re: Klezmer article in this week's Forward

[Mattflight <Mattflight...>]

     I was in a bar last week talking with another list member, while 
listening to music being played by another list member, when another person 
that we were talking to who had no knowledge of the music asked them how 
their instrument would sound if it was in this ensemble? To which they 
replied that if they are playing more traditional it would sound more like it 
was out of a military band, and if the band was more modern, their would be 
more things the instrument could do. 
     My question, that I didn't ask is what is traditional? We have a hundred 
years of recorded music to look at. Almost every recording is as traditional 
as the next, because recordings document history in a specific time and 
place. Think of recordings as a sound photograph, and you hope that you have 
a good caption to be able to place it in its historical context. 
     
     In the past 30 years their has been a historical music movement in all 
genres. At the core, the "klezmer revival" is on of these historical music 
movements. Of the early bands the one that is most easy to define what it was 
doing is the Klezmer Conservatory Band, and their attempts to recreate the 
big band/theater orchestra sound of the 1920's. The later bands though that I 
want to look at are Budowitz and Khevrisa. These two ensembles fall into the 
period instrument group. They attempt to recreate the sound of a specific 
time and place. (And even though Steve Greenman writes new tunes today, they 
still attempt to recreate this earlier sound.)
     The reason I bring up these two groups   is that I was talking to Yale 
Strom after a screening of one of his movies at the Boston Jewish Film 
Festival this past fall about the last chapter in his book where he talks 
about the "klezmer revival." I asked him what his goal for the chapter was, 
and he seemed to be leaning towards saying that it was about where he thought 
the direction of klezmer music should go.   And he has a direction that he 
thinks the music should be going, and it is possible to see through how uses 
quotes from all over the klezmer spectrum for this goal. He has his specific 
time period that he calls traditional and thinks that the music should push 
down that path of exploration.
     By referring to one time period as traditional, it devalues all other 
time periods. Even if the stand out musicians from other time periods are put 
on pedestals, we don't always look at their entire careers, but very narrow 
time periods. By devaluing parts of the recorded history though we are 
helping the cause of missing buzz words. (To which I in this commentary have 
done, I have used the term Klezmer without giving you my individual 
definition.)
     So to get back to Budowitz and Khevrisa, when I asked Yale what he 
thought about these bands, he was like what are they doing? I responded that 
they are looking over the wall of recorded sound and attempting to recreate 
what came before recordings started. And I came away with the feeling that he 
thought this was a bad use of klezmer scholars time. 
     I disagree, I think that pushing musical scholarship in all directions 
can only add to our knowledge. Hopefully one of these scholars looking at the 
prerecorded time period will be able to write a music theory text that open 
up the key of how to write new tunes without each person having to figure out 
rules on their own.   While others of us can do work looking at what the 
recordings made in this past 100+ years says about music and the Jewish 
community.

     What I think that we need to do is somehow get away from using the term 
klezmer. It is too broad and is doing our listeners a disservice for us to 
continue to us it. Each person will bring their own music history into what 
is "Authentic klezmer," and it isn't the same for each person. If I new a 
good catch phrase I would tell you. But the Jewish musicologists of the first 
half of the 20th century might of had it right calling it Jewish Music. While 
it is more wordy, maybe Eastern European Inspired Jewish Music, with some 
other descriptive terms is a better way of talking about it.
     
     Matt Temkin