Re: promiscuous fusionizers

[Kame'a Media <media...>]

Thanks to Jordan and Jeffrey for their cogent and
even-handed comments on the promiscuous fusioneering topic.

With some Jew, you can never be =frum= enough.
With others , you can never have enough=gelt=.

And with others still, --should you sing or play Yiddish music--
your Yiddish is never good enough (even if it is native -- because it is not the
listener's dialect or the one they think they remember <bubbe> speaking) and the
+ta'am+ ("feel", "taste") of the playing =feylt epis=(there is something
lacking).

Many Ashkenazi Jewish people, in my perception, due to both generational
neuroses and collective trauma have a weird proprietary relationship to the
Yiddish language and ( for purposes of this discussion) it's expression in
music/song.

I have concluded that this feeling of almost "owning"  the language is bound up
with cherished childhood memories and of course, with the six million.
When these people come to  a Yiddish musical event (should they deign to attend)
they are, of course, hyper-critical.  Add individual personality traits of
bitterness and vengefulness, and you have an idea of the attitude some folks
bring to a simple concert.  And, should they consider themselves scholars  to
boot, there will never be any pleasing them.

When they are served up Yiddish, they want it their way.
Spiced just so, as in the meatloaf that was used as an analogy earlier.
{The recipe may be the same, but there's stuff in the meat -- you don't want to
know -- that wasn't there in =bubbe's=  day).  So it's gonna taste/sound
different anyways, no matter what.  Changes in  the instruments , amplification,
improvisation  and venues all come into play.}

I sometimes wonder, except for the old timers who may have seen
Witler in Lodz or Schwartz in NY -- who in today's audiences ever even saw a
"real" Yiddish artist in their own element,  so that he/she could at least have
some sensible and reality-based criteria by which to judge?




Wolf Krakowski

Kame'a Media
http://www.kamea.com






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