Re: New Jewish Music

[Ari Davidow <ari...>]

At 11:16 AM 1/3/00 -0500, you wrote:
>
>
>Susan Lerner wrote:
>
>>  So, that leaves me in the minority position; I'll stick with "Klezmer
>> Revival".
>>
>> Shira
>
>Since the Klezmorim made their first recordings c. 1976 -- that's
>one-quarter of a century --  how long can the term "revival" be used?
>
>Wolf

Interesting question. As a movement, the revival is long over.
But if you refer to klezmer recorded today, aside from the very
special tributes such as Margot Leverett's recent album, there
are a plethora of recent musics that are part of what the bands
play, and what informs their playing. So, "klezmer revival" as
a category means, "klezmer, with some Israeli dance tunes and
some Yiddish theatre stuff and perhaps some Yiddish folk tunes,
plus these great rock and jazz riffs that the folks attending
this particular simkha will find familiar and enjoy hearing,"
as opposed, to, say, "early American klezmer". I'm not even
going to touch the european variants on same ;-).

So, there you have it, "klezmer revival," from movement to
record cataloging category. Heh!

And one result of the klezmer revival is that it's given a kick
to help people notice how many, many changing forms of Jewish 
music are out there, including the many Sephardic forms, music
from Bukhara and points east, and a wide variety of Yiddish music
that isn't now, and never was, klezmer. Oh, right, and that 
"Contempory American Jewish" stuff, whatever that is. Further heh!

ari


Ari Davidow
ari (at) ivritype(dot)com
list owner, jewish-music (at) shamash(dot)org
the klezmer shack: http://www.klezmershack.com/

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