Re: Klezmer article in this week's Forward

[Jordan Hirsch <trombaedu...>]

Matt brings up some very good points.
In using the word traditional, we have to be aware that the question
"Whose tradition?" applies all the time.
Having said that, I would suggest that the person to whom Matt refers
was using the word to describe how his instrument would have been used
in a klezmer band where klezmer was an organic part of the society in
which it was played. Klezmer music evoking Klezmer Music  played in
Eastern Euorpe in the late 1800's is traditional because it is the
indiginous music of those for whom it fulfilled a functional role, and
it reflects the music of its society. (A mouthful, but I think you get
my drift).
I also agree that the music needs to grow in all directions.


Jordan Hirsch


Mattflight (at) aol(dot)com wrote:

>      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