Re: yale strom

[Ari Davidow <ari...>]

>
>      The larger question I was trying to frame to the list deals with what I
> feel is the misrepresentation of the word Klezmer. I think Zev puts it right
> when he calls it an umbrella. I think it may be in the best interests of the
> musicians to go back to calling the music "playing the Freylakhs." 



I think that Matt makes a very important point here, one that Seth alludes to
in his article, as well. The label "klezmer" is recent. Even more recent is the
notion that the wedding dance repertoire constitutes all, or most of what an
Eastern European Jewish musician might have known or played. A "klezmer" in the
older sense, of a low-caste Jewish musician, played much more. And, as noted in
the Zev Feldman article included in the Slobin collection to which Seth
referred, even beyond the ganze Jewish repertoire, musicians shared tunes with
other cultures, and knew tunes specific to other cultures.

It's a lot like today, where a wedding band will play more than just
freylekhs--perhaps they'll bring in some jazz, or pop or rock, or even Israeli
folk dance melodies. And even their klezmer will be influenced by all of the
above. (You wanna see amalgam? Attend an Orthodox Jewish wedding and feast your
ears on "Yeshivish" ;-).)

I think that Strom has a point to make in the importance of being culturally
grounded in order to make improvisations and changes within the world of Jewish
wedding music in order to change Jewish wedding music (I am deliberately
eschewing the term "klezmer" for the moment.) The same applies to Jewish life
overall--there is nothing so important as becoming better educated Jewishly,
something that for most of us is means starting from something less than zero
(first we must forget the information we know wrong).

But for others, while the klezmer revival was happening and some American Jews
(and yes, I would describe the revival as primarily an American phenomen, as
much as it has spread around the world) were labeling some parts of the
Ashkenazic Jewish wedding tradition "klezmer", the direct descendents of that
tradition--be they they klezmorim such as Moshe Berlin in Israel carrying on
the Meron traditions and mixing in amazing Carlebach melodies (he, himself,
innovating Jewish music and bringing in from the outside), or the move to
electronic keyboards in American Hasidic communities, or the aforementioned
"Yeshivish"--we all busy evolving, and continue to do so, independent of our
decision as to what is "tradition" or not. 

But, of course, for many American Jews, the Klezmer Revival signalled a new
awareness of their own Eastern European Jewish musical culture, and that, too,
is researched, revived, changed in contact with Jewish communities that are
constructing and reconstructing a sense of "Jewish" that is very, very
different from that of 200 years ago. For starters, most of us juggle more
identities than "Jewish"--we are, say, American, with smatterings of religious
influences from around the globe; we are political locally and with regard to
Israel, we are aware of several Jewish cultures, not just one, as we also
juggle StarTrek and Seinfeld and a myriad of professions and sub-cultures.

I think that several of the artists that Seth mentioned belong more to this
latter category--they are not continuing Jewish culture as it was, rather they
are part of the fragmented lives of modern, largely secular Jews--a notion that
is already so significantly different from tradition that it harks back more to
the period after the return from Persia, and the seeds of the split between the
Pharisees and Sadducees and Hellenists and all the rest. It is a dialogue with
modernity that began even before Moses Mendelsohn, and is certainly alive and
well today.

In that sense, Strom's formulation is simplistic and perhaps over-easy to
dismiss, but the point of being grounded is still important. More important,
though, I think, is what Matt is saying about how arbitrary our labeling of
"tradition" is. Jewish tradition, in many ways (halacha aside, and not a
subject of this particular list), =is= change. How else would we be able to go
to a concert by Ha'Breira Ha'tiv'it one night, come home and listen to Adrienne
Cooper or argue klezmer?

My two cents, anyway,
ari



Ari Davidow
ari (at) ivritype(dot)com
list owner, jewish-music (at) shamash(dot)org
the klezmer shack: http://www.klezmershack.com/

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