Re: Germans and Klezmer

[Monika Feil <monika.feil...>]

Dear list members,

I want to share my thoughts upon this question with you. I am a non-Jewish 
German

musician, a Yiddish singer and violin player in a German Klezmer band. Two years
ago I wrote an article for a Swiss magazin and there I also mentioned some
thoughts about Germans and Klezmer. I have tried to translate it into English,
hope I didn´t make mistakes that change the sense of what I mean. I added also
some new thoughts.
I think there are not so many bands who fulfill the conditions that I will
describe. Many performances may be awkward and annoying to Jewish ears. I think
there are only a few bands who have a very serious relation to the Jewish
background.
I will not talk about the phenomen of Giora Feidman and his forming of the 
public

opinion here in Germany of what is Klezmer - so that when you play traditional
Klezmer you are told that that´s not real Klezmer and you should listen to some
recordings of Feidman. I also will not talk about the phenomen that he brings
Germans, also that who are born after the war in a condition of feeling guilty
and then is healing them from that guilt. He and his pupils are the gurus and
healers of  the collective guilt. (With that I quote Josh Horowitz.) I think
that´s a secret of their success in Germany.

Now that´s what I wrote in the article plus some additions:

Can musicians who didn´t grow up in the tradition become good Klezmer musicians?
Can gentiles sing Yiddish songs? May just Germans after all what had happened in
the past go on stage with that music? These are questions that I often have been
asked and that I have asked myself time and again. After discussing that a lot
also with Jewish musicians I would answer all three questions with ?yes?, but
with some reservations.I think, a first supposition is the question of
motivation. Comes it from a love to this music and a love to what the music
expresses (what means that the musician must know ? mentally and by heart - 
about

what it expresses)? Comes it from the wish to share this love with others? Then 
I

think there´s nothing to object to that. For me it gets questionable when there
is an attempt to play the music as a reparation and when the motor are feelings
of guilt for what has happened in the past. At that usually these musicians are
born after the war and don´t have personal guilt. (Unnecessary to say that I
think there is a need for us Germans to know about the history, not only the
common facts but also hear about personal fates by talking with people and/or
reading biographies for example.)
You sometimes see gentile musicians dressed on stage like Jews (or what they
think that Jews should be dressed). If non-Jewish Germans think that they could
make good something or express solidarity by playing the role of the victims on
stage then this is again a presumtion, arrogance and violation. Like a good
Jewish friend and musician once said: they make a Disneyland out of a nearly
destroyed culture.
For me it is an important criterion if the musicians have got the soul of the
music, if they have a feeling for the neshome of the music and the culture that
is expressed by the music. A feeling for the neshome also requires knowledge
about and contact with the culture. So if you sing Yiddish songs you have to
really understand the language that you are singing. It´s not enough that there
is a relationship between Yiddish and German and that Germans understand a 
little

Yiddish ? mostly they don´t realize that they understand a lot wrong because 
many

words have different meanings in Yiddish and German. Another point is that in my
ears the neshome gets lost when the language isn´t spoken witout an accent. With
?language? I don´t only mean the Yiddish language but also the musical language.
People who perform Jewish music should try to learn that language as good as
possible, should occupy themselves very intenively with it and should listen
again and again to people who have learned this language as mother tongue. - I
think that has also importance to many Jewish Klezmer musicians as I know that a
lot of them also didn´t grow up with that ?mother tongue?. - The language in the
case of the instrumental music is characterized for example by the kind of
phrasing and ornamentation, the kind of harmonization or - more exactly - the 
use

of the typical modes. Besides studying with good teachers ? who are rare in
Europe ? there is for example the possibility to listen to old recordings.
Who has got the neshome can maybe also go new, modern ways without loosing it
(like bands like Brave Old World or The Klezmatics do). But here in Germany
(maybe not only here) you often have the situation that musicians who label 
their

music as ?Klezmer? go new ways without knowing the roots. The result may be nice
music. But then there is a lack of a pinch of Tam Gan Eydn. If I myself have got
it? In any case the longing for it.


What I want to add is that many German people in the audience have a true open
heart when you as a musician share your love to Klezmer music with them.

Wolf, I also want to add that I really can understand when survivers of the
Holocaust and their children and grandchildren don´t want to listen to 
non-Jewish

German Klezmer bands. There is no need for you to do that.

Monika Feil

Erlangen, Germany

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