Review (long) Chava Alberstein/The Klezmatics 10/10/98

[Ari Davidow <ari...>]

Chava Alberstein/The Klezmatics, live at Town Hall, NYC, 10/10/98
album release party: The Well

I meant to write about this concert sooner, but I was on the road
for several days and assumed that others from the list, who also
attended the concert, would chime in first. Hopefully, they will
follow with their own comments and observations.

In a few words, the concert will rank among the most marvellous
that I have seen. Attendees, all of whom left the concert with
smiles and most cheerful demeanors ranged from Debbie Friedman,
of Jewish spiritual folkie fame, to Zalmen Mlotek, the foremost
arranger of Yiddish music in our time (in my opinion). And, a lot
of us who aren't particularly famous or talented, but enjoy good
music when we get the chance.

Alberstein, unique among Israeli folk performers with many
Yiddish language recordings interspersed with her usual Hebrew,
has never been among my favorite performers. But I only knew her
from a spotty few recordings that I have deigned to listen to
over the years. Clearly, just as I was jolted politically by the
release of her shocking, astonishing, wonderful and prayerful
"Chad Gadya" a decade ago, I have been guilty of serious
underestimation with regards to her abilities as a peak
performer, live.

For the recording of "The Well," Alberstein enlisted the help of
The Klezmatics, a band that is among the best, and arguably,
evenings such as last Saturday night, entirely without peers, in
the field of modern Jewish music. Although the Klezmatics are
best known for their fusion of klezmer with the American jazz,
avant garde, and rock music with which many of us are more
familiar, they have long demonstrated an ability to play just
about anything (starting with very traditional klezmer), and in
their collaborations, individually and as a band, have spanned
the globe, physically and stylistically. 

The project involved recording poems written over the past
century by Yiddish poets, many of whom are unknown outside of
Yiddishist circles. There have been similar projects in recent
years: I recently reviewed an album in which the Austrian band,
Di Goyim, set poetry written in Vienna in the 20s to Weilish,
jazzish, industrial-sounding music. My own "homies," the Boston
band, Naftule's Dream, did similar work with a broader range of
Yiddish poets, and performed the material extensively a couple of
years ago.(A cut from those recordings, not otherwise publicly
available except for bootlegs, was on the JAM compilation, Guide
for the Perplexed.)

This project was different, in that the melodies to which the
music has been set are far more mainstream, far more
familiar-sounding and accessible. This is not edge music
(although anything on which the Klezmatics play is going to be
near the edge, periodically). Indeed, although the music was
written by Chava Alberstein and primarily reflects her Israeli
Hebrew and Yiddish folk roots (about which, read further, below),
the Klezmatics added an obvious overlay of their own music, and
there was even a moment when producer Ben Mink joined them on the
stage last Saturday night, he who achieved early prominence as a
member of Toronto's seminal "String Band," one of the most
amazing folk bands of the 70s, when I could hear his Canadian
Folk/Quebecois influence, as well.

In short, the music is not traditional Yiddish. Nor is it
klezmer. It is definitely folkish and wonderful. This goes well
with the poems, which span the gamut of life, from poems about
hearts broken in love, to longing, and peaceful times, to a
precurser to Bob Dylan's song about serving someone, Abe Reisen's
"One Has Got" (We must all have something/Must believe in one
of/A devil down below/A good Lord up above/....), to the amazing,
evocative, "My Sister Chaye," one of the strongest, most
compelling songs about those who were murdered set to music in
recent times.

But, perhaps, these are words that better belong in an album
review. After all of this time, I should at least talk about the
performance a week ago in Town Hall.

The Klezmatics opened with a reasonably usual set of hot, mostly
dance music. The material was drawn mostly from their most recent
two albums, "Possessed" and "Jews with Horns," and if they
strayed a bit further from klezmer into avant jazz a bit on one
of Matt Dariau's horas, this is neither entirely unexpected, nor
an unwelcome event. Their set closed with the usual "Shnerele
Perele" and "Fisherlied", songs that I am convinced will continue
to move me at least as long as I am ready to hear "Mr. Tambourine
Man" yet again.

Rather than go directly to a set by Alberstein, the band,
instead, called Alberstein onto stage and they launched into the
new material. Hopefully, someone kept a set list. All I can say
is that the pleasure of watching, listening, to incredible
musicians playing new music that they clearly love almost as much
as they love playing together is something very special. 

