Re: Reviews of new Khevrisa, Budowitz

[Ari Davidow <ari...>]

Regarding the quote of Alicia Svigals' remarks from the Budowitz/Khevrisa
review:

'Back in the 1970's, she said, everyone was playing it in a "goofy, kind of 
self-hating" style. '

>I'm less comfortable (despite my early general endorsement) with her remarks
>about the early revivalists.  Is she calling groups such as the Klezmorim
>goofy and (stylistically, at least) self-hating? If so, I don't think that's
>fair.  Some of their schtick I could do without, but they did some important
>work to bring back the music, and they had some appropriate fun with it, no?

I think that Svigals is pointing out that many of the early revival 
performances, and, still the case for some bands today, perform klezmer as 
"shtick", rather than as though the music stands on its own. That was certainly 
true of the Klezmorim, and I would contend applies to some of the early 
recorded material from Kapelye, as well. That is very different from the love 
of the music that inspired learning, playing, and promoting the music by both 
of those bands, and everyone else who went through the effort or researching 
the music, and experienced the vacuum of commercial success (as in, experienced 
no commercial success, yet persevered). I would also disagree that 
"self-hating" is the best term for this (and suspect that Svigals, given a 
chance, would prefer to express the thought differently). Still, it can be hard 
to present music that was learned as "old fashioned", that accompanied ways of 
living that are gone, in a mode that is entirely present. New traditions have 
to be es
tablished; old ones revived, at least to the point of meeting the music.

To my ear, it's easiest to hear on some of the vocals. I don't want to 
embarrass any specific bands, but there are times when Yiddish theatre songs 
will be sung with an affected, vocal "blackface", which I find offensive, but 
some audiences seem to find appealing. It's the difference between performing 
music that stands on its own, and performing music that needs to be set off as 
shtick. Which would fit with the comment with which the Svigals quote is ended, 
"We're not trying to be comedians any more."

But, for goodness sake, the question of how spiritually authentic klezmer 
music, as played today, 20 or 30 years after the klezmer revival, where there 
is a context to hear it on its own terms, and hearing it back then when even 
the simkha context in which it would have been heard was largely gone.... 
Sheesh. I'm not even going to touch the "authentic" part. But, even here, 
audiences are still learning to dance to klezmer music, so things are renewed, 
but maybe there is room for more renewal to come, and not just on the serious 
music side.

In this last generation there is, for instance, the obvious discovery that 
American recordings of Klezmer music weren't the whole klezmer music 
repertoire--especially not much of the stylistic repertoire. There are waves of 
field recordings and research, and a whole generation of people who are 
learning the music as children, from adults who have been playing it all of 
=their= adult lives. Then we have a whole new set of music elders--the German 
Gorenbergs and Majer Bogdanivitchs today, .... Yes, sure. It's quite profound 
to note that this part of Jewish music, like many parts of Jewish music, has 
far more serious and mature sides than were possible 30 years ago.

Sorry. I guess I mean to direct some sarcasm at the article's author, who seems 
to have conflated a large number of concepts, spreading a bit of lashon ha-ra 
in the process.

Sorry to rant for so long,
ari


Ari Davidow
ari (at) ivritype(dot)com
list owner, jewish-music (at) shamash(dot)org
the klezmer shack: http://www.klezmershack.com/

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