Klezmer in the Orthodox Community (was: Decline and Fall of Clarinet Empire (was Re: women musicians)

[Sapoznik <Sapoznik...>]

In a message dated 2/28/01 11:29:12 PM, GRComm (at) concentric(dot)net writes:

<< An ancillary question, perhaps even more elusive to answer; why is
klezmer fading out in the Ortho community? >>

It's not fading. It's faded.  Long faded. If by the "Ortho" community you 
mean "Hasidic" it's been a good 35 years since you heard real deep dish 
klezmer like a Rudy Tepel and the Epsteins on their bandstands. Dave Tarras 
stopped playing for them in the early 60s because their parties would go on 
all night and even though Pete Sokolow is still doing occasional gigs with 
Neginah et al, there's no klezmer of any sort on those bandstands. It's been 
a good 15 years since there's even been a clarinet on NY Hasidic  bandstands 
and now even the saxes (mostly alto) which replaced them are starting to 
become rare. Andy Statman had tried playing clarinet on Hasidic gigs for a 
while but  he even he couldn't them to accept it back on the bandstand, let 
alone any "klezmer". 
If however, you mean Young Israel type Modern Orthodox, then the presence of 
what we would consider klezmer in that community is gone, gone gone even 
longer than in the Hasidic world. 


Henry Sapoznik
Founder/Director "KlezKamp: The Yiddish Folk Arts Program"
Author  "Klezmer! Jewish Music From Old World to Our World" (Schirmer Books)
Winner 2000 ASCAP-Deems Taylor Award for Excellence in Music Scholarship











---------------------- jewish-music (at) shamash(dot)org ---------------------+