klezmer trumpet

[Solidarity Foundation <svzandt...>]

On Sun, 25 Jan 1998 at 22:56:44 -0500 (EST), Dave Dalle wrote:

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?

On Mon, 26 Jan 1998 at 10:03:54 -0500, Reyzl Kalifowicz-Waletzky wrote:

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.

_________________________________________________

(I know Dave and Reyzl have already resolved this for themselves. I
actually wrote the following last night, but due to a sending error, it
did not get on the list. I've decided to post it anyway, because I think
Reyzl's message raised a number of interesting topics that I'd like to
try and respond to.)


Although, as a fidler, the thought of lots of trumpets, lots and lots
of trumpets, "more trumpets period", does make me a wee bit nervous --
I'm already on the record as an admirer of a good klezmer trumpet. I
guess you mean more trumpets "around", not all in the same place at the
same time, Dave? Anyway, let's look a little more closely at what Reyzl
is saying.

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? 

I think a number of questions are getting tangled together here, and
it's important to keep them separate. First of all, the style of playing
a particular instrument. Secondly, the style of an entire Balkan
military band. Third of all, the relationship between Balkan instrumental
and Jewish klezmer music. Fourth of all, the philosophical implications
of even making the comparison. Fifth, sociological differences between
Jewish and co-territorial non-Jewish instrumental folk musics.

Now, as far as I read it, Dave said only:

trumpets are great at doing
Balkan music, why wouldn't they be great for Klezmer?

Maybe I'm being naive, and I do think the points you raise are all
important, Reyzl, but I don't see any "hidden agenda" in these words. The
fact is that the klezmer trumpet style IS related to the Balkan trumpet
style. It did come into Jewish music through military bands, including
many Jews who actually played in bands while they were in the army. One
of these, I think it was Lieutenant Joseph Frankel, was actually in the
Russian army as a band member and later in the U.S. army, and made some
fine klezmer recordings leading an ensemble (not sure what he played --
possibly clarinet -- does somebody out there know?). If memory serves me,
Dave Tarras was also in a Russian army band before he emigrated to this
country. -- Now also in the early years of this century, Rumanian music
was becoming more and more popular with Jews -- the bulgars, sirbas, 
doinas and (slow) horas were all coming into klezmer at approximately
that time. The solo trumpet in Jewish music at that time bears signs of
BOTH these influences. Both examples of excellent klezmer trumpet that
I mentioned the other day are playing this new "Rumanian" style. The
anonymous Istanbul trumpeter is playing a doina, and (a point I made
in my article in ARSC Journal 28.1 (1997) pp.46-47), trumpeter Abe
Elenkrig, although he came from a shtetl nowhere near Rumania (he was
from Zolotanosha, near Kiev), plays in this newer "Rumanian" style, as
opposed to the older "Hasidic" style.  

Also interesting in this connection is a recording of a doina and sirba
and a march entitled (in Rumanian) "Maneana Turceasca" made as early as
1905 by (non-Jewish) cornetist Mihai Viteazul with the Rumanian army
band Musica Militara Reg.6. (The first of these has been reissued on
Sapoznik's "Klezmer Pioneers, Rounder C-1089). He also recorded
"Rumynski bolgar" parts 1 & 2, issued on the Warsaw label "Sirena" in
1914. It is interesting because the doina and sirba was issued in America
in 2 different couplings that suggest that it was marketed to the Jewish
audience as well as the Rumanian -- although it's not a Jewish band at
all.
Around 1914 we find a group of recordings of actually Jewish pieces, with 
titles in Yiddish, issued by a "wind band" under direction of Stupel',
a Jewish military band leader from Vilna, and in the same year another
group by a wind band under the direction of A. Olefsky, most of which
also have titles in Yiddish. Both recorded on the "Odeon" label.

There are also the numerous recordings of a "Russian-Jewish Orchestra",
actually a wind band (or possibly more than one) which seems to have
recorded between 1909 and 1911 in (strangely enough) Hanover, Germany.

