Re: Cartoon music klezmer?

[Sandra Layman <104254.61...>]

I hope it wouldn't be out of place for me to interject a minor historical
note, from a personal perspective, about the evolution of the Klezmorim's
style. Please forgive me if it is!

As a violinist with a background of playing klezmer, Romanian, Greek, Near
Eastern, etc. (as well as classical) music, I was invited by Lev Liberman
to join the Klezmorim in late 1978. (Makes me feel ancient!) Just as I was
about to leave lumberjackland (Seattle) for sunny Berkeley to do so, I got
"uninvited." It turned out that right at that time (around the beginning of
'79), the Klezmorim as a band decided to dispense with the violin(s) and go
all winds & percussion.

Since I'm more meshige than freylakh by temperament (the rebe might not
approve), and probably also because of the nature of the instrument I
played and because of the soulful old fiddle 78s I gravitated to, I tended
to be attracted toward cultivating those doinas and kale bezetzns
Itzik-Leyb alluded to. The more lugubrious and heartwrenching, the better.
Give me a good krekhts, I always said!--well, at least some of the time.
And flavor it with some "boyntyas" [Lev's word!], too. (But don't get me
wrong: I blew a few kazoos and slide whistles in my time and scraped out
lotsa up-tempo stuff on the fiddle, too.)

Maybe if the Klezmorim had chosen to retain a softer instrument or two,
like the violins they originally had, they might have manifested a
different emphasis, style, and repertoire in their later performances. But
that's not the direction they chose. My impression is that, after their
first couple of years, they deliberately chose to concentrate on and be
identified by a certain kind of "brassy" sound, and that they chose
carefully to cultivate and research and even choreograph a certain kind of
style and rendition that might be described at times as "circus
music"--rubber chickens and all.

They sure as heck were good musicians, though!

Sandra Layman
a poshet fidler

<
Mickey Katz truly was the Spike Jones of Jewish music. Totally
nuts.

        Good analogy.

As for the issue of "fun." Let me point out the obvious: there are
different ways of having fun. Much (though not all -- think of the
doinas and kale bazetsns, for example) klezmer music is "lebedik un
freylakh" by nature. The fun is in the music, when played right. You
don't have to superimpose it. I don't even think there's anything
wrong with a few birdwhistles or kazoos now and then, AS LONG AS YOU'RE
REALLY PLAYING KLEZMER. 

For those of you who understand Yiddish: "Der rebe hot geheysn freylakh
zayn, nisht meshige zayn."

Itzik-Leyb
>