Kanada's Klezmer King

[Ed Sieb <esieb...>]

Montreal Gazette  |   Sunday » August 24 » 2003
http://www.canada.com/montreal/montrealgazette/story.asp?id=390F8EDF-ECE1-46
8B-9C7C-360BE704D47C

Kanada's Klezmer King

Traditional Jewish music from eastern Europe is being taken to new
places by young klezmer stars such as Montreal's Josh Dolgin.
Some purists don't want to go there

ILAN SARAGOSTI
Freelance

Sunday, August 24, 2003

PHOTO: CREDIT: MARIE-FRANCE COALLIER, THE GAZETTE
Josh Dolgin, a hot young Montreal accordion player, conducts workshops at
the klezmer camp in the Laurentians.

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PHOTO: CREDIT: MARIE-FRANCE COALLIER, THE GAZETTE
German Goldenshteyn plays clarinet while the camp's program director,
Michael Alpert, gives pointers.
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PHOTO: CREDIT: MARIE-FRANCE COALLIER, THE GAZETTE
Most of the leading musicians in the world came to instruct and jam at
KlezKanada.
Musicians are in workshops during the day and perform in jam sessions during
the evening.
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Dorval airport on a mid-summer's afternoon is alive with the competing
noises of modernity - cars, buses, cell phones and, of course, planes. But
on this sweltering August day, live music from a bygone era cuts stubbornly
through the cacophony.

The tunes are klezmer, 1,000-year-old eastern European Jewish music, and the
four musicians playing them are waiting to be taken by bus to KlezKanada,
the eighth annual klezmer retreat in Lantier, at picturesque Camp B'nai
Brith in the Laurentians north of Ste. Agathe.

The scene encapsulates the klezmer movement's preoccupation with trying to
bridge the present with the past. Which is why it is surprising the new
golden child of klezmer, 26-year-old Montrealer Josh Dolgin, is modernizing
the genre to the point some are arguing it can no longer be classified as
klezmer.

The music, mainly uptempo and happy, was traditionally played at weddings.
Clarinet accordion and violin are the usual the instruments, although
klezmer can include other strings and even brass.

In Lantier, while the 400-odd participants arrive before dusk and
immediately begin spontaneous jam sessions throughout the camp, Dolgin only
makes it there by midnight. Apparently, this is par for the course.

"Typical Dolgin," laughs one woman when she spots him lugging his
instruments to his cabin.

When Dolgin finally gets to the camp's epicentre, the travel-weary crowd
renews its buzz, with pre-eminent klezmerites going out of their way to
greet him enthusiastically.

It is easy to see why a cult of personality has developed around Dolgin. He
exudes a persona - seemingly part genuine, part cultivated - that has all
the elements of the classic mad artistic genius.

His manner is unpredictable, and wittily eccentric, yet is soft around the
edges, giving the shtick an unquestionable charm.

When one woman approaches him with arms extended for a hug, Dolgin pulls
back saying "Careful, I'm not used to hugs; I live alone in a dark
basement."

He ends the comment with an ironic smile, and the woman takes it all in good
fun.

Physically, Dolgin also strikes a memorable pose: deep sunken eyes, deadly
pale skin, unfashionably hip clothes, and a wild black "Jewfro," as he
refers to his hair, that is a cross between The Simpson's character Sideshow
Bob and Arnold Horshack, from Welcome Back Kotter.

But the main reason Dolgin's peers hold him in such high regard is he has
innovated klezmer beyond the previous frontiers, and achieved remarkable
success in the process. Dolgin, under the DJ name "SoCalled," has spun a new
musical genre: Hip-hop klezmer.

Using samples from hip-hop tunes and old klezmer recordings, he put out a
full-length CD this year, called Hiphop Khasane. The record has had massive
success in Europe, reaching No. 8 last month on European world music charts,
and being singled out as a top pick by the British world music magazine
Songlines.

"It's totally unexpected," says Dolgin, "I was just doing it for myself in
my basement and the next thing I know I'm playing a sold-out show in Krakow
in front of 10,000 people with David Krakauer."

