Re: Do we need printed klezmer music?

[TomP317 <TomP317...>]

I think we do too. Remember if you can the arguments about when printing 
actually started. Oh but this is the end of the oral tradition they said; oh 
nobody will remember anything any more.

Well there are perfectly excellent klezmorim of all generations today who 
still don't know the name of the tune they're playing at any given time; 
people who, yeah, might have imbibed it from folk memory, but equally might 
have done that thing we all do when we instinctively know what track's coming 
next on a CD. If you're playing long sets for a wedding over and over again, 
it must feel like you're a disc on repeat mode. My point is that this kind of 
memory can be just as stifling as the printed word.

With printed music at least you can hope for a record of what your tune is, 
and how it evolved. With the improv skills that are innate to this music, it 
would take so much more than writing this music down to set it in stone. It 
would take something bigger even than Disney to do that. So print, I say, 
print; and trust the people already using fake books and Pasternak, who want 
to make it theirs, to keep what you do alive. You needn't be reminded of 
this: but that rejection letter was all bullshit (most rejection letters are).

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