Re: How does being Jewish factor into playing, teaching, or learning klezmer?

[Alex J. Lubet <lubet001...>]

There must be several times as many answers to this question as there are
Jews.  Obviously, everyone's answer is going to be framed by a very individual
experience and history of contacts with others who play the music.  I would be
very circumspect about extrapolating much from any one answer.

I'm quite certain I was recruited to play klezmer not because of any prior
experience playing music--I had none--but because I'm Jewish and had some
experience in liturgical music and in composing art music on Jewish themes.
I'm pretty sure those experiences were an advantage in learning the repertoire,
as I had something in my ears that had a familial relationship to klezmer,
mostly in terms of melody.  I played the music and continue to play other kinds
of Jewish sacred secular music largely out of kinship with and responsibility
to the community.  As someone who has taught music for nearly three decades,
I'd be hard put to say that the purely sonic and technical characteristics of
any music are beyond the reach of anyone who is dedicated to learning it.  On
the other hand, I have a certain connection to Jewish history and culture and
faith and family that provide an attachment and sense of responsibility that
would be difficult for me to impart or transfer to someone with an entirely
different background.

I hope that I never gave anyone sense in prior posts that they ought not be
propagating klezmer in the academy.  I had some pretty unpleasant experiences
with seeing what gets done with musics, Jewish music perhaps foremost among
them, by people without emotional or historical attachments to them to use them
in creative projects in manners I have found insensitive and inappropriate.  A
recent example: a former student who has gone on to form a "Balkan band"
performs Alle Brider.  When he introduces the song and teaches the chorus to
the audience, as so many do, he he refers to it not as non-lexical syllables,
as an ethnomusicologist might, or in some other similarly non-offensive terms,
but as "gibberish."  His entire show is full of similar faux pas's, and not
just about Jews.  His is not the only egregious example, although perhaps the
most offensive.

Some of this may have to do with being situated in the Midwest, but I can't
swear to that, having little basis for comparison.  Mazel tov to everyone out
there doing good work and having happier returns for it than have I.



gang0038 wrote:

> Hello,
> It's time for my last question.  Thanks to everyone who has participated in
> the discussion--it has been a very enlightening, sometimes entertaining
> experience.  This last question is probably the most "loaded," but I would
> love to hear what people have to say about it:
>
> How does being Jewish factor into playing, teaching, or learning klezmer?
>

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