After a first set together, the Klezmatics left the stage for a
while so that Alberstein could perform some of her older Yiddish
(and Hebrew material). It was then that I realized how thoroughly
I may have missed what a great performer she is. Along the way,
she performed a couple of Israeli traditional folk songs
(melodies, according to Alberstein, imported just recently from
South America), in part forming her explanation of the Israel
"folk" process, by which songs are brought by immigrants, are
heard for a while in their native language, and reappear after a
while as Israeli traditional melodies. In this, she was also
hinting at the sources, and eclecticism, of the music to which
the new material had been set.

She then concluded her set with an amazing rendition of "Chad
Gadya," an adaptation of the traditional Aramaic seder song (the
recording was originally released as part of her 1989 "London"
album). It was, she said, about the need to end the cycles of
violence. Clearly she was referring not only to the context of
the intifada, in which the song was released, to a more universal
message worth hearing in a world and in a week, where bombings in
Kosovo were imminent (to single out one conflict, one that
happened to grab a headline above the fold in the Sunday paper
following, next to reportage about the latest meetings between
Netanyahu and Arafat.) She then concluded with a song that she
used to dedicate to Yitzhak Rabin, and now dedicated to his
memory and to the cause of peace, a Shlomo Carlebach song that
has long been part of the general Jewish folk repertoire, origins
obscure to many of us. (And which song? I, who am unfamiliar with
Carlebach's music, can only say that I knew the song, but which
one? That was a week and several lifetimes ago.)

It was during the songs that closed the set that I found myself
thinking about the implications of what I was seeing on stage. It
wasn't just the amazing music and pleasure of watching a band
having such pleasure--although, usually, and even here, those
would be excuse enough. It was impossible to miss the symbolism
of hearing Yiddish and Hebrew on stage as both relevant to each
other. The war of Hebrew vs. Yiddish in Israel was long, complex,
and bitter. Hebrew won, in part with help of assimilation in
America, and the destruction of European Jewry by Hitler. In the
aftermath, not only have issues such as the character sets
available on computers for writing using the Hebrew alphabet been
affected (interested folks can contact the UYIP mailing list, see
http://www.ivritype.com/resources/jlists.html#uyip for further
info), but recent knowledge of European Jewish culture as
expressed in Yiddish was less familiar, and less accessible to
Israeli children than stories from 2000 years ago. On last
Saturday night's stage, that antagonism was gone. The inclusion
of Aramaic, in Chad Gadya, symbolized not only that healing, but
reminded us of how many languages have been part of our history
and culture, and how important the cherishing of each is. Seguing
so quickly to the Carlebach song, made not only a strong overt
political statement ("politics!" snorted the person in the seat
ahead of me, but he neither left, nor appeared uninvolved in what
he was hearing), but reminded us of how deep and rich our culture is.

The Klezmatics came back out, and continued to play through "The
Well," including "My Sister Chaye," surely one of the most
beautiful songs, and one driving home so much of what the
Holocaust meant on a personal level, and also including other
songs from Alberstein's repertoire. This song also drove home how
good the words to all of these songs are. There are no
moon/spoon/June songs here, nor is their piety, or tradition,
other than the universal tradition of the human condition, and of
the particular human condition of Jewish life in this century.

The thing is, by now, this was not just amazing music. It was
amazing healing music. We all stepped outside, not just awed by
an amazing performance, but all, to some degree, more at peace
than when we entered. Not that the music had necessarily been
gentle, but that the performance had broadened our world just a
bit, and made us realize how precious and beautiful it was. As
the band performed it's encores, I had an image of the Lubavitch
story, from "Tanya" if memory serves, in which they explain the
variant spellings of the word for "light" in Genesis. When G-d
first spoke, an immense, inconceivable light filled the universe:
"Y'hi or." Later in the chapter, as creation proceeds, a shorter
spelling is used; according to the Lubavitchers, this is because
that original light had to be shattered to allow creation, and
shards of that original light are embedded in all of creation.
Part of our job on earth is to perform "tikkun olam," to repair
that world by uniting those sparks by our prayers.

Last Saturday night, Chava Alberstein and the Klezmatics created
such a light, gushing out into the world (to borrow a metaphor
from Israeli poet Yehuda Amichai), and over us, shattering the
perfection of the music's conception, washing over us with peace
and something larger than ourselves, or the music, itself, as
"The Well" was not just performed, but was embedded in each of
us, as a healing, and as a reminder of who we are and how
beautiful and wonderful that is.

The rest, I guess, is commentary.


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