FW: promiscuous fusionizers

[Reyzl Kalifowicz-Waletzky <reyzl...>]

I didn't send this out yesterday afternoon because my computer crashed 
every time I tried to answer a message.  Since my computer seems finally to 
be back to normal today (Netscape is still in tatters), I will finally send 
this out.


Wednesday, December 8.


Wolf,

My e-mail program has crashed 6 times today and 75 times since Sunday and I 
am truly feeling ill from sheer frustration, but here goes.  I have somehow 
withstood 15 minutes of no crashes....

What does "creative non-conformism" with an expression of "a lot of 
personal and contemporary style" have to do with what was talked about 
here?

I don't think that it is fair to describe those who play traditional 
klezmer music as those who come from "an expected position based on 
archived yiddishkayt-in-a-box nostalgia or novelty".   The field is not 
limited to two modes.  Nostalgia to Yiddish is not found in this present 
generation of klezmer musicians because they have not come from "the old 
country" or lived through the twenties and thirties in America to be 
nostalgic about.   I haven't seen any contemporary klezmer do a "nostalgia" 
show.   Well, if they do that if and when they come into an old age home I 
don't know about it.   But it is a nostalgia is not what they are 
experiencing.   I don't quite know what you mean by "Yiddishkayt in a box 
novelty", but I won't ask.

I don't think that there is anything wrong with fusion and I was not 
speaking against fusion.   There is a place for traditional music; there is 
a place for the authentic  Yiddish or klezmer music; there is a place for 
old material in a new bottle; and there is a place for fusion of old Jewish 
and a non-Jewish style.   They can all co-exist happily side by side.   The 
results of fusion are often truly wondrous and transcendent and I am not 
one to invalidate this important technique.   The problem is that there is 
fusion and there is fusion.   So much of what is touted today as great in 
klezmer music has very little to do with klezmer music.   Putting in a line 
or two of klezmer doesn't make for a successful fusion.   The point that 
was being made in the thread was that so much of today's fusionists produce 
what they produce because they don't really know the klezmer or Jewish or 
Yiddish music.  They may have reduced the whole style to two or three 
elements and thereby think that they have mastered the style.   When the 
general audience doesn't know any better, they get away with that.  There 
are people however, who have attempted to meld two distinct styles 
successfully, because they know both intimately well and kept the balance 
between two distinct traditions.   I have listened to my husband Josh's 
fabulous Jazz rendition of a Yiddish folk song "Afn yam veyet a vintele" (I 
was so astounded at such melding on my first hearing of the song that I 
fell in love with him on the spot - so don't tell me I am against fusion). 
 Eve Monzingo at Klezkanada '98 did a most, most fabulous meld, actually 
more of an intertwining of two _whole_ styles - klezmer and Jazz in a song 
I wish I could remember it's name (I think it's on one of her records). 
  American Yiddish swing music, or at least, what has survived of it, was a 
highly successful fusion, but we should remember that we probably today 
hear the best examples of that today.   There are too many examples of 
successful fusion to cite, including Yiddish and pop music, Argentinian 
tangoes, etc.   I think you blended Yiddish songs and rock in a wonderful 
way in your Transmigrations albums which was fresh, sassy and invigorating, 
i.e., your version of "tsen brider", and the review of album that I wrote 
for Ari's web site and I wish I could find, clearly says so.   But we can 
not say this about all the music that is being done today.

This post came in the context of a discussion of the Ashkenaz Festival. 
 The Ashkenaz Orchestra Project, "the musical centerpiece of the festival" 
as it was called with "twenty of the brightest lights of the international 
Jewish music scene... dedicated to the performance of new Yiddish music" 
and where most of the music was _commissioned_ for that Friday night 
performance was a God-awful failed experiment, in my humble opinion.   To 
my great surprise, the music of the guy who organized it, David Buchbinder, 
was the best and most successful of the whole lot.   Everybody else seemed 
to want to be so novel, they fell off the map in their experimentalism. 
  The whole thing was an ego trip of who could be more novel and obvious, 
but it had little to do with real music.  Making a lot of noise is not 
music or novel.  On the other hand the band from Buenos Aires, "Klezmer en 
Buenos Aires" did traditional Yiddish songs in a wonderful, wonderful new 
way/sound/phrasing/instrumentation and it was absolutely ethereal.  It was 
a totally personal approach to traditional Yiddish music that could not go 
under any particular category that I am familiar with.  The audience went 
wild for them and they deserved every clap.

>In my experience, the word "promiscuous" is usually trotted out by the 
envious
>and the vengeful in an attempt to besmirch somebody's character because 
they
>are perceived as having too much or the wrong kind of close interpersonal
>contact.
>I don't like it.

I don't think that that is at all correct, but you often like to give this 
rationalization for various criticisms.

For many musicians and listeners, the goal is to capture and reproduce the 
authenticity of a traditional style that is absent in one's environment and 
if that is your goal, then your standards are very distinct.   I personally 
come from that point of view and that is why I studied Jewish folklore. 
 There is nothing wrong with wanting to modernize an old style, but as 
Henry wrote very well again is, you have to know the rules before you break 
them.   These guys took a quick lesson and thought they got it all in a 
quickie Klezkamp course or by listening to 10 records.  Es makht zikh nisht 
azoy gikh [=it doesn't happen so fast.]   Or maybe the whole problem at 
that Friday night Ashkenaz concert was that New Jazz and klezmer just can 
not be mixed.  It is possible.

Elliot wrote:
>But, I would also issue a word of caution by reiterating the words,
>"organic fusion." One should be fully immersed in both (or more) styles
>that one hopes to fuse, otherwise you may produce something that deserves
>what an old composition professor of mine used to call "the eclectic 
chair."

