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Being sensitive to a Yiddishe crowd
- From: MaxwellSt <MaxwellSt...>
- Subject: Being sensitive to a Yiddishe crowd
- Date: Thu 22 Jul 1999 03.54 (GMT)
In a message dated 07/21/1999 9:22:19 PM Central Daylight Time,
KLEZMER313 (at) aol(dot)com writes:
<< Could be that being a rather simple simcha musician has it's
rewards.....one
of which being free of the almost arrogant attitude that you seem to
attribute to the concert musician.
Maybe (let's hope) we are having a semantics problem rather than a
philosophical one!!!! >>
As a musician, I would say it's probably a philosophical difference. I have
great respect for musicians who perform for the pleasure of creating original
music, and there is almost always at least a part of the public who responds
to his/her sincere act of talented creation by appreciating the music, albeit
almost as an accidental onlooker. But I am bothered when simcha music (that
IS the origin of klezmer, after all) is performed as art to the exclusion of
being simchadik (or when the performer is more into his thing than how it
communicates)--because jazz is great, but it's not the wellspring of Jewish
music. Nor does it sit well with me when a klezmer fancies himself a sort of
contemporary atonal/angry artist. Many in New York would disagree with me,
but if it loses its chen (charm, sort of) and its Yiddish character, I think
klezmer's on the wrong path. And I don't blame the audience who is
disappointed when they've come to connect to their warm past and have more of
the cool present foisted upon them.
Example: Once I hired two very good jazz musicians (clarinet, piano) to play
background music at a person's house. The client called me back, distressed,
saying that although the music SOUNDED good, the two never cracked a smile,
seemed aloof and made her feel depressed! Get the idea? People who are
looking to this music for sunshine and humor, the touching sound of Yiddish
voices and the krechts of emotion--if instead they get Jeremy Cohn-trane on
sax, it's confusing and disappointing. (Likewise, I suppose the band who
breaks out in Yiddishe Mama at the Knitting Factory is going to turn up some
noses--as the person who titled this thread "shmaltz" must feel.)
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- Being sensitive to a Yiddishe crowd,
MaxwellSt