Re: Meaning of "Klezmer"

[Joshua Horowitz <horowitz...>]

> >1) Preservationist/European (e.g., Brave Old World, Perlman)
> 
> As far as I'm aware, there are very few groups trying to *preserve* the old
> European sound (as in the Historically Informed/Early Music sense). I would
> include groups like Joshua Horowitz's Budowitz and Di Naye Kapelye.

I think I'll go onto the defensive on this one, and rather than respond
to the whole theme, will just do it on the basis of my response to what
was just written:

I always thought there were two ways to bring about innovation- the
first was to do something entirely new with no thought toward lineage or
continuity- pure invention, which of course never exists without some
continuity with what came before it, but can always be attempted; The
second was to go back to a different starting point, far enough in the
past to enable the development to be fresh again. I chose the latter in
my projects with klezmer music. I figured there were no precedents in
dealing with historical instruments in an old klezmer style  -  while
modern instruments were indeed well represented among the menagerie of
modern ensembles. To do something really new meant doing something
really old. I can?t say that my efforts have been a success from the
vantage point of the listener. You need an audience familiar with the
nuances of history and post modern methods of reconstruction, and the
modern audience in general takes what it?s given at face value. If it
hears an old instrument playing an old style in a new way, all it hears
is the old playing the old. Who wants to be bothered with the practical
applications of spiral historical reconstruction. 

Since the idea of reconstruction in the early music movement does not
emphasize the idea of development and renewal from a certain point of
history forward toward a direction history DID NOT TAKE at the time, the
audience expects the same methodology from folk music efforts. Therefore
they are not prepared for the completely different method of historical
renewal which is specific to the type of renewal Budowitz has been
attempting. In other words you can create new developments by going back
in time and starting from any point but developing toward a different
point than where history actually brought us. This idea of time is like
a road map. Imagine travelling one route from Minsk to New York in 1835.
All the things you would see that would influence the creation of your
solutions to problems would create what was typical to the 19th century.
Now if you could go back again to Minsk again to the year 1835,  take
the same journey BUT WITH THE ROUTES WHICH EXIST TODAY to New York, your
solutions would be different, even if your journey would be the same,
and they would have a connection to the same undertaking by virtue of
being the same journey. This H.G. Wellian musical time travelling
interested me much more than the idea of of starting from New York and
going forward, only to end up in New York again at the end of the
journey. Not least of all because I find the idea of utilizing any form
of primitivism (the term commonly used to refer to any reworking of
older styles in a modern context) to be completely exhausted in the 20th
century. And to be honest, none of the developments in klezmer music
from Zorn to anywhere else even come close to the intellectual
experiments which this century has already seen in this area in my
opinion. That doesn't mean that I think no wonderful music is being
made, but as soon as anyone starts in on the "new this and radical that"
they should at least get themselves familiar wih the streams of
direction this century has already scavenged, chewed on, digested and
spit out by mid-century. Nothing short of pissing on your audience from
the roof of the ticket booth or broadcasting simultaneously an
interactive program from  Turkmenistan to Port Townsend is worthy of
being called "new" if we want to massage our egos with platitudes. 

It's only the pretentiousnous of believing that one's efforts are
icoloclastic and the need for this that gets on my nerves. Kinda reminds
me of a friend who called me at 3:30 a.m. and exclaimed that he had
found an unbelievable modulational relationship on his electric guitar -
that if you modulated from C major to E major and repeated it from E you
would get to G# then come back to C again magically! What can you say?
That Wagner did it in Tristan und Isolde already and Coltrane thought it
was a revelation a century later when he penned Giant Steps?? Why is it
so important to be new?

I?ve often thought that if the world were really modern, and we really
acted upon the fact that time is relative, we would stop dealing with
time as though it were linear, tempocentric, with one epicentrum, from
which all developments in music emanate. If the modern klezmer world is
really so modern as it thinks, why hasn?t it graduated at least to a
historical perception of time which is congruous with our time, in which
time is relative. That would mean everyone begins from his or her own
point of time wouldn't it? 

I do suffer from the same sickness, to confess here. The industry
demands it. We as musicians demand it. But to return to the original
thought I had...Di Naye kapelye doesn't seek to preserve anything.
Neither does Budowitz in its truest eforts. The main generating
aesthetic motor of Bob Cohen is to redefine klezmer to include the
Transylvanian Mezoszeg style. His efforts are based upon his tastes and
his contacts, and the desire to Judaize what he feels the group Muzsikas
has failed in doing. Budowitz hopes to do something new in terms of
repertoire, style, instrumention and genre. That we are all doomed to
failure is a given. Nothing is new under the sun. And when I see how
important attitude is over music, I'm not even that sure it's even that
fun trying. Sorry for the pessimism. Bad mood. Worse weather. Josh

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