Re: year's top 10, more or less !!! A VERY LONG RESPONSE!!!

[DAVID CHEVAN <dchevan...>]

This letter is a fairly indirect, EXTREMELY LONG  and rambling response to
Ari Davidow's on- line article, The new romance with "Shtetl".  In so many
ways, I think you will find that I agree with Ari's main points, even if we
diverge in our perceptions of them.  Perhaps it is because I am not just an
active listener to this music, but also perceive myself (at least to some
degree) as an active conversant in the current "musical dialogue" that is
ensuing in the Jewish music world.

First, I want to congratulate Ari on a perceptive and long overdue series of
comments on the state of American Jewish music.  I was provoked by what you
wrote. Provoked in a positive manner.  To be thoroughly honest I would have
liked to have seen my own recent artistic contributions mentioned in your
review, but I have long since worked through those ego problems and would
like to sincerely thank you for addressing the new movement that is afoot in
some artistic circles to include Jewish religious music in our sonic
dialogue.  While there may some sort of movement afoot, I cannot speak for
anyone but myself when it comes to explaining a bit of what I think is going
on.

MEMORIES SERVE AS A CIRCUITOUS COMMENTARY
For those of you who don't know it, I am not a klezmer musician though I
have been performing this music on and off at different times during my
musical career.  I have a distinct memory of hearing New York style Klezmer
at family events during my childhood in the 60s and either not thinking
about it, or just dancing with my family.  Then sometime around 1980 in
between my first and second college experiences, I was visiting my parents
and they took me to the dedication party of the National Yiddish Book Center
in Amherst, MA in its earliest location, an old school building.  There I
was blown away by a small group of musicians whom I can only assume were one
of the earliest formations of the KCB because I seem to recall seeing Don
Byron playing with the group.  "How cool," I thought.

Another memory.  Visiting my grandmother in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, while
she was still well enough to live in her own house.  She moves around the
house singing these endless melodies that are all different but somehow the
same.  I ask her about her singing.  She tells me she doesn't even know
she's doing it.  When I hum a few bars for her she explains it old songs she
learned as a girl in Poland.  But when I ask her about growing up in Poland
she turns dark and begins cursing the Poles (she called them Polacks and
much worse- she never swore around the rest of the family, but for me she
lit into them) and telling me about Pogroms and how she had to leave the old
country.  When I read Ari's words about romancing the shtetl I was reminded
of my grandmother and her survival instincts and that the only time I ever
heard her swear was when I asked her about the old country.

Final Memory
In my third year at music conservatory I am visiting my parents for the High
Holy Days.  We're singing Avinu Malkeinu and the notes all begin to make
sense.  I see the fingerboard of my instrument in my head and how to play
the melody on my bass.  It all makes perfect sense.  I think how much I'd
like to improvise on it.  Then I shake my head out of the dream state and it
takes another 12 years to get back to it.

JEWISH PROVINCIALISM.
I didn't grow up in New York City, I wasn't even born there.  Most of my
formative years were spent in Western Massachusetts far from the central
zones of American Jewish culture.  My Jewish education came from a family
that spent erev Shabbat together, went to services at a Conservative
synagogue that was nearly a half-hour from our house, and the usual two
afternoons a week of Hebrew school and Sunday school.  A year in Israel when
I was twelve was a real mind twister.  For nine months we spent almost every
Saturday morning in Mordechai Kaplan's shul.  The words that were spoken
were intense but All I remember now is the feeling of excitement in the air
and the melodies that were always a part of the service.  Then it was back
to America and bar mitzvah. Show off that I was I memorized and led the
entire service from beginning to end.  Then of course, came the obligatory
USY experiences, (ahh the vaguely nostalgic thought of unfulfilled suburban
Jewish sex).  Shift ahead some ten years and this is all behind me I'm
playing jazz and club gigs to pay my way through grad school.

************************
Q: Why does a nice Jewish boy not from New York play Jewish Music?
A: Mid-life crisis?
A: Must every question be answered with a question?
A: Some things just make sense at a particular time and place.

***********************

PERSONAL HISTORY
1980. I begin a course of studies in the jazz program at UMASS Amherst (the
program is called Afro-American Music). I take a course with Horace Clarence
Boyer on the history of African- American Church music.  I'm at an
impressionable stage of my development.  In class Dr. Boyer says something
to the effect that all great jazz musicians got their start playing in the
church and if you listen carefully, you can hear it in what they play.

1983. I move to Brooklyn, NY to go to grad school.  I try to get substitute
bass gigs in every black church I can.  I also audition for a klezmer band
and am later told I didn't get the gig because my playing is too . . .
"American."

The time frame changes and it is 1996 and I'm playing in a jazz club in New
Haven.  We're playing some incredibly old jazz warhorse, and it's my solo
and I begin to play.  I'm feeling really good and for once my brain doesn't
get in the way of my playing.  First comes a quote from Kol Nidre, then I
begin to play parts of Avinu Malkeinu.  It's an odd sensation because
although I'd dabbled with the Bruch rendition in school, I've never directly
played these tunes at a jazz gig and here they are coming out of my fingers.
I know that whatever I'm doing is making sense to me but I'm worried that
I've let the cat out of the bag, I'm no longer passing for "just a guy",
I've let my Jew flag out again.  I'm certain of one other thing, whatever it
was I just did only barely made sense with the chord changes, but at that
moment of ecstasy I don't really care.

