RE: Mandy Patinkin's Yiddish album

[Dick Rosenberg <drosenberg...>]

I just re-listened to the excerpts from Mandy Patinkin album that are
available on the net and have the following observations:

It's not so much that the album is "bad", it's that to my ears it's very
"schlocky". I don't like it for the same reason I didn't like The
Lawrence Welk Show when my parents used to put it on when I was a kid. I
personally think that the Klezmer Conservatory Band's version of Belz
(with Judy Bressler's heartfelt vocal) is orders of magnitude better
than Mandy Patinkin's.

But is Mandy Patinkin's version (of whatever) authentic (or at least
more authentic in terms of being truer to its era)?. Probably. Is there
a audience for what I would consider schlock? Probably (maybe
unfortunately would be a better term based on my opinion, but that's not
what this is about).

Klezmer is certainly nostalgic music. I think part of what has made the
Klezmer Revival so successful is that the nostalgia has been
reinterpeted by modern artists to create music that simultaneously
evokes the nostalgia of the earlier era while interpreting the music in
a manner that is pleasing and meaningful to our late 20th century ears
and tastes.

I think that what can be said about Mandy Patinkin is that he has taken
the nostalgia of an earlier era and interpeted it in a way that is both
somewhat surprisingly good (I was pleasantly impressed with his Yiddish
accent) and reasonably true to its period, even though it might be too
reasonably true to its period for many readers of this list. Certainly,
as Ari has pointed out, he has given us a window into what life was like
for a particular generation in a particular era.

Dick

>----------
>From:  Ari Davidow[SMTP:ari (at) ivritype(dot)com]
>Sent:  Monday, June 08, 1998 10:58 AM
>To:    World music from a Jewish slant.
>Subject:       Re: Mandy Patinkin's Yiddish album
>
>>Ari,
>>   You write that the new Mandy P. album is not your kind of album.  It is
>>so bad that it can't be anyone's album.
>
>I dunno, Elaine. This is one of the rare albums that people came
>up to me to talk about at various Jewish and Yiddish events,
>all of them excited about it. Sometimes I'll be standing with 
>friends and realize that a group nearby is discussing it with
>excitement. I can try to look at why it might have meaning, or 
>why it might offer pleasure, and I can (and have) talked with a 
>couple of people involved with it. Regardless, of what I think I 
>understand, there are a lot of people for whom it is bringing a lot 
>of pleasure (including the reviewer who wrote about the album on my 
>klezmer shack website).
>
>Maybe "bad" isn't the word that matters here. Maybe the question is
>what it is about the album that causes some people to enjoy it so
>much? I've speculated on some of the factors in previous messages, 
>but I've also noted that I'm working at a distance.
>
>And, I have come to really like "Take me out to the ballgame" in
>Yiddish, despite myself. It instantly takes me back to the world
>of my grandparents and how they described the things that mattered
>to them, and to their feelings about America. But that's me and
>my family.
>
>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
>
>