Re: klez go classical

[ganzl azoi freyl <d6l...>]

sorry to prolong/revive this thread (sorta sorry anyway),
but i've been away from the machine and busy at work (where the email is) 
for the last three days and wanted to respond to a few things.

i think the point i was trying to make about klez in the concert hall went 
completely by the boards in the discussion which followed--

ari writes that brave old world's project is "building on tradition and 
creating something, appropriate to a formal concert hall, that is new", and 
again, to "create music that is appropriate to the formal classical setting 
in the light of what they feel compelled to create as musicians".

joshua responds that this raises the question of who (and with what economic 
interests) decides 'what is appropriate to the concert hall'.

while joshua's point is well taken, the question that i was trying to raise 
was about the value (and effects) of making a klezmer that is "appropriate 
to the concert hall/formal classical setting" in the first place.
     to mildly overstate it:
***why do we want to be in the concert hall, anyway?***

when i talk about classicalization i'm not talking about musical elements so 
much as about the context in which the music is presented, the venues it 
sees as its goal-- the concert hall, the JCC function room, or the dance 
club, to name three.  by me, taking the first two of these (and especially 
the concert hall) as the goals of where klezmer should live is in the 
medium/long-term a recipe for musical disaster and irrelevence, while the 
third holds more promise for the survival of klezmer as a living, evolving 
genre.
    i'm not dismissing brave old world or any other groups's music or 
choices of venue (as everyone seems to agree, variety is good)(and i love 
"beyond the pale", and find michael alpert's rhyming flow on "blood oranges" 
very inspiring in my own attempts to put some breakdancing on the klezmer 
dancefloor), just pointing out what i see as a big-picture problem in the 
state of the 'revival'...

i think i actually agree to some extent with henry sapoznik's assessment, 
though with a different emphasis...
     he writes:
"I think klezmer suffers from both high artification and from the 
promiscuous fusionizers who meld it with music forms they understand far 
better than they do klezmer."
     i can't really argue, henry, if by "klezmer" you mean klezmer as played 
by brandwein, tarras, and the other pre-khurbn luminaries.  but 'promisuous 
fusionizers' are what makes genres evolve, and the ones that don't evolve 
die out quicker.  if "klezmer" can include the music made by kletka red, 
cayuga klezmer revival, and the klezmatics more 'out' moments, rather than 
excluding them from the chosen fold, i can't agree that it's suffering from 
their experimentation.
    the fine and problematic thing (IMperhapsHO)is to make sure that 
evolution keeps a good solid eye on where the music has been, while still 
remaining part of a *living culture* which allows change and development in 
a variety of directions at once.

a last word, i hope.
sholem in gerangl,

daniel

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