me...
>
>Quite right.. sometimes the effort to keep postings brief results in
>miscommunication.
>I should have made clear that I was referring to the _derivation_, not
>negating the operational definition in Yiddish.
>
>
>Irving D. Goldfein, M.Ed., Ph.D.,


I may be going out on a limb here, and if someone definitively knows
better, please correct me and point me to a source, but I wonder whether
"kley-zemer" ever meant a non-human musical instrument, even in loshn
koydesh (Hebrew).  My modern English-Hebrew dictionary gives the following
words for  instrument:  makhshir, emtso'i, heskeyn, gorem, kli ngino,
tno'ey haheskeym, mismokh, te'udo, kley meysorim (stringed instruments) and
kli nshifo (wind instruments).  (I'm not sure if I transliterated correctly
from the Hebrew, I tried to use the standard transliteration that is used
with Yiddish, and the pronunciation I use is Ashkenazic.  The words I find
for musician in hebrew are: nagon and zamor.  Kley-zemer is not mentioned.

When I look up in Hebrew-English, I find kley-zemer as: "musical
instruments; (col) popular musicians (orchestra, band; at weddings, etc.)"
I'm not really a Hebrew speaker, so I'm way out of my area of experience.
Do, or did people ever use kley-zemer in its literal meaning as a non-human
instrument, or has it always meant a
person-who-is-an-instrument-of-song-for-religious-purposes?  If kley-zemer
is used in modern Hebrew to mean a musical instrument, does that use
predate the Yiddish use as musician?

Maybe this whole thread should move over to Mendele for an answer.  With
your permission, gentlepeople?

Yosl (Joe) Kurland