Manfred Lemm/Daniel Kempin

[Reyzl Kalifowicz-Waletzky <reyzl...>]

Simon,

I did not have time to get involved in the German-Yiddish music discussion 
and wouldn't read any of it for fear of getting involved because I was much 
too busy at the time, but this is an important point.  (I have saved all 
those posts and will read them as soon as I can.)   You may get calls from 
all over the world asking for Lamm's music, but you are not getting these 
calls from people who know Yiddish.   I can't believe that you are taking 
this position on this issue, just because the record sells well for you.  I 
don't take the automatic negative attitude that a German (non-Jewish) 
performer singing Yiddish is automatically inappropriate or problematic.  I 
have heard Germans and other non-Jews sing Yiddish too wonderfully and too 
beatifully to hold such a position.  German Karsten Troyke will be at Tonic 
this Sunday and people will be able to hear themselves to see what I am 
talking about.  There is also one Irish singer in Toronto who Yiddish 
singing is utterly sublime (sorry that I can't remember her name right 
now.)   I never heard Lamm's music directly, but only know it from Kempin's 
UN concert of Lamm's music and the one song Wolf recorded of his, and now 
understand that Lamm is the source of the problem.  But since I am not sure 
where Lamm ends and Daniel Kempin begins, I am going to group these two 
together in my comments.

>However, there have always been comments about the fact that he
>is German and a non-Jew, and therefore he "doesn't understand" the
>music. I DON'T want to get involved in THAT debate, however, I admire
>anyone regardless of their religionor nationality , who is willing to
>record Jewish music knowing the criticism that will follow.
>Maybe THAT'S the reason so many Jewish performers record Christmas music!

I have never heard anyone make negative or positive comments about Lamm, 
but I am not at all surprised to find you write the above.   It very much 
reflects my response as well.   I think the reason why people say that Lamm 
and for sure, Kempin, don't understand the music they are singing is 
because they sing Yiddish with German intonation and rhythms.  They don't 
have a clue about how Yiddish sounds and sways and they don't seem to give 
a damn about it either.  Every song I heard Daniel Kempin sing (and I 
believe that they were all Lamm's compositions) had totally false rhythms 
and intonations to the point that every song was incomprehensible and 
non-sensical, even to a native speaker like me who knows how to fill in the 
spaces.  They have no clue as to how Yiddish phrasing, stress, and syntax 
works and basically work against the natural music of the language in every 
single line.   Phrases are broken apart haphazardly at all kinds of 
unnatural points so that you are left with words strewn in all directions 
on the floor with little sense or logic.   All Yiddish expressions are 
basically destroyed.   For a native Yiddish speaker, listening to these 
guys sing Yiddish is akin to listening to a foreign language in which you 
are trying sort the individual building blocks in the flow of the sentence 
so that you can group them into main ideas and verbs.   More than anything, 
for those who have mastered the rhythm of Yiddish phraseology and 
expressions either by birth or training, listening to them is highly 
irritating and frustrating.   One of the greatest aspects about Gebirtig is 
that his melodies make a perfect fit with the plain-spoken words.  It seems 
that Lamm/Kempin devised a melody for each song and basically squeezed the 
text every which way to fit it without any knowledge of the linguistic 
rules and prohibitions that govern Yiddish sentence structure.  In every 
sentence, you want to stop them two or three times to tell them that they 
are butchering whatever content they are singing about.  When you 
understand that Lamm/Kempin are basically functioning on the opposite end 
of Gebirtig's spectrum of music-lyrics correspondence, while you hear them 
explain to you this very brilliance in Gebirtig, is when you really get 
angry at being subjected to this muck.

These two can "compose" Yiddish music only in a Europe devoid of real 
Yiddish speakers and a world unfamiliar with the spoken language.   People 
who depend on translations to understand the words may like their singing 
or passion, but Yiddish speakers quickly understand that these two "don't 
know the language".  I think it takes a lot of khutspa to compose in a 
language you know nothing about, just because your German allows you to 
understand most of the individual words and the dictionary will explain the 
rest to you.  I don't think that Lamm/Kempin are brave to record the songs 
when they know they will get criticism.  Bravery has nothing to do with it. 
  They simply know that the world in which they perform is so full of 
ignorant listeners that the more knowledgable American or Israeli Jews 
won't make a difference in Germany, Poland, Holland, or Italy.  If you sing 
songs with a passion and an air of authority you can fool enough people to 
become a star on many stages.   In today's world you can get invited to 
perform in all kinds places, because the program directors don't know the 
language, but if they think the music succeeds in a few spots, and if the 
sound is new and different, they think that this may be sufficiently 
avant-guard and innovative that the music will go.   No one wants to appear 
"uncool" and criticize the cool "avant-guard" so they go along with things. 
  Few people know Yiddish music intimately well and they are too few to 
count.   The damn truth is the music is God awful and I don't even know if 
any of it is fixable by someone who does know Yiddish music.

