Re: Cartoon music klezmer?

[SICULAR <SICULAR...>]

Thanks, especially to Owen & Sandra, for all the thoughtful replies on this
question.  (I too love to hear those old calypso tunes; also, for similar
effect, listen to the Cuban soundtrack in Len Lye's 1930's UK experimental
animation piece, <<Doing the Lambeth Walk>>.)

Now, just for the footnote:  Henry, I believe there is one case of Khosn Kale
Mazel Tov in an old animated film.  I'm sure you are already aware of this
cartoon music, since you were the one who brought a copy of the film in
question (via Jack Chen?) to the YIVO Institute's film archive long before I
started working there.  It's in that remarkably-racist-even-for-the-period
short, LAUNDRY BLUES (BlackHawk Films?)  But maybe this very deliberately
referential use of a klezmer piece, played in this case to further stereotype
a Jewish character who goes into a Chinese laundry, distinguishes it from
more generally atmospheric sorts of cartoon soundtrack music in which some
have claimed to hear klezmer influence.

Anyway, this flick is certainly conscious of genre, in its nasty little way,
throwing in Chinese music, complete with gong, around a no-tickee-no-washee
scene; and then of course there's that blues in the title.  All part of the
zeitgeist TBS, Warner et al. would like to pretend never existed: independent
movie theater exhibitors have recently been threatened with major lawsuits if
they show archival programs like Forbidden Bugs Bunny, i.e. those which
contain sexist, racist, or other material that might tarnish today's
sanitized image of these still eminently marketable cartoon commodities.  And
at least in some cases, this censorship by corporate legal department has
worked to suppress public screenings in Manhattan.  As for LAUNDRY BLUES,
there's was still a video copy at YIVO, as far as I know, and maybe now again
at the Museum of the Chinese in the Americas (also in NYC).

Eve Sicular
Metropolitan Klezmer