RE: Klezmer Clarinet

[Reyzl Kalifowicz-Waletzky <reyzl...>]

Typically Snide Alex wrote:

>Before people get too caught up in instrumental-style
>discussions regarding the use of clarinet in klezmer music,
>remember that the people (East European Jews) 
>who created this music were NOT originally limiting 
>themselves to specific instruments or sounds. It's
>only with our academic musicological retrospect that 
>we create clarinet "categories" of klezmer, a truly dangerous
>proposition,... 

I am not interested in an argument about which instrument is more
Jewish than another, but on what basis do you make the above 
statement?  This is just not true.   There were several instruments 
that non-Jews played that Jews didn't/wouldn't.   They were ethnically 
marked for whatever reason.  Some of these peasant instruments were 
even cheaper to acquire than fiddles or clarinets, and yet Jews 
wouldn't play them.  It's been a long time since I looked at this 
material and I wish I could remember the names of those peasant
instruments. 


Bob Jacobson wrote:

>And btw Owen, don't be too quick to write off bagpipes as a klezmer
>instrument. There's some fairly cool sounding use of bagpipe in things like
>Transylvanian village music and probably other vaguely related styles that
>I'm even more ignorant about. You're right, you would indeed look silly,
>but it might sound okay.

As much as I love bagpipes, the fact that it can be found in music 
of Transylvanian villages doesn't mean that Jews or even non-Jews 
played it in Jewish contexts.  Esta's use of bagpipes is interesting
and novel as everything else they do is, but theirs is "new" Jewish 
music and a new sound, as they will happily tell you.   Does anyone 
have any citation of bagpipes being used by Jews or in Jewish contexts?   
Wish someone would find some 'cause I would imagine that if Jews had 
bagpipes available to them in an ethnically neutral way, they would 
have liked that wailing sound.  I would take bagpipes any day over the
accordion.  Sorry Owen!  


Reyzl Kalifowicz-Waletzky 
YiddishNet