Exactly.   That's another very good analogy.  There is too much eclectic 
klezmer going on, IMHO.   And some of the musicians are angry because the 
audiences don't take to it and they can't quite get why.

>Please, -- Kabalas, Alan Eder/Pesach Posse, Klezperanto, Neshama, et al.,
>keep making more great, original and  "promiscuous" music

Sorry, Wolf, I haven't heard any of these.

I don't know why you so often take comments as if they were personal 
affront to your music.  They weren't that at all.   All I can say is I wish 
there would have been more rocker-Yiddish blends that recorded their music. 
  I know of people having done some of that in the sixties and seventies in 
camps such as Boiberik and Camp Hemshekh, but none of those are recorded. 
  You probably need to sit and squeeze Josh, Zalmen, maybe Steve Meed and 
Moyshe Rosenfeld to elicit some to those.   You seem to be the only one out 
there these days.  If there are others, I really would like to know.


Reyzl



> Henry Sapoznik wrote:
>
> >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.
> >IMnotsoHO...
>
> Very well said and right on target.   "Promiscuous fusionizers"

H-mm.  So the creative non-conformist who expresses him/herself witha lot 
of
personal and contemporary style, and not from an expected  position based 
on
archived yiddishkayt-in-a-box nostalgia or novelty, is now musically 
immoral,
too?  Interesting concept.

In my experience, the word "promiscuous" is usually trotted out by the 
envious
and the vengeful in an attempt to besmirch somebody's character because 
they
are perceived as having too much or the wrong kind of close interpersonal
contact.
I don't like it.

Please, -- Kabalas, Alan Eder/Pesach Posse, Klezperanto, Neshama, et al.,
keep making more great, original and  "promiscuous" music.

Remember to practice safe sax.

Wolf Krakowski


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



> - I really
> like that phrase very much.   They are the ones filling up most of the
> concert halls, because where else can such artifice go today?   I can say
> that very little of it is really creative and I have been to the last
> Ashkenaz Festival where some of the best of that was presented.   (There
> was one moment [in the concert of all new compositions] where the noisy
> jazz in the all new compositions program was so annoying that I truly 
felt
> like throwing a Molotov Cocktail just to stop that pure noise.  I soon
> found out that many others were equally annoyed.)  There are reasons why
> opera companies know that they can present the same operas year after 
year,
> and theaters succeed in showing revivals and mothers keep on baking the
> same meatloaf for generations or people continue listening to the same
> classical musical repertory.   When people have refined a grammatical 
form
> to become a classics in that genre, they respect and cherich it.
>
> Reyzl
>
> ----------
> From:  ganzl azoi freyl [SMTP:d6l (at) hotmail(dot)com]
> Sent:  Wednesday, October 13, 1999 12:27 PM
> To:  World music from a Jewish slant
> Subject:  re: klez go classical
>
> i'm flattered to be described as "difficult to keep on a leash" <smile>
> and 'course i don't mind being shredded and reassembled, but i would 
prefer
> my tangents and asides be less central to your response, josh...
>
> my basic point (as distinctly opposed to your 'socratic summary') has
> always
> been about *emphasis*, not exclusion (the first time "banning" anything
> came
> up in this thread was when you put it in my mouth--please take it right
> back
> out, 'kay?).  i'm in no way opposed to sitting in a concert hall 
listening
> to klezmer (or tuvan 'throat singing' or stravinski for that matter). 
 what
> i see as potentially dangerous is the concert hall becoming the *only* or
> *primary* site for klezmer music.
>       the 'change and development' in music which i've said is necessary
> can
> happen in any context.... *but* when it mainly happens in concert halls 
it
> seems to me far more likely to lose its connections to other parts of the
> culture it's rooted in than when the experimentation is happening in a
> variety of venues (among which the concert hall should of course be
> present,
> but not dominant).
>
> incidentally, you imply that there's a contradiction between dancing to  
 and
> listening to music.  if anything, i'd want to argue that the opposite is
> true-- you just *can't* dance without paying serious attention to the
> musicians; it's easy to sit and drift...  it's also worth mentioning that
> venues with space to dance tend also to accomodate those who just want to
> sit, while concert halls tend to frown upon dancing (with some
> exceptions--the 'in the fiddler's house' tour being the first to occur to
> me).
>
> finally, it seems more than a bit disingenuous to describe "listening" in
> the concert-hall sense as part of the traditional wedding context of
> klezmer.  then again, it seems thoroughly unnecessary to appeal to that
> context to establish something as worthwhile for klezmer in 1999 (yes, i 
do
> think that concert-hall type listening is worthwhile)
>    --unless, that is, you want to insist that all klezmer contexts should
> include dancing, wine, and a rabbi (which is probably closer to my 
position
> <wink>)--
>
> that's it for me....
> ideologically yours,
> zayt gezunt,
>
> daniel
>
> p.s. "hidden agenda"?  what's *hidden*?
>
> p.p.s.
> for reference, snipped for concision--
> josh wrote:
>
> >That "variety of directions" excludes the classical venue, seemingly
> >because it doesn't allow for you to breakdance and also because it
> >encourages the act of listening (in your former email, you refer to 
>this
> >as the "sit-in-yer-seat experience").
> >
> >In spite of the fact that listening was a part of the original context
> (the
> >wedding) in which klezmer music developed, and represents a further
> >possibility for "change and development," it >is banned from your list 
of
> >outlets which allow klezmer music to >evolve.
> >
> >Rather than antithesize the contradictions in your argument, I would
> >rather manipulate them into a synthesized Socratic summary, using
>
> >In spite of actually sympathizing with some of your sentiments, Dan,
> >it's hard to resist uncovering a hidden agenda in your ideology. Josh
>
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