concert review of David Krakauer's Klezmer Madness

[Seth Rogovoy <rogovoy...>]

[We were fortunate to have David Krakauer and his band perform right here in
my hometown last week. Here's the review of the concert I wrote for the
readership of the Berkshire Eagle, a general-interest daily newspaper:]

David Krakauer’s klezmer goes beyond category

by Seth Rogovoy

(GREAT BARRINGTON, Mass., June 3, 2001) –  With the dynamic energy of a rock
band, the improvisational genius of a jazz ensemble, and the virtuosity of a
chamber group, David Krakauer and Klezmer Madness took listeners on a
journey through the deep soul of modern klezmer in the sanctuary of Hevreh
of Southern Berkshire on Saturday night.
        In his work with the Klezmatics and now with Klezmer Madness,
clarinetist/composer Krakauer has been a linchpin of the klezmer
renaissance – a movement which takes the klezmer revival beyond efforts to
reconstruct the music in old arrangements and adds new and sometimes
unexpected elements to the arrangements.
        Thus, “A New Hot One” – the title track to his marvelous new album –
reworked the Naftule Brandwein classic, “Der Heyser Bulgar,” much as a jazz
bebop group would, with Krakauer playing the changes as much as the melody,
and with drummer Kevin Norton, who has worked extensively with Anthony
Braxton, stretching out on a muscular percussion solo.
        Krakauer’s “Klezdrix” – one of several numbers he played from his 
marvelous
new album, “A New Hot One” – combined classic, immigrant-era dance music
with psychedelic blues-rock. Krakauer first played a melody based in the
style of early 20th-century klezmer great Dave Tarras before filtering it
through a sensibility borrowed from Jimi Hendrix, making the music speak
volumes about where the music, its audience and the musician himself have
been.
        This is a tricky proposition, and in the wrong hands it can spell 
musical
doom. But Krakauer is a master of the traditional forms and styles, and even
when he takes the music seemingly as far as it can go, he never loses the
Yiddish tam, or essence, that gives the music the flavor and soul of
klezmer.
        Thus, “Klezmer a la Bechet” was both a tribute to the seminal New 
Orleans
jazz clarinetist Sidney Bechet, as well as a nod to contemporary New Orleans
funk. Indeed, structurally speaking, there was little difference between
what Klezmer Madness did with this number and what any top jam-funk band
does.
        Put another way, one could easily envision Klezmer Madness -- which also
included Mary Ann McSweeney on bass, Rob Curto on accordion, and Kevin O’
Neil, also from Braxton’s group, on guitar -- holding an audience of young
groovesters rapt in astonishment at the band’s hypnotic pulse and virtuosic
soloing. That the music happened to be klezmer was almost beside the point,
which is probably what a critic in last week’s Sunday Times meant when he
referred to Krakauer’s music as “beyond category.”
        Almost beside the point, but not quite, as Krakauer demonstrated in the
second half of his performance, which was mostly rooted in the traditional
wedding repertoire. The group’s medley of Russian shers, or “Jewish square
dances,” as Krakauer called them, was as fine an example of what most people
expect to hear when they hear the term “klezmer” as you’re likely to hear
anywhere.
“Arpeggio,” Krakauer’s version of an old Dave Tarras bulgar which he
delivered in Tarras’s clean, polished style, was the perfect example of the
dualistic aspect of klezmer: happy, upbeat, a little bit manic, combined
with a poignancy, a cutting-edge to the laughter. “Der Gasn Nign,” a street
processional that would have typically been played in the Old Country to
escort the wedding guests to and from the ceremony, built to a frenzy around
a simple melodic figure and a limping, hora beat.
        Krakauer and band mixed things up, however, with a cheeky parody of the
modern bar-mitzvah band repertoire, spinning dizzying versions of the Greek
dance-meets-surf rock hit “Miserlou” and the Israeli folk dance “Mayim.” And
Krakauer’s own “Nine, Nine, Ninety-Nine” laid down a nimble reggae beat
underneath a Hasidic-style melody.
        There is arguably no one today playing klezmer -- or any music, for that
matter --  that is at once as deeply rooted in tradition while at the same
time as utterly innovative and in-the-moment as David Krakauer.

[This column originally appeared in the Berkshire Eagle on June 5, 2001.
Copyright Seth Rogovoy 2001. All rights reserved.]

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