Re: In defense of the recorder (ammendment)

[Heiko Lehmann <hklehmann...>]

> In a message dated 3/25/00 8:53:56 PM, reyzl (at) flash(dot)net writes:
>
> << These are the same
> people who read Henry Sapoznik's book and just because they read there
> things they have not seen elsewhere, they are convinced that he is a real
> scholar and will even write wonderful reviews of his book.  Ask any Jewish
> music scholar who knows the field and the reviews are consistently,
> devastatingly negative, both the first and second half.  And who the hell
> wants to start pinpointing all the errors, sloppiness, misleading
> statements, etc.?   No list subscriber who is in the know wants to even
> touch that subject on this list, and this is someone who worked at YIVO
and
> had the archive readily open to him.  I will leave this discussion for
> another time.
>   >>

It strikes me that many Jewish music scholars you´d ask about a book on
klezmer music written by any other Jewish music scholar would write
devastatingly negative reviews. What is >>who knows the field<<? Did I
miss the installation of the absolute truth? When´s the movie coming out?
Or, when´s Reyzl´s book on klezmer music coming out, with her truth?
This would be a lot better than putting others´ work down, and it would
actually add something to it.  Henry wrote a very personal book which is
readable and well-researched in terms of
the needs of the book. From the material I know of, it´s the only book which
could draw people to klezmer music, and so far the best one on the market.
It´s written for people, not just for music scholars, and I think that´s
rather an advantage of the book, as well as it was a smart move to write it
from a more personal point of view: you can´t demand perfection if there is
no such thing. It wasn´t hard to figure out that the book will be discussed
controversially, especially since it is (as far as I know) the first book on
the history of the music and its "revival". But it´s not that there was
no time for others to write a book before Henry did it.

Heiko.









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