Re: Klezmer trumpet

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

>My take on Klezmer trumpets is that there should be more of them.  There
>should just be more trumpets period.  And trumpets are great at doing
>Balkan music, why wouldn't they be great for Klezmer?
>
>
>Dave

What relevance does the sound of a particular instrument in one 
kind of music matter to what it would be in another genre?   There 
may be many relationships between Jewish and Balkan music, but 
since when is Balkan music a measuring stick for Jewish music?   It 
was never so for Jews in Eastern Europe.  Jews may have picked up 
melodies everywhere but that doesn't mean that they wanted to 
reproduce the sound of the non-Jewish melodic sources.   When they 
took melodies around them, they usually adapted it in their 
distinctive Jewish ways.   For example, Jews often picked up 
melodies from military brass bands marching through the town, but 
the farthest thing in the world those Jews wanted was to "sound 
like", mimic, or _emulate_ that sound.  The brass sound was 
associated with the military, with the ruling lords, the 
monarchy and "goyishness" and thus, not for Jews.  Melody was 
considered something else.   Melodies were holy and could by 
Judaized in many ways.  

Some non-Jews in Balkan countries to this day hear Jewish music 
and call it Balkan, unable or unwilling to see anything distinctively 
Jewish or different about it.  But that was not how Jews heard it or 
how Jews or Jewish musicians wanted it.  They had no interest in making 
it sound like Balkan, meaning non-Jewish music.  From their point of 
view, such judgments by non-Jews were either uninformed or prejudicial 
in their unwillingness to recognize the unique features in Jewish music 
or the Jewish contributions to music.   

I think that opinions expressed here earlier that Jews looked for 
instruments that could mimic the expressiveness of the human voice 
are correct.  Jews also didn't need or want that large, brash sound.  
They lived in close, sometimes crowded quarters and had small 
shtiblakh.  There was no need to make their music fill the non-Jewish 
air.   No reason to be get attention of non-Jews or to call attention 
to themselves or their simkhas by an impudent, brash sound.   Who knew 
what jealousies they would awaken.  I think brass instruments were used 
for extra special occasions - large, rich Jewish weddings (when the 
guests would march into town in some kind of a procession) or when the 
rebbe would come into a town or get married or when they walked in a new 
torah to the synagogue, which meant a lot of community pride.  

Dave, you are facing the wrong side.   You gotta look inwards into the 
Jewish music.


Reyzl Kalifowicz-Waletzky