My review of Wolf Krakowski's CD, “Goyrl : Destiny”

[Mordechai Kamel <mkamel...>]

I wrote and sent in a review of Wolf Krakowski's new CD last week, while the
list was down.  I have not seen the review, so I am resubmitting it.  If in
fact the review did appear, then I apologize for the redundancy.

Thanks

Mordi

I have been attracted to Yiddish music since hearing lullabies from my
mother (o. v. shalom).  The Klezmer revival of the 70’s spoke directly to me
and I purchased every piece of Yiddish music I could lay my hands on, from
Mickey Katz and Andy Statman to Klezmer Conservatory Band and Kappelye and
more.  When I bought Seth Rogovoy’s “The Essential Klezmer” about 2 years
ago I looked in the glossary and realized that I already owned 14 of the 20
titles he described as “The Essential Klezmer Library” and “Ten more for
good luck”.



I first encountered Wolf Krakowski in this excellent book.  Rogovoy
described the music on Krakowski’s first album, “Gilgul / Transmigrations”
as “electric shtetl-rock, which as a Yiddish speaking 2G I found off
putting, but he went on conclude his piece by quoting the musician who said,
“I sing through them and those that were silenced sing through me.”  Having
been named for 2 grandfathers murdered in the Shoah and having felt the
weight of “speaking through them and having them speak through me” my whole
life, that statement touched a nerve.  That raw nerve was best described to
me several months ago when I read a piece in the Chronicle of Higher
Education entitled “In the Beginning Was Auschwitz” by Melvin Jules Bukiet.
He made the point in discussing the survivors that their lives went on after
the Shoah.  He states, “In a way, life has been even stranger -- though
infinitely less perilous -- for the children than the parents. If a chasm
opened in the lives of the First Generation, they could nonetheless sigh on
the far side and recall the life Before, but for the Second Generation there
is no Before. In the beginning was Auschwitz.”  This nameless sense of
absence, this yearning for a “Before” had always coloured my life actions
and responses and that was the nerve that this article touched.



Within a few weeks, I had the album.  I was impressed by the treatment that
this obviously native Yiddish speaker put into both the theater songs and
the folk songs, many of which I knew.  The thing that really got to me was
the depth of understanding, pain and anger that he was able to put into the
music and poetry of the victims and survivors like Kaczerginski, Brudno,
Witler, Gebirtig and Perlman.  These were poets and songwriters steeped in
Yiddish whose culture had been burned to the ground around them and who had
found no voice to do them justice until this CD.  The culture that they
represented was “Before” and this CD was not only excellent music, it was an
honest representation of that culture, as touched by its loss.



In the intervening years, I have met and come to know Wolf and see in him
much of my own sadness, anger and “2 G’ness” (whatever that is, I think that
we recognize it in each other when we see it) and it became very clear that
the emotion and depth that he brings to the music is authentic.



I have owned the new Wolf Krakowski CD, “Goyrl : Destiny”  for about 3 weeks
and have listened to it often.  I will make no attempt to address the album
musically other than to say that the quality of musicianship and vocals is
excellent and that I liked the music a lot and found the treatments of the
songs both wonderful and entirely appropriate (but then my mother (o. v.
shalom) used to sing Yiddish folk tunes to a tango beat as well, so it was
not unnatural to hear some of the stylings).  What touched me, and in a way
compelled me to write was, in fact, the rightness and naturalness of the CD.
Krakowski is not only a musician deeply rooted in Yiddish, he understands
the culture we lost in a way that few if any of the other modern Yiddish
singers do.  He sings the folk tunes and theater tunes with an understanding
of “Before” that seems totally natural.  It is important to say at this
point that this is not a dry recycling of prewar material or stylings, but a
complete integration of his Yiddish roots with his North American
upbringing.  His treatment of Doyna is the first that I have heard that
recognizes that this isn’t a little ditty about freedom, but the death trip
of a calf on its way to the slaughterhouse.  When he sings the poem “Tife
Griber, Royter Laym (Deep Pits, Red Clay) by Shmuel Halkin he truly evokes
the loss of the survivor in ways that I have rarely heard in any art form
“Dorten ligen mineh brider,……..(There lie my brothers, torn limb from limb
stabbed in their homes and shot at the pits), and he also manages to evoke
Halkin’s deep albeit sad optimism with “kimmen veln gitteh tsaiten……….” (And
better times will come, pains will get easier to bear and children will grow
again.  Children who will play loudly near the graves of the martyrs.  Near
the deep full pits so that the pain will not overflow.”  His treatment of
the other songs from the Shoah is deep, honest and respectful and reflects
the pain, the suffering and the ongoing belief in survival.



This is a CD that every lover of Yiddish music should have, but from my
perspective, it is a CD that every second-generation person should listen to
and play for their children, because this is a rare authentic representation
of "Before".  To paraphrase Rogovoy: It isn’t too much of a stretch of the
imagination to think that had Eastern European Yiddish civilization
survived, it may have on it’s own produced music remarkably like that found
on Wolf Krakowski’s CD’s.



Mordechai Kamel