Re: Just a thought

[Ingemar Johansson <hebanon...>]

Hi Judy,

I've reviewed this CD several times, in Swedish and in English, being a
writer and critic myself. You'll find one of these reviews below.

Ingemar
 
> I suggest if you find his writing misinformed or shallow that you simply
> offer the rest of us your own review. (I wasn't on the list two years ago
> and don't know if you did already.)  I would proffer two criteria: 1)
that
> it be your own writing and reactions you have to the music and 2) that it
> be a direct review of the album, not a "response" or "reaction piece" to
> Ari's --or anyone else's reviews.
> 
> What say you?
> Judy

This review was published in Djembe (a leading Scandinavian magazine on
World music) # 26 (October 1998):

TRANSMIGRATIONS
Kame'a Media KAM 7001

If you say "Yiddish Music" to people acquainted with so called World Music,
you may be more or less assured of this reply: "Ah, you mean Klezmer".
However, it's a fact that Klezmer today is going through much the same
crisis that once made New Orleans Jazz stiffen into Dixieland. Many of 
today's klezmer musicians lack in improvisational skills, and are actually 
not rooted in that wonderfully modulated, almost shimmering, language that 
begat it: Yiddish.

Allow me instead to take up the battle for Wolf Krakowski, a guitarist and
blues-singer from Toronto, Canada, now residing in Northampton,
Massachusetts, and firmly anchored in Yiddish. 

What Krakowski has done with his debut-CD, "Transmigrations", is simply to
unite these two traditions: eastern Jewish culture and the music of
blues-rock-reggae. It may sound risky and would have been so in the hands
of a less conscious and sensitive artist. That it
works out well for Krakowski is of course a consequence of the fact that he
is permeated by just these two strains. Yiddish is his mother-tongue, his
"mame-lozhn", as is the tender Yiddish term for it, and modern blues-based
rock  is his natural musical medium.

In an e-mail interview I have done with him, he tells how he once, at the
beginning of the Klezmer-revival, experienced how a musician executed a
"Yiddish blues" as a pure parody. "I couldn't understand why all the
wonderful music of both these forms should be misrepresented in such a
way." 

The thought that he himself should show what one could do in this area grew
organically. "First and foremost, the blues is my music. What have all
these mazurkas and bulgars and quadrilles that klezmer is based on to do 
with my daily life?" 

That may sound disrespectful in the ears of a "klezmer-purist", but the
fact is that Krakowski handles his material on "Transmigrations" with deep
respect.

Here we encounter some Ashkenazi popular, folk, and theatre songs from the
Holocaust era, presented in delicious arrangements which stress, but never
dominate the inner qualities of the texts and melodies. By the way, the
text of Ashkenazi songs almost always are deeply meaningful; they may seem
simple, but they are more often than not about essential and existential
things, just like good blues is.

There are many pearls of the Ashkenazi song-treasure on "Transmigrations",
and you don't have to hear many seconds of the opening number of this CD,
the traditional ballad "Tsen Brider" ("Ten brothers") to grasp that Wolf
Krakowski has created something unique. American reviewers have compared
his voice to that of Leonard Cohen and Tom Waits, but I
think it's all his own. It's strong and tempered, warm and restrained at
the same time; filled with deep sentiment, but never sentimental. And he
has had the good taste to bring some excellent musicians along, the group
"The Lonesome Brothers" (which recently had a new CD out on Tar Hut 
Records), where especially the multi-instrumentalist Jim Armenti excels 
(he plays guitar, mandolin, violin, saxophone and bouzouki on 
"Transmigrations"). The interplay between him and Krakowski brings Lester 
Young and Billie Holiday to mind. This may sound exaggerated, but I wish to
communicate an impression of extraordinary congeniality.

"Transmigrations" is hard to get at, but if you have accession to the Web
it could be a good idea to visit Krakowski's site at http://www.kamea.com,
where there are samples of his music and possibilities to order it.
 
Ingemar Johansson

 

---------------------- jewish-music (at) shamash(dot)org ---------------------+