klezmer accordion dames

[Joshua Horowitz <horowitz...>]

Since this is relevant to the discussion of women in klez, I excerpted
the portion of my klezmer accordion article (pending publication) which
deals with the phenomenon of women in the scene. The info on the Pincas
sisters comes from Henry Sapoznik's book, and the NYC Musicians
directory from Paul Gifford. 

        One new suffragist development of the new era of klezmer music,
however, is the appearance of women accordionists on the scene. Back in
the 1930s, the Pincus Sisters sang as one of the several harmonizing
sister acts that popped up around the time of the Andrews and Barry
Sisters (eventually called the Bagelman Sisters). Two of the Pincus
Sisters played accordion. An unpublished  photo of a nameless young
woman standing in an angelic white dress next to Dave Tarras on a 1940s
bandstand and one or two female names in the accordion listings of the
New York City Musicians Directory also exist, but aside from that there
is woefully little evidence of female presence among the early players.
Yet if we wanted to fake history in the fashion of (names deleted) in
order to build a case that women led a klezmer concertina craze during
the early years, we could put Eddie Cantor?s post facta lyrics to an
Original Dixieland Jazz Band rendition of Jewish tunes from 1920 to use:
        
        Leena is the queen of Palesteena,
        Just because she plays her concertina.
        She plays it day and night,
        She plays with all her might,
        But how they love her, want more of her....

The growing presence of female accordionists today could also aid us
effortlessly toward entrenching the accordion even deeper into its
definition as a minority within a minority within a minority. Before
this was the case, the first accordionist of the beginning klezmer
?revival? years was none other than Lauren Brody, leading a discipleless
crusade at that time, armed only with a Bell piano model and an
impressive backround of experience in Bulgarian music. Since then, many
other women accordionists have enriched the scene with exceptional
musicality, among them Christina Crowder, Franka Lampe, Kathrin Pfeifer,
Sanne Möricke, and Wendy Morrison, to mention only a few. 

Josh Horowitz

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