Re: Meaning of "Klezmer"

[Joshua Horowitz <horowitz...>]

> If I understand your thoughts, you are saying "I am immersed in the musical
> world of a past generation and entranced by it, but I am not a 19th century
> immigrant and my own sensibilities and humor ultimately takes the music in
> another direction."  Or maybe, "I am doing my own riff on the old groove, but
> out of love and respect for the masters."  Or maybe just, "I want to create
> another time and place for modern ears, but the best way to do that isn't by
> trying to be a tintype of my ancestors but by running it through my own
> imagination."  Do I read you? Lori in Chicago

Pretty much all of the above. I didn't mean to rail on anyone
personally, but sometimes it feels as though the *developers* in this
scene are desparately clinging to the anachronism of defining their
music as *Jewish* when the characteristics, aesthetics, sensibilities
and function of the terms they are clinging to were thrown out with the
bath water. It's like saying, I'm going to develop ancient Greek by
spicing it up with a bit of Latin here, a smattering of French, and a
large portion of Spanish. What your left with no longer has the vestiges
of your nominal language, so why call it Greek? Not to mention that the
basis for an audience's being able to understand the new concotion is
familiarity with all the languages equally. Just rename it and get on
with your life. It's a
case of eating and wanting the cake too. Musical developments in this
century have happened rapidly and on a molecular level. I hate to say
that we have entered a *new age* but at the same time can't help seeing
that our old definitions of this or that just don't apply anymore. If
something deviates from its source so much that the source is
unrecognizable, its time to redefine it completely. In the end, it would
be great if we could do without labels, but apparently there is a
function and a need to name things...

On a personal level, I feel that there ARE developments which are
possible within the very delicate boundaries of the musical language we
call klezmer. There are modulations which the *masters* didn't explore,
there are fills and endings, nuances, phrasings etc which can be fresh.
You can set up expectations with motives and still shock people with a
left turn if they are following you, etc, etc. But these developments
fall within the realm of *personal style*. In my opinion, when you
relinquish or burst the stylistic boundaries of your music, you are in
effect giving up a certain amount of your musical personality. This is
the opposite of what it seems. You might say that combining Salsa with
Irish with Greek with klezmer is so new that you achieve a new high
profile personality through doing it. If there is no fixed strata of
style upon which you make your own statement, too many juxtapositions
make minestrone out of a celery soup. But add a bit of nutmeg to the
celery soup and nothing more, and you have your own personal statement.
I don't live out my need for total personal creativity in klezmer music.
I compose also, and my experience as a klezmer musician has virtually no
part in that. It's just too banal compositionally to try to integrate
klezmer music into modern compositions. Bartok did a fantastic job at
integrating Hungarian and Romanian folk music into his personal
compositional style. But attempts to do that today always seem to me to
be very old-fashioned, no matter how seemingly modern. It's the ACT
itself which seems outdated, not to mention the results. The aesthetic
is obsolete. Josh

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