I was absolutely drop-dead ready to collapse when I heard Kempin sing 
Gebirtig songs at a very special reception at the UN about 4-5 years ago. 
  I expressed my criticism to Bret Werb, Kempin and other people very 
directly after the concert.   Just to test the situation, I also asked many 
audience members if they understood the songs or were able to follow the 
music as it was sung.  Indeed, no one else could either, including people 
who understood Yiddish well.   I was even more shocked to find that Bret 
Werb hired Kempin to record a CD for the US Holocaust Museum because Kempin 
was "affordable" to the museum's small budget.  Chane Mlotek nixed the 
recording when asked her opinion of Kempin, but the Museum went ahead with 
it anyway.  This kind of amrotses [ignorance] will go on once there are no 
native Yiddish speakers are alive, but when so many are still around from 
whom to learn the language or at least give an opinion to its 
comprehendiblility or authenticity, this inexecusable.  The only way that I 
can possibly understand why some of these songs sell is because these 
Gebirtig songs are unknown and people hope that they will pick up the texts 
anyway.  They have also heard so much raving about Gebirtig, they may think 
there must be something there even if they don't see it.

I have wondered why no one in the post-War years took on the role of 
writing "Gebirtig" style melodies to his his texts.   Although few people 
know that Gebirtig's original notebook with 200-300 song texts had been 
found, some people did know it.  (I myself did not know this until that 
concert.)  For those who truly and fully undestand Gebirtig's greatness, 
Gebirtig may perhaps be too perfect for anyone to try to mimic him.  But 
the fact is that at the 1998 Klezkamp, there was a memorial program for the 
great, great Hebrew and Yiddish composer Meir Noy (Dov's brother) and there 
we heard and were told that Meir wrote scores of _excellent_  compositions 
in true Gebirtig style to these same Gebirtig songs.   I, in fact, forgot 
about that till tonight and my husband just reminded me of that.   These 
songs should be recorded and disseminated and not the fake Yiddish 
compositions by Lamm and/or Kempin.  It is a shame that few people outside 
Israeli circles know these compositions of Meir Noy.   Since Noy wrote 
literally hundreds of songs throughout his prolific life (the number 400 is 
sticking in my head), getting them all out and recorded has always been a 
challenge in Israel.  I am sure that once these compositions in the 
authentic style will come out, Lamm and Kempin will be a small, strange 
footnote to Yiddish music history.  Lorin Sklamberg sang these songs 
beautifully (as usual) at Klezkamp.  Maybe he can be convinced to record 
them.

Note that I haven't said anything about Lamm's melodies.  Lamm/Kempin's 
melodies may be ok or even wonderful, I really can't say.   One can not 
appreciate melody if the melody is so severally out of sync with the text 
in Kempin's singing.

Ari and Wolf have been after me to write a review of Wolf's record and I 
have been holding back on it not just because I am over my head busy with 
my own work, but because I wanted a chance to hear Lamm directly before 
making this particular criticism about Wolf's using Lamm's song.   I liked 
and appreciated so many things about Wolf's CD, but was very disappointed 
about this one fact, i.e., that he used one of Lamm's songs on it ("Blayb 
gezunt mir Kruke").   The melody of this song is rather good and even 
catchy, but since it also catches itself rhythmically on the words, the 
song stumbles on its face as well.  So the hell with waiting to hear Lamm 
directly in order for me to be 100% accurate to make this particular 
criticism.   98% percent is good enough.   Your comments Simon confirm this 
again.

I think Jews record Christmas music for a whole other reason.


Reyzl Kalifowicz-Waletzky





In a message dated 4/4/0 10:23:13 PM, GRComm (at) concentric(dot)net writes:

<< I'm embarrassed to say I'm not familiar with Lemm. I'd love to know more

about his recordings of Gebirtig.


Manfred Lemm has recorded 3 CDs of consisting of 52 Gebirtig songs.  He has 
also recorded (with an ensemble) a CD of Jewish holiday songs, mostly in
Yiddish and some in Hebrew.

We have carried his CDs for almost 10 years, and I have posted information 
on
Lemm to this list a number of times. We have done very well with his
recordings, and get calls from all over the word for these. However, there
have always been comments about the fact that he is German and a non-Jew, 
and
therefore he "doesn't understand" the music. I DON'T want to get involved 
in
THAT debate, however, I admire anyone regardless of their religionor
nationality , who is willing to record Jewish music knowing the criticism
that will follow.
Maybe THAT'S the reason so many Jewish performers record Christmas music!

For those interested in his recordings, visit our "Manfred Lemm Page" at
http://www.hatikvahmusic.com
Then do a search on "lemm" to see all his recrdings.
Simon
Hatikvah




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