Resent: "You gotta have heart!!!!!!"

[Dan Leeson: LEESON (at) admin(dot)fhda(dot)edu <leeson...>]

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Subtitle: All you really need is heart!!!                                      


I am a relative newcomer to jewish music, but I have noticed a
number of questions by people who want to learn to play klezmer and
ask how to do it.  The responses are invariably helpful, but not,
in my opinion, entirely realistic.
 
Let me begin with an analogy.  In the 1950s there was a movie with
Kirk Douglass and Doris Day entitled "Young Man With a Horn" in
which Douglass played the semi-autobiographical role of the
legendary jazz trumpet player, Bix Beiderbecke.  In the movie, the
youthful Beiderbecke/Douglass is wandering the streets of New
Orleans listening to various dixieland bands in open-mouth
astonishment at their facility with the form.
 
He stops at one of the places -- it may have been shown as a
brothel since there were lots of women -- and asks the cornet
player, "How do you do that?" meaning, of course, how did they play
so elegantly without need of music, and how did the intermingling
of 5 or 6 players to such pleasant ends occur in this apparently
unstructured fashion?
 
The wizened, wrinkled, old trumpet players looks at him, smiles
with a twinkle in his eye and says, "Son.  You jess gots to feel
it.  Tha's all."  (I mean no ethic disrespect.  That was the 
dialogue.)  At which point, Douglass/Beiderbecke, apparently
instantaneously getting to "feel it" picks up the guy's cornet and
plays 25 straight choruses of Royal Garden Blues.  Well, that's
Hollywood.
 
As a result of thinking like this, generations of hopeful players
before and since that time have become neurotic on the subject
because most of them don't "feel it" and then they get insecure
under the impression that if they really had talent in the medium,
they should certainly be able to do it without any more preparation
that Kirk Douglass had (which, I think, was 15 minutes of trumpet
lessons and seven weeks of experience in candling eggs).
 
To which, one can only say, "CA-CA!"  It was the typical Hollywood
highly oversimplified view that gave me the impression that all I
needed to do to make out with Ava Gardner was to flare my nostrils
like Rossano Brazzi, and she would swoon into my arms!  From my
thoughts to God's ears!
 
Improvisational skills, like any musical skill, needs to be
learned, though, like any human endeavor, talent is needed and some
people will learn the skill with far greater ease than others.  And
this is not only true in jazz and klezmer, it is equally (maybe
even more true) in Baroque and Classical music (and I mean very
specifically, music of the classic period, not the generic term
used for all music that is said to be "classical."
 
The fact that one knows, likes, and even sings all the Yiddish
verses of "Tsu mir is gekummen a cousine!" doesn't mean bupkes when
you have to play it as a doina.
 
There are a lot of tools that one has to have at their beck and
call before the first attempt at improvisational playing can be
made, including absolute facility in all major and minor scales and
arpeggios, as well as modes.  Any player from beautiful downtown
Lodz knew how to protect himself in f-sharp minor even if he had
not studied with the first clarinet player in the Slutzk Symphony
Orchestra.
 
Before I retired as a professional performer, I used to do a great
deal of improvisation in Mozart's music (as long as the conductor
would tolerate it) and I suggest that it took me two years to
become familiar with the vocabulary for that period.  And before I
even began I was an adequate dixieland player.  Nothing special.
 
Klezmer is also a style of music that has its own vocabulary, and
those people coming on this list asking how they might do it may
very well want to perform this extraordinarily exciting style
without realizing that some heavy duty study is going to be
required.  I doubt very much if Feidman, on his first try, was
anywhere near where his natural brilliance eventually took him.  If
he was like everyone else, his first attempts were probably
tentative, clumsy, and probing.  And he grew up in that environment.
 
The first think that I would recommend to any person desirous of
playing klezmer is to study with a teacher who is capable of
literate discourse on the subject of jazz improvisation.  Shoot
anyone who says, "You don't have to do anything but feel it."  And
if you find such a good teacher, exploit  him mercilessly until you
can function well in that vocabulary.  One is aided by the presence
of very good books about jazz improvisation and that is why I
suggest this particular approach.  A knowledge of music theory
won't hurt either.  In fact the absence of it may hurt though it
does not necessarily disable.
 
But most important is to rid oneself of the erroneous belief that
all that is required is "heart."  That is about as useful as being
told that all that is required is "soul."  "Brain," yes, but the
rest of the body parts constitute the romantic and erroneous
beliefs of the non-performing dilettante.  The difficulty is
finding a teacher and the right books that enable one to enter into
this terra incognita, as well as the recognition that elegance in
playing comes only after learning.  While a desire is, of course,
necessary, it is simply not sufficient and anyone who suggests that
"feeling it" is the only requirement to good improvisatory playing
needs to have the lumps on his head both made and then read.  (I
intend to sing the "Queen of the Night Arias" from Mozart's Magic
Flute, because I really feel that kind of music and I want to do
it.  Do you think I'll be ready by Tuesday next?  So what if I am
a man and those are women's arias?  I really want to!  And isn't
that all that really counts?  Desire. ... Uh, yeah.)
 
In the case of klezmer, one has the added issue of a culture leap,
but if one can make the cross-cultural leap to play baroque music
effectively, then the leap into Jewish music cannot be any harder. 
I would think that a person with a good background and good skills
could be a respectable klezmer performer under the proper tutelage
in six months.   This has been amply demonstrated by the very 
talented Don Bymer (do I have the spelling or even the name right?).

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Dan Leeson, Los Altos, California
Rosanne Leeson, Los Altos, California
leeson (at) olive(dot)fhda(dot)edu
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Dan Leeson, Los Altos, California
Rosanne Leeson, Los Altos, California
leeson (at) olive(dot)fhda(dot)edu
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