Re: promiscuous fusionizers

[Susan Lerner <meydele...>]

At 04:01 PM 12/8/99 -0500, Wolf wrote:
>Musicians will, if given the chance, make the music that is meaningful to 
>them.
>The audience owes it to themselves to stretch their awareness constantly.
>
>Arts programmers need to have the vision and courage to present artists 
>that are
>not standard fare.
>
>For Jewish and Yiddish musical culture to matter and flourish, the traditional
>must be balanced out by the contemporary.

As usual, I agree with Wolf completely.  Nothing is more deadly than a 
concert of "old"  shmaltz performed unchanged over a 30 year period.  It 
can be wonderful to see an older audience warmed by the sounds of their 
youth, but you won't see many young faces there.  From a promoter's point 
of view, that audience has a limited financial potential (let's face it - 
they are mostly on limited incomes, don't expect to pay much for Yiddish 
events and are sadly dwindling in numbers).


On 12/9 Matt wrote:
>  Last summer at the Klezkanada concert, we were treated to traditional
     American klez, modern broadway tunes, Russian revolutionary songs, a
>  concerto for mandolin and orchestra, 19th c. klez reconstructed, and
Hassidic nigunim. The latter, by the way, got booed off stage, much to my
shock, presumably by people who had come to hear the traditional American
klez style.

Could this be a secular/religious split?

I think the category is a bit odd. Who would ever speak of a category like
"Songs in English and instrumental music written by people who speak
English"? Maybe it's because there are so few people who are actually
involved in Yiddish culture, and because we have such a short period of
history in which the musical part of the culture was recorded, that this
happens,

Hankus and Bert may recall a conference held at USC on "Polish Music" which 
had this same rag-bag quality.  Everything from Chopin and his imitators to 
Polish-Jewish music, to film scores.  If you love a culture and its music 
and feel that it is  not understood in the US, then you end up with 
concerts which are amalgamations.  What about what is termed "Balkan 
Music,"  which can be yet another mish-mash of styles.  I have always loved 
the KlezKanada big concert because it shows the range and versatility of 
the music which is performed and created under the rubric "Yiddish".  I am 
usually bored by the "headliner" but relish the opportunity to have a broad 
audience exposed to material they otherwise might not hear (because it may 
be unfamiliar or new).  I find that audience members often surprise me in 
appreciating more unusual material than might be expected if it is 
presented in the correct context.

On 12/10 Skip Heller wrote:
What matters is whether the resulting music is any good or not as music 
that communicates
itself.

A sheynem dank, khaver!  Now we are at last at the crux of the matter.   I 
guess I would add, for the purposes of this discussion, not only 
communicates itself but also some aspect of its relation to the Jewish 
experience.

As to the discussion of the term klezmer and the way it has been 
"elasticized, "  I'm not too concerned.  We may not be able to agree on a 
definition, but I think there is a critical mass of people who can 
differentiate between "sounds real klezmer", "sorta klezmer"  to "not 
really klezmer", if my 'teen classes struggling to answer the question What 
Is Jewish Music? are any indication.  Yep, I'm actually (and here I blush) 
falling back on "I don't know what it is but I know it when I hear 
it."  And that I think may have a lot to do with what is or isn't a popular 
seller for Simon.  Here I think I start to repeat the discussion of this 
past summer about how to educate/please audiences.  Genug.

Shira Lerner


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