[Fwd: klezmer = yiddish?]

[Kame'a Media <media...>]

Ernie Gruner / Cathy Dowden wrote:
> 
> Please could someone explain to me the relationship between klezmer and
> yiddish?

Much like swimming  is to  water. 
While a case could indeed  be made that one can  swim in other liquids,
 it would be a specious argument. 
>
Are they / Were they always linked ?

They are no longer  linked, as many  musicians playing this music have
never spoken the language or have  an "arrested development"
relationship to it .   While some have made  some commitment and effort
to learn,  many have not.   Among the post-WW II generations,  Jewish
people usually speak the language of the country they live in as a first
language.  

 Not only was Yiddish disparaged in modern Israel, it  was  suppressed,
both through "language of the ghetto" negative propaganda as well as by 
the official government starvation of Yiddish education and culture. 

This effects of this  negative propaganda were felt in the US and Canada
throughout the 40s, 50s and 60s as Yiddish fell into ever greater
desuetude. 
This  created a great void in certain sectors of Yiddish intellectual
and cultural life, the repercussions of which are being  felt today.  

Yiddish was all but abandoned and started to be spoken of as a "dying
language", etc.  Isaac Singer writes that, when he would tell people he
was a Yiddish writer,  it was like  saying he was a grave-digger.  That
is to say,  not only was there not a lot of prestige in it, it was a
suspect occupation for an otherwise normal and intelligent person. 

Many  contemporary Yiddish-speakers have not formally studied the
language beyond a primary-school level.  One can certainly  not expect
the  non-Jewish klezmer performers, of which there are many,   to speak
Yiddish in any significant numbers.  There are, you may be aware,
all-gentile klezmer bands.   

Up until  WWII, they  were (linked).   And, in America for at least the
first decades after WWII,  the <simkhe> musicians were most likely 
Yiddish-speaking.     Does this mean that no gentile ever sat in with or
shared a gig with a Jewish klezmer band?  Of course not:  Charlie "Bird"
Parker himself was said to have played  Jewish weddings.   Were they
playing klezmer music?  Probably  some; American_Jewish party band
repertoires  would most likely include a
 <freylekh> or two. 

 Were there klezmer musicians in Europe who did not speak yiddish?
where?

>Doubt it.  A well-seasoned and well-travelled musician of any origin could 
>have picked up some licks or copped some style, or even played a gig with a 
>Jewish klezmer band,  but it would have been rare.   The interrelationship 
>between musicians and  their "clients" would dictate that Jewish and  
>Yiddish-speaking  <klezmers> would be engaged for Jewish <simkhes>. 
 
> My understanding is that klezmer was Jewish eastern european instrumental
> music, and that yiddish is a language which happens to be spoken in most if
> not all of the areas where klezmer was played. Is my confusion based on
> time and geographical changes and definitions?

Where is the confusion?

Wolf Krakowski
Kame'a Media
http://www.kamea.com



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