Re: klez go classical (was: Buena Vista Social Club)

[Joshua Horowitz <horowitz...>]

Ari wrote:

> Ultimately, that will be determined by the public--what do they
> pay to come to hear. 

But the fact is, if you have the apparatus and funds to propogate music
on a wide scale, the audiences opinion can be manipulated in order to
create a fad. This is the point. The music you make is only one part of
the picture. Getting that music out to the public is another. If the
audience was the sole - or even main- determining factor in a music's
popularity, would we have overnight successes like the Spice Girls and
the Buena Vista Social Club? To put it bluntly: First comes the
promotion, then the fad, then the public taste. That's why I wrote that
the Cooder/Wenders productions can create a fad with powerful promo and
that's what happened. Who will admit that they didn't have a clue what
Son music was before they were told what a fantastic genre it was?
Before they saw it at every listening station in every Cd store from
here to Greenland? That says nothing about the quality of the music- it
is wonderful. But the extent to which we buy what we are told to is
extreme. 

You would probably be shocked to find out how business end people really
think. An example: Talking to a clique of world music agents in Germany
in March, I couldn't figure out why they all kept talking about Swedish
fiddling. All of them seemed to be saying the same thing- that they
thought the music wasn't that exciting, but there are a lot of women
involved in it and women are *in*. They all hinted at the fact that they
would be pushing these Swedish projects....sure enough, in this issue of
Folk Roots, a Swedish group is on the cover, and sure enough, there are
several Swedish groups now touring Germany. When I talked tachlis with
the agents, there it was in technicolor: They are at this very moment
creating a fad. Wait and see. This is one of the ways this thing
operates. 
 
> On the other hand, as I have written many times to this list, I am
> not a fan of Kol Simcha. To complain about a review written that
> lauds their music over Budowitz (to provide an excellent contra)
> is to despair because someone likes Kenny G's music and takes it
> to represent what is good in jazz. 

I wasn't of course making any comment one way or another on Kol Simcha's
music. My point in showing that review was to show who has the power in
opinion-forming, and to show the discrepency between what we present and
how it is perceived by an outsider who has the means to reach more
people with his criticsim than we do with the music. That journalist
reaches several million readers. I can't quantify the effect of that in
terms of record sales or potential professional interest in the group,
but I can tell you that it certainly won't help get us gigs in the
Stuttgart area for the future, and when I write a report to grant-givers
about the media results of our ventures, such things are an
embarassment. When our agent reads that review, his first though is:
*Hm, time to move on to the Swedish fiddlers now. Trad klez is out.*
That's the reality from the inside. It's a dog eat traditional klezmer
world. But who's complaining? Just gimme a bisquit and I'm happy! Josh

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