Ingemar Johansson Reviews Sapoznik and Rogovoy Klezmer Books

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To the List:

Swedish journalist Ingemar Johansson --currently unsubscribed from the List--
has requested that the following review be posted.

> It will be published (in Swedish) in the forthcoming issues of "Lira" 
> (Sweden's leading folk
> magazine) and "Judisk Krönika" ("The Jewish Chronicle") .

Fraidy Katz


> Quite a different pair of new Klezmer books
>
> In his recent book "Klezmer! ? Jewish Music from Old World to Our World" 
> (Schirmer Books)
> Henry Sapoznik tells a moving story from the days when he was an ardent
> practitioner and researcher of American folk music. This was in 1977 and 
> Sapoznik, by then
> well in his twenties, was stunned when folk fiddler Tommy Jarrell asked him: 
> "Hank, don?t
> your people got none of your own music?"
>
> More or less from that moment on Henry Sapoznik has dedicated much of his 
> vast talents as a
> scholar and a musician to Klezmer, the celebration music of the East European 
> Jews, and he
> has certainly for many years contributed to the new =Yiddishkeyt= ? the 
> renaissance of
> cultural self-esteem among Yiddish-speaking people dispersed everywhere. 
> Klezmer is ripe
> with this language and this culture, profound and easy-going, tragic and 
> playful; an
> invisible blackbird suddenly heard warbling through the traffic-jam.
>
> In the first part of his book Sapoznik, the scholar, guides us on a 
> fascinating tour through
> Klezmer?s history from the early days of Michael Joseph Gusikov, a virtuoso 
> of the
> "shtroyfidl" (a set of diatonically arranged solid wooden tubes placed atop a 
> bed of straw
> and played with small wooden sticks), who toured the Central European 
> metropolises in the
> 1830?s and found an enthusiastic admirer in Felix Mendelssohn, via the early 
> 20th Century
> wedding bands in =di shtetlekh= where the violin gradually was replaced by 
> the clarinet as
> lead instrument, up to the hectic days of Yiddish vaudeville and swing in USA 
> between the
> world wars.
>
> Illustrious episodes from Jewish musical life are legion. In a telling 
> passage on Aaron
> Lebedeff, "Yiddish theater?s Al Jolson", Sapoznik notes that it is "a 
> testament to the
> flexibility of the popular Yiddish milieu that a singer from White Russia 
> with the nickname
> ?der Litvak Komiker? (the Lithuanian Comedian) should become famous for 
> singing a song
> about Romania". This is one of many allusions to the statelessness of 
> Yiddish, "the sole
> language that never has been spoken by men in power" to quote I.B. Singer 
> (although he
> might have forgotten Romani). Sapoznik is never far away from ordinary 
> people; in his
> impressive historical panorama of Klezmer and Yiddish theater he vividly 
> depicts the joys
> and sorrows of everyday life in various Jewish communities.
>
> The second half of "Klezmer!" is more or less an autobiography. Here 
> Sapoznik, the musician,
> gives his personal, highly interesting but probably not indisputable, version 
> of the
> "Klezmer revival". He has been deeply involved as a leader of "Kapelye" and 
> as a founder of
> "Klezkamp". Some personal schisms seem to shine through and some musical 
> evaluations seem
> biased. In the chapter on Mandy Patinkin, grossly overrated in this writer?s 
> eyes and ears,
> we have a curious mix of both tendencies.
>
> Only a few months after its publication, "Klezmer!" was followed by Seth 
> Rogovoy?s "The
> Essential Klezmer" (Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill). The subtitle, "A Music 
> Lover?s Guide to
> Jewish Roots and Soul Music, from the Old World to the Jazz Age to the 
> Downtown
> Avant-Garde", gives us a hint of similarities and differences between these 
> two works.
> Although being a thorough and insightful writer, Rogovoy doesn?t claim 
> expertise where he
> has none. When it comes to complex musical interpretation his angle is that 
> of the amateur,
> in the original sense of this word: "he who loves".
>
> Two decades of Klezmer revival notwithstanding, Rogovoy?s actual discovery of 
> the
> =Ashkenhazi= music was an eye-opener, too. As with Sapoznik it took part when 
> he was a
> mature man. But this was in 1997 and the scene was "The Knitting Factory" in 
> New York City,
> a veritable battleground of the downtown avant-garde evoked by Rogovoy in his
> subtitle. The Klezmatics performed, "but this was no mere concert ? it was a 
> slivovitz ?n?
> rhythm-fueled affirmation of cultural pride, a middle finger raised to the 
> demon of
> assimilation, a shout-out to the world that said: ?Jewish is hip!?."
>
> Soon Rogovoy found out that Klezmer is the Yiddish language in music, and 
> although rich and
> diverse in itself it is, like the language, flexible and open to influences. 
> This, too, is
> the way the Klezmatics play it; well-rooted in tradition they never seem to 
> dread
> experiments and daring excursions. You could say that they showed Rogovoy, 
> the writer and
> listener, his way. It?s certainly important to be well-versed and 
> knowledgeable, but the
> really thrilling things start with the curiosity of the one who loves.
>
> Seth Rogovoy gives a fair exposé of Klezmer?s essential development, but the 
> true strength
> of his book is its open-minded alertness, documented above all in the chapter 
> "Beyond the
> Pale", in which he covers important musicians who, more or less by 
> definition, Sapoznik
> didn?t find room for. It most fittingly breaks loose with Wolf Krakowski who 
> has brought
> Yiddish back to American popular music with his CD "Transmigrations", where 
> he ? wonderfully
> backed up by multi-instrumentalist Jim Armenti and others ? presents East 
> European Jewish
> songs from  the inter-War years (as well as older folk material and a 
> contemporary song) in
> blues- and rock?n?roll-arrangements. It ? as fittingly ? reaches its finale 
> in a long
> essay on the music of John Zorn, the gifted avant-garde jazz man, who dug up 
> his Jewish
> roots and seems dedicated to bring that Jewish generosity, its contents so 
> perfectly
> mirrored in Yiddish and Klezmer, back to the modern world in free forms.
>
> By his own generosity, Rogovoy gives us a comprehensive discography of 
> recorded Klezmer
> available on CD. This concluding chapter has already proved invaluable, much 
> like the
> appendix in Sapoznik?s book on modes and scales. They also highlight the 
> authors? different
> approach to their common subject. Though both books are highly worthwhile it 
> is a bit sad,
> at least for a European, to state that in both of them there is next to 
> nothing about Jewish
> popular music on our continent after the end of World War one. True, Sapoznik 
> mentions
> musical life in Vilna during the Holocaust, but that?s in passing, just like 
> when Rogovoy
> attributes some songs to European composers.
>
> That book definitely remains to be written, but of the existing ones, which 
> one should you
> spend your money on? I would say "Klezmer!" if you are historically inclined, 
> and "The
> Essential Klezmer", if modern music is your main interest. But both are 
> enlightening and
> well-written. It?s a good pair of Klezmer books, these two, although quite 
> different when
> compared to each other.
>
> Ingemar Johansson

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