Re: Shtetlization

[ro <ro...>]

Ari Davidow wrote:
> There is more to say, certainly, in response to the very thoughtful comments 
> by George Robinson and David Chevan, but I want some time to think things 
> over. Mostly, I feel very grateful for the comments received so far as they 
> have helped me clarify my own thoughts and helped me clarify what I might 
> have written had I been a better writer and a better thinker. In the 
> meantime, I don't want to cut off any emerging discussion.

Ari, I too enjoyed very much the article and found it thoughtful and thought
provoking, and in the same spirit I'll offer my own critical comment of
one piece that I'll grab here somewhat out of context:

        Indeed, as I type these words it
        occurs to me that just as the klezmer revival
        occurred at a time when what remained of klezmer
        was usually a caricature, and unimaginative, we are
        now in an age when, to the extent that people of
        Jewish extraction are familiar with Jewish prayer, it
        is most often the Debbie Friedman American-folk-derived tunes

I'll come at this from several of my own perspectives, and always
with the disclaimer that I'm no expert on any of this.

Obviously, this is going to represent your reaction to your own
milleu to a large extent.  It's funny when people talk about how
"popular" "klezmer" has become, because anytime I'm in a gathering
of people - especially Jews! - they usually ask me to turn off
that aye-yi-yi stuff.   That's my milleu, at least, outside the
Workmans Circle walls.

But at the same time, when I'm with people from my (Big C Conservative)
synagogue who *do* enjoy the music, I find no one listening to the
Debbie Friedman version of Jewish music.  And on that occaision
out of town when I find myself at a Reform synagogue and they
start in with the guitar and folk song, I frankly cringe inside.

But but but, I finally come around to saying: Baruch Hashem for people
like Debbie Friedman.  I may not care for her take on it, but clearly
it is a voice that speaks to many Jews and speaks to both their heart
and their heads.  I don't know who her audience is, but obviously
she's got one.

Of course, in a previous posting I was putting down Shloimy Dachs
and Suki and Ding and the whole genre I've taken to calling
"frum-pop".  Look, I personally despise the stuff but not for nothing
they are selling records.  (I see Tara calls it "Yeshivish/Orthodox 
Contemporary", which I guess is a lot less loaded than my term).

While Debbie Friedman may not have deep historical roots in the
romanticized shtetl, I believe she is "historically accurate" (not
an argument I'd usual care to be involved in or have any real of
my own authority on it) as an historical reflection of the late
20th century classical Reform movement as evolved in America with
an emphasis on ethics and chesed.  And that her music, and the music of 
others like her if viewed in 120 years might be seen as the true roots
music of whatever that tendency of the Jewish people has evolved into.

I guess the blinding glimpse of the obvious I'm trying to lead myself
around too rather poorly is that since everything "historic" was
once "contemporary", we need to view Jewish musics we are less
drawn to, of more "modern" sensibility, as being historically
rooted and as being the historical roots of the future.  To do
otherwise invests our ego of living in the time we do with too
much importance.

It certainly brings to mind the night I took my father-in-law
to see the Strauss/Waschauer Duo at Tonic.  After the show he
informed me that "that was not klezmer music".  (Neither one
of them played clarinet, you see.  And in HIS mother's house,
klezmer music had clarinets.  But that gets me into my "zaideist
Judaism" jag - what is halachic?  what is traditional?  However 
my zaidie did it is how Jews have done it for THOUSANDS OF YEARS.
Did you know they had Manschevitz Triple Heavy in the First Temple?)

All that being said, Ari, kol kavod! for your article and for the
tremendous job you have done, for no other reason than love of the
music, in organizing the bits and pieces of information floating
around out there about Jewish music as seen through your own
history and time and place.  May you do so for many more years,
and continue to make me think.

roger reid
-- 
r l reid        ro (at) panix(dot)com

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