mixing Jewish music, culture, and politics

[Ari Davidow <ari...>]

The recent discussion about Yiddish, shmaltz, and new Yiddish
performers who remind one of Bob Dylan has caused me to reflect
a bit on culture and politics, and seems maybe worth discussing
further.

As a minority (speaking for those of us participating in the US),
just seeing Jewish symbols on the TV, or on stage, or reading
having an Israeli star win the Eurovision song contest (in this,
and in our general dislike of the music of Eurovision, Americans,
American Jews, and Israelis share a common bond) is a powerful
cultural, and even political statement: we are here, we aren't
going away.

For many, myself included, the klezmer and Yiddish revivals 
symbolized a reclaiming of a part of the Jewish identity of
our grandparents that is in sync (at least, that part of the
identity that we are reclaiming) with where our idealized
sense of politics feel it should be. This too, is both
political and cultural (and perhaps baffling to those who
never lost that particular language or music, or who are
more familiar with the complexity of the world whence it came).

One of the very neat things that has followed on the heels of
the klezmer and Yiddish revivals (Yiddish still recovering;
klezmer now healthy) is the greater awareness of the multitude
of Jewish cultures, and in particular, of Sephardic song, ranging
from the Ladino melodies, new and old, of Sarajevo native Flory
Jagoda, to the inclusion of familiar Sephardic songs even in the
repertoires of mainline "klezmer" bands such as the Klezmer 
Conservatory Band.

I'm thinking of this especially, and in this particular context,
because I'm hoping to see Chava Alberstein and the Klezmatics perform
this afternoon, where their repertoire in common will be from a new
album that they have just recorded, and which is due to be released
in September, of new Yiddish songs that Chava wrote.

I have no idea what the songs will be about--whether they will be
pop fluff that happens to be in Yiddish (my opinion of much of 
Alberstein's repertoire, as differentiated from that part that is
often pop fluff, but in Hebrew), or whether this will also reflect
some of the political work in which Alberstein has been involved in
recent years (exemplified by her electrifying version of "Khad Gadya"
a few years ago in which she followed up the cyclical singing of the 
traditional words with the question of how long Israelis and 
Palestinians would be locked in their own cycle of violence and
mistrust). 

I can say that Alberstein is unique among Israeli singers in emphasizing
both Hebrew and Yiddish (and most unusual in the Israeli context just in 
having recorded previous albums of Yiddish folksongs). Her ability
to transcend the politics of one versus the other to a place where
both, among others, are equally important to Jewish culture, is a
cultural statement that I value.

(I also suddenly realize, as I write this, that I have no idea
how the Klezmatics fit into this. On their own, the Klezmatics
exemplify a wonderful "in-your-face" meld of Yiddish, klezmer,
and politics, but they are also a very tight band. I'm eager
to see whether the interaction transcends more than as an 
excellent musical backdrop to Alberstein's songs.)

Where does hearing Yiddish or Ladino in public become its own
cultural statement (as opposed to "the way we are")? Is there
an implied politics, be it a reminder to an American culture that
often seems unbearably homogenous that we are Jews, not Judeo-
Christians, or to ourselves, in celebrating our diversity and in
honoring and remembering our history--things that we do as a 
matter of course in the rituals and reminders of the Jewish year?

Maybe this is a series of questions: when or how or to what degree 
does performing our own music, or writing new Jewish music, become
"just" an internal expression of Jewish culture, and when is it a
political or cultural statement on its own? What are some of the
things we try to explore or teach ourselves in creating new music?
What are some of the messages we intentionally send when we perform
such music to the world?

ari

Ari Davidow
The klezmer shack: http://www.well.com/user/ari/klez/
owner: jewish-music mailing list
e-mail: ari (at) ivritype(dot)com