1997. I show up late to a trio jazz gig. My buddy Warren Byrd is already on
stage playing with the drummer.  They're playing a song I know well from my
Brooklyn days, "Soon and Very Soon," by Andrae Crouch.  Having played it a
number of times as a substitute in church I quickly unpack my gear and begin
playing along with Warren and the drummer.  I quickly teach Warren an
arrangement of Eliyahu Hanvi that I've been messing with and we play it.
This represents the first, albeit unofficial, performance of our program of
Jewish and African-American Sacred Music.

PROVINCIALISM, PART II
1999. Warren and I are getting requests to give concerts and performances
all over the Northeast.  Everywhere, it seems, but Manhattan.  Finally, we
get a call from a group in New York City that is interested in us. Most of
our contact is through e-mail.  Early on in the process it is clear that
this group is interested in what we are doing, but not the way we are doing
it.  They ask us if we can do the concert without a piano (our only
requirement) and use a keyboard.  Since we want to play in New York we
agree.  Then, can we provide a singer who can sing the spirituals?  Since we
want to play in New York and we have a close friend who is a singer, we
agree.  Can we put our repertoire aside and only play the pieces that are
arranged for us by a member of their congregation? We hesitate, and then
agree.  Finally, we are told our choice of singer isn't right.  Warren and I
agree that maybe we should stop being so agreeable.

The moment of truth comes when we get an e-mail in which our contact writes:
"All of the suggestions I am making are what I believe would help you catch
on with the New York Jewish Community. I work, live, and worship in that
community, and have been involved with Jewish liturgical music for the past
twenty years. It's your perogative to either listen to my suggestions or
tell me to fuck off. "

We're too polite to tell this person to fuck off but at that point it occurs
to me that New York is just another province amongst provinces and we don't
need to play there if we have to keep changing ourselves to accommodate some
personal or political agenda.

DIRECT RESPONSE
There are those of us in the artistic community who take the idea of
belonging to a community quite seriously.  Making a community active,
vibrant, and meaningful is a long-term commitment and one that is an
evolving process.  My perception of the new nusach composed by such diverse
individuals as Friedman, Taubman,  and Carlebach is that it is also meant to
create community.  Further, that it is part of the evolutionary process that
is Jewish music.  You don't have to listen to it, or love it, but I think
you do need to respect it for what it is trying to do.  Not all of us live
in the heartland of American Jewish cultural and yet all of us, in some way
are yearning to maintain a sense of Jewishness in our lives.  My lifetime
experience of reverse provincialism has created a need to be cautiously - a
relativist.

A few years ago a member of this list described certain groups on the new
klezmer scene as (sorry if I don't get it exactly right) "promiscuous
fusionizers".  Well, hasn't that fusionizing always been the case with
Jewish music?  In my research for the liner notes of "Let Us Break Bread
Together," I found that many of the liturgical melodies I thought were
ancient could be dated and identified.  My sense from reading Idelsohn is
that most Jewish liturgical music has been transformed by the diasporic
experience.  I would caution us to not treat the Cantorial tradition as any
more fixed than the secular Jewish music we are all loving and listening to.

AN EVEN MORE DIRECT RESPONSE
Davidow: "The same people who explored klezmer years ago, are now exploring
deeper, and often holier (holier than making people dance? hmmm. possible
overstatement) sources. But some of that exploration is deeply
conservative--not a pushing of the edges, but a pushing back of edges, a
retreat to a shtetl of the mind."

Once again, I can only speak for myself but perhaps, as was my own case to
some degree many of these people (some of whom I've discovered are exactly
my contemporaries) are hitting an age where musical values needed to be
reexamined.  We cannot only sing of partying, drinking and meeting our
future loved-ones.  At some point we must do more.  When I explore holy
music it is because I am at a time and place in my life where this has
meaning for me.  I know this is also the case for the few Jewish musicians
with whom I have discussed this.  We may be jamming on Avinu Malkeinu, but
it is because we are feeling these pieces as relevant in ways that other
music may not always be capable of containing.

Ari is correct to be concerned and cautious, and critical.  But please
continue to be embracing of this work.  Earlier I kidded that this is a
mid-life crisis.  And that is also not meant as a joke but a perception that
Jewish artists must be expected to grow and change.  Do I want every
synagogue to end up with a klezmer band and a nusach band and a Jewish rock
band?  On some level I am tempted to respond simplistically, Why not? If it
strengthens the community and keeps it thriving it might not be so bad.  But
in truth, there is nothing to fear here. I don't see that happening anytime
soon.

In closing I just want to thank Ari for writing such a provocative piece.
It certainly got me thinking.  I also agree that we are at a time when these
can only be strains of incomplete ideas.  I just hope we'll continue to see
them flourish.  Now, if you'll just click that delete button you can get rid
of this long winded drivel . . .
--David Chevan
<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>
David Chevan, Bassologist
for more info visit my web site located at
 www.chevan.addr.com

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