klezmer experience

[david lowther <dlowther...>]

This is David, Mary's long suffering and actually jewish (on my mