Re: "you didn't sing any Ladino songs!"

[r l reid <ro...>]

> >audiences) - and then afterwards, the Sepahrdic teacher, in his late 30s
> >or so, came up to me and said "that was great! But you didn't sing a
> >single Ladino song!"
> 
> It fascinates me the way people associate things. It sounds like the teacher 
> isn't familiar with Ladino and hence associates only those songs that are 
> familiar and have been associated already with "Ladino" as being Ladino 
> songs. But, a Sephardic teacher =is= presumably familiar with Ladino....

Actually, the comment made sense to me, tho it was in error.  When I took
my father in law and his wife - both of whom were raised in America in 
Yiddish speaking households (but for whom English was primary) to a few
shows at Tonic - Jef Warschauer and Deborah Strauss, for example - they
told me it was "interesting but not klezmer".  Because there were no clarinets,
you see.

The tunes that our reporter does not sing because "they're OK, they'll survive"
are probably all our young Sephardic teacher knows.   Perhaps it needs to be
part of the schpil she gives, that she won't be singing "The Greatest 20th
Century Hits of Sephardic Music".  

But it doesn't surprise or fascinate me.  Remember, if you didn't play 
"Tradition!", you didn't play klezmer!


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