Re: music and words

[Ari Davidow <ari...>]

>Ari,
>I would have let it go, but you've repeated this assertion many times
>now:  
>"listeners unfamiliar with Yiddish appeared not to hear it as a Yiddish
>album
>--it sounded like a lovely world folk album." "It" is The Well (or 'di
>krenitse') by 
>Chava Albertstein and the Klezmatics, which appeared a few years ago.
>
>I submit that if one doesn't know Yiddish well, one can't very well judge
>the 
>"Yiddishness" of it, especially not so as to EXCLUDE it from its
>category.

Leo,

I think we are discussing different things. I do not expect someone unfamiliar 
with Yiddishkeit to be familiar with, or to be especially tuned to Yiddish 
signifiers. My comment was meant to point out the difference between the music 
for "The Well" which is not particularly rooted in Yiddish-specific, or 
Jewish-associated Eastern European folk melodies as, say, Josh Waletzky's new 
album, which is absolutely and inesculpably so. In neither case is the pleasure 
for someone not in the Yiddish-speaking community as great as for those who are 
part of the community whence the music sprang.

As I also noted, Yiddish speakers--even partial Yiddish speakers such as 
myself--pick up on the Yiddish signifiers immediately, and don't necessarily 
catch the non-Yiddish signifiers! It reminds me very much of the situation with 
Israeli rock music--I can usually tell, without hearing lyrics, when a rock 
album originated in Israel and has picked up something subtle from that locale. 
But years of  playing Israeli rock for non-Israeli, even non-Hebrew-fluent 
friends has convinced me that I am missing the larger generalities in catching 
the esoterica. Non-Hebrew speakers don't "get" Tammuz, or even Yehuda Poliker.

There's a larger subject here about whether the stereotypic, easily 
recognizable cliches can be replaced by more subtle hints, while absorbing 
broader musical influences and still being true--or truer--to the original 
cultural impulse. In that sense, I'd argue that "The Well" or "Tammuz" both do 
reflect their cultures, and to members of their respective cultural mileus 
could only have come from same. Both are clearly powerful, and relevant 
documents to members of the culture whence they sprang. And I think that you 
are making a similar point. In fact, I think you're going further and pointing 
out that no culture should be bound by the stereotypes of the past--Yiddish 
music, like all music, like life, must be alive and grow and change. Had that 
been the subject I was addressing, I think we would have found agreement much 
sooner. If you have read my writing on the klezmershack, you would know that I 
most value those musicians who move beyond the so-called klezmer tradition as 
recorded during the first decades of the last century of the common era.

In this case, my assertions might have been better focused on the difference 
between music that is easily perceived by people in the culture as being of the 
culture, and music, such as Waletzky's that serves both audiences. It is 
irrelevant to me, as a listener, that "di krenitse", like "ariber di shotns" is 
most accessible to people familiar with Yiddish culture--I am close enough to 
that culture to "get it". But it is noteworthy to me, as a reviewer, that a 
general audience will recognize the roots of "Crossing the Shadows", even 
without understand the lyrics, whereas the general audience will not make that 
connection with "The Well."

My statement about "generic world folk music" has =nothing= to do with the 
value of any works to anyone, or how cultures change. It was a much less 
thoughtful, perhaps too thoughtless comment on what people, not in a given 
culture, hear. 

ari

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