Re: "Davka"--redefining jewish music?

[moshe denburg <denburg...>]

On Sun, 20 Jul 1997 17:13:36 -0400, Ari Davidow wrote:

>"What makes this especially fascinating is the sociological odyssey 
>that these descriptions appear to signify. For many people of my 
>generation and younger, Zionism was to be the replacement for Judaism. 
>Israeli culture the replacement for Jewish culture. For many of us, 
>Israeli, and especially Middle-Eastern sounds were far more familiar 
>than those of the klezmorim, or Yiddish Theatre, or even Sephardic 
>folk traditions.

In Israeli folk music, Klezmer tunes, and the melodies derived from the
Yiddish Theatre, are an intimate part of the repertoire, though they have
been mostly synthesized with Hebrew lyrics. It would seem that the Yiddish
language, not the musical language of Klezmer, has been shunted aside. This
is due mainly to the revival of Hebrew as a living Jewish vernacular, but
may also be due to the Holocaust (= victim) associations of Yiddish, imo.

Moshe Denburg