David Krakauer is a breakthrough klezmer artist with a large following of
jazz fans in Europe and New York. He heard some early attempts at hip-hop
klezmer at KlezKanada last year and immediately approached Dolgin about
recording together.

In a CBC radio documentary, Krakauer was quoted as having said, "When I
heard [Dolgin's hip-hop klezmer] I was completely blown away. And I thought
this is a place I want to be musically, it's the next logical step."

Dolgin wrote one track on Krakauer's award-winning CD The Twelve Tribes, and
a live version of their joint concert in Poland is due out later this year.

But being a medium that looks back in time for its inspiration, there are
predictably traditionalists who are not enamoured of the mutation klezmer
has taken in Dolgin's hands; some of them are on the KlezKanada faculty.

"Josh has fun with the hip-hop, and he's very clever," says Elaine
Hoffman-Watts, a 71-year-old drummer who is a fifth-generation klezmer
player and a revered figure in the movement. "But that's not klezmer; that's
not how my father taught it to me."

Dolgin retorts he has utmost respect for the klezmer tradition. He plays
accordion with the Montreal traditional klezmer band Shtreiml, and has mined
the klezmer archives to come up with the most authentic klezmer riffs.

"You hear that sample, that's Aaron Lebedef, a Yiddish theatre star from the
'20s and '30s; that's a typical Bulgar drum beat," says Dolgin while giving
a demonstration in hip-hop klezmer.

"I'm an unabashed sentimentalist. I think in so many cases they just don't
make things like they used to."

A big boost of legitimacy comes from KlezKanada co-program director Michael
Alpert, a seminal figure in the klezmer Revival of the 1970s, who performed
on the Hiphop Khasane CD.

"Klezmer, and Yiddish culture in general, have always been about borrowing
something from the dominant culture while holding onto other things that are
Jewish," Alpert says. "It was a very pluralistic culture and what we're
seeing with the mutation klezmer is going through today is just a
continuation of that."

But while he welcomes modern innovations to klezmer, Alpert believes it is
the music's link to the past that continues to attract young Jews, such as
Dolgin, to the movement.

"It's clear that because of the Holocaust, assimilation, and
suburbanization, North American Ashkenazi Jews (Jews of eastern European
descent) have lost a great deal of our culture," Alpert says.

"People are always hungry for spiritual substance and often connecting to
one's past fills that void."

Alpert believes it is no coincidence KlezKanada has taken shape in Montreal,
where the once burgeoning eastern European Jewish community continues to
decline rapidly. While Montreal continues to show strength in terms of
maintaining traditions, the 2001 census reveals the Jewish community is
dwindling in numbers - with a decline of eight per cent since 1991 - growing
older, and taking on a more North African flavour.

Add in the mass exodus from the traditional Jewish neighbourhoods around The
Main, to suburbs such as Côte St. Luc and the West Island, and you have
pretty much the annihilation of the Montreal Jewish community popularized by
Mordecai Richler.

This is largely what first inspired KlezKanada founder and chairperson Hy
Goldman, and continues to drive him today.

"Montreal Jews now live in enclaves that really have no historical relevance
to them," Goldman says.

"I think the younger generation wants and needs a connection to their past,
and we're trying to provide that through music."

How fitting that Dolgin's performance at KlezKanada brings to a head the
difficulty in bridging the old and the new.

With a large ensemble on stage with him, Dolgin kneels down and begins
spinning heavy beats through his sampling system.

The sound engineer keeps the levels too low, however, and despite Dolgin's
mad gesturing to pump up the volume, the band has trouble hearing the beats.

Murphy's Law then sets in: The drummer fails to keep time; the trumpeter
chimes in awkwardly, and is overlapped by the harmonica player.
Nevertheless, they receive enthusiastic applause from the audience.

Dolgin simply looks at the crowd, shrugs his shoulders, and walks off stage.

© Copyright  2003 Montreal Gazette








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