Stylistically, these recordings are not uniform. Examples of the
"Russian-Jewish Orchestra" I have heard sound very wooden. Although
they are playing typical Jewish repertoire, there's no "neshuma"
(soul). Nothing "Rumanian" about them either. So it seems like the
"marching band", non-Jewish (also non-Balkan, by the way), that some
people may find so disturbing about -- for example -- many of the
Kandel orchestra, rhythmic stiffness, I mean, was not a uniquely
American influence (although it is reported that Kandel played in
John Philip Sousa's band) -- because the same kind of thing can also
be found in SOME of the European recordings mentioned above.


We may not like this -- and yet, it happened. But forgive this digression,
Reyzl, because you were talking about BALKAN-style military bands. It
so happens that I attended the annual BALKAN-BASH festival last week,
with the brass band "Zlatne Usta" and wall-to-wall other bands playing
South Slavic and a little Greek music, and it was quite obvious both
the kinship AND the difference between that dance repertoire (practically
all they played were dances) and klezmer. Klezmer, which we tend to think
of, or some of us do, as so WILD AND CRAZY, is (as another co-Jew there
remarked), very "tsniesdik" (modest -- but there's got to be a better         
translation) in comparison.

Reyzl, when you say "Some non-Jews in Balkan countries to this day hear Jewish
and call it Balkan, unable or unwilling to see anything distinctively 
Jewish or different about it.  "I have no doubt that's the case, but I would
put the emphasis on "some."

Others hear Jewish music and call it Balkan and DO hear something
distinctive and different about it. And for that matter, Reyzl, not too
long ago a Jew from Rumania said to me (smugly, I think, but it was by
e-mail so I didn't really get his tone of voice), "klezmer is just early
20th-century Rumanian folk music" -- which is, well, a half-truth. 
Also, it is well known that an unusually large percentage of people
involved in the Balkan dance scene in this country are Jewish. Why this
is I don't know, but it seemed interesting enough to one ethnomusicologist
I once met (a non-Jew from the Balkans, incidentally) to have been made
a subject of study. Last time I checked, the Balkan Music home page one
the Internet had a link to Ari's klez shack (Ari, please confirm or deny),
which I take as a sign of  interest and respect, in no way belittling.

If klezmer IS part of the "family" of Balkan musics in a musicological
sense, I don't think it detracts from its uniqueness. If a lot of klezmer
tunes are the same or similar to Greek and Rumanian tunes (which they are),
it is also true that EACH of these Balkan musics borrows a lot of tunes
and dances from others -- yet each is UNIQUE.


So here we come to the heart of the matter, literally. You see, Reyzl,
and also Alex Jacobowitz, I don't disagree with you, I'm just trying to
clarify the issues (and I only hope I'm succeeding). Because what's
really unique to klezmer, ultimately, is the yidishe neshume, the unique
ethos that took us 5,000 years to develop. And the function within our
community, which has, let's face it, greatly diminished from effects of
assimilation, but which we klezmorim ourselves can play an important       
role in doing something about -- or not. It's a difficult practical
problem, as a Jewish musician, to be working towards hemshekh (continuity
of tradition) without just pandering to sentimentality or stifling
creativity. Although I suspect a lot of us have adopted too uncritically,
western, 20th-century dogmas about what being artistically creative
consists in, as well as the false, modern western idea that continuing
a tradition excludes development.

Even when I say "each is unique", it may seem to some people that I'm 
being too "multicultural." Jewish music should be MORE unique. Well, it
is, my dears, you know why? Because its OURS. And no other music, at
least not in the same sense, can make that claim. I understand that a
Jewish person in America today can (and no doubt most do) feel more
rooted in jazz or rock. I feel pretty rooted in rock myself, having
listened to it from the time I was 9 years old (which is getting to be
a pretty long time ago). But only Jewish music is Jewish music.

Itzik-Leyb