Re: "Klezmer" review in NR

[TomP317 <TomP317...>]

I've been lucky. My first attempt to post this didn't work out, which means 
I've had a chance to reconsider what I wrote and look at the texts involved 
in the discussion.

I was agreeing with those who wrote saying that Ruth R. Wisse's piece 
assessing 'Klezmer!...' in the New Republic was fair comment. I hadn't read 
it then, but I still think they're right now that I have. My job is to help 
edit book reviews, and we're always delighted when someone files an article 
that strongly sustains debate. It is certainly true that Henry deserves huge 
bundles of credit for being the first one to produce a book dedicated to 
Klezmer; but that makes it all the more necessary for a reviewer to consider 
matters like its timing, and its cultural significance.

That said, I should like to defend 'Klezmer!...' in the debate. 

I think Ruth R. Wisse did indeed give the book a good amount of space, and 
did see the wider picture. Henry has a section in which he pursues a metaphor 
comparing different exponents of the klezmer revival to different strands of 
Judaism itself (in which, broadly, Kapelye, the KCB, Klezmorim and Andy 
Statman appear as 'orthodox', the Klezmatics as 'reform' - see Sapoznik p247 
ff for fuller discussion); and the metaphor helped me both ways, telling 
someone new to the subject not only about the roles of different musicians 
but also about perceptions of Judaism. Given this vision, the reviewer was, I 
think, right to take this further.

It was good too that she reviewed the other books, on theatre; but a shame 
that this led her to concentrate more on the theatrical part of 'Klezmer!...' 
which serve her argument a bit better than do some of the later sections of 
the book. It's a shame too that in reviewing, there's a kind of convention 
that the reviewer has to be right. Imagine if instead of writing, 'He 
[Sapoznik] does not see that the true Jewish counterculture in America has 
always been Judaism itself', Wisse had written, 'He does not agree with me 
that the true etc....'

Me, I find myself the kind of soul who could stand accused of the charge 
levelled at the author of 'Klezmer!...', and fall for the argument that music 
can indeed sustain a whole identity. I near the end of my overlong posting by 
clinging to my cherished but still half-read copy of Idelsohn's 'Jewish 
Music', quoting him quoting J. G. Frazer:

'The musician has done his part well as the prophet and the thinker in the 
making of religion. Every faith has its appropriate music, and the difference 
between the creeds might almost be expressed in musical notation...' 
(Idelsohn, p195; Frazer, 'Golden Bough' part IV, pp 53-54).

The argument can be stretched perhaps too far (I think Idelsohn speaks less 
highly of gypsy music than he might, for example); but if what Henry's saying 
is that music can sustain a whole identity, and that it is 'as valuable as 
every other part' of his tradition, then

a) Ruth R. Wisse seems to think theatre similarly valuable (and why not?) and

b) hey, why not?

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