somewhat pure klezmer

[Solidarity Foundation <svzandt...>]

On Wed, ^ Aug 1997 22:23:10 -0400 (EDT), Seth Rogovoy wrote:

On Wed, 6 Aug 1997, Eric Goldberg wrote:

> 
> There are a few bluegrassish jewish recordings although each music is best
> when it is presented somewhat in a pure state.

Really Eric, you didn't mean this, did you? ;-)

talk about your can of worms.....

you want to define "a pure state" of either type of music? or any music,
for that matter?

--Seth
________________

Seth, if klezmer were not generally played "somewhat in a pure state,"
well, it wouldn't be klezmer, would it? If bluegrass were not generally
played "somewhat in a pure state," it wouldn't really be bluegrass, either.
Like, if you played klezmer enough like bluegrass, it WOULD be bluegrass.
If you played it part of the way like bluegrass, we'd only "get it" if
we were clued in that there was such a thing as klezmer and such a thing
as bluegrass. And it would be neither one, so it would really deserve a
new name, if there were enough of it to need a name. When baroque music
changed enough, the musicologists had to call the new stuff something else,
so they called it "rococo." The entire phenomenon of baroque music is
circumscribed by certain stylistic traits, and even though there are
transitional styles and we can't mark absolute boundaries, baroque music
is a definite style and everybody accepts that. Why is this such a
problem with klezmer? Personally, I think klezmer allows for much wider
stylistically variability than baroque. But it has its limits. If you
want to play "Ma Yofis" in the style of Charlie Parker, be my guest, it's
not against the law, but it's not klezmer, it's a modern jazz piece
built on a Jewish tune. If ALL so-called klezmer music were played in
the style of bluegrass, modern jazz, Andean panpipes, Karleinz Stockhausen,
and what have you, klezmer music would have become extinct. 

Itzik-Leyb Volokh (Jeffrey Wollock)