Re: Germans and Klezmer

[Kame'a Media <media...>]

Leopold Friedman wrote:

> Khevre,
> There are two comparisons relating to Germans and
> other non-Jews participating in the Jewish musical
> world that may be helpful.
>
> One is a comparison to "Whites playing the blues."
> There are some White performers who've done their
> preparation (frequently with Black teachers), who are
> faithful to that heritage, and who acknowledge their
> sources. One can often tell that it's not Black
> people singing/playing, but it's good, sometimes
> great, and honest music.
>
> The other is a comparison to the American fascination
> with Native American culture decades after the people
> who sustained that culture were decimated by European
> American racism. This is "necrophilia" just like what
> Wolf was pointing out.
>
> I respect musicians, whether strangers in their own
> culture or friendly outsiders, who approach the Jewish
> culture underlying Jewish music with respect and who
> make the efforts to learn about it before they begin
> performing for anyone. I resent and could do without
> the others.
>
> Lee Friedman
>

Regarding "whites playing the blues":
the first white men to adapt and play the blues as a means of
self-expression
(outside of a purely show-business context)
were "trans-cultural" people.  That is, they shared the same environment,

often laborting under the same brutal share-cropping system as their
Black neighbors.
They worshipped the same Diety, spoke the same language and even ate the
same
food.  Early white bluesmen such as Jimmie Rogers and Hank Williams (to
name two
of the most prominent) both acknowledged their Black teachers.
Later bluesmen such as Johnny Winter and Stevie Ray Vaughan honed
their craft  playing for both Black and White audiences throughout the
South.
Northerners like Michael Bloomfield and Paul Butterfield apprenticed in
Black Chicago blues bars, before coming into prominence in the folk
scene.
Members of the Rolling Stones and Led Zeppelin (and countless other
British bands)
learned from touring American Black blues artists.

None of the above can be said  to apply to Germans in relation to klezmer
music.
Their relationship to the music is "disembodied" and  academic; therefore
the term
"necrophilia" (fascination with the dead) is valid.

Most post-War Germans have never had any contact with Jewish people,
whatsoever.
I shouldn't have to tell you why.

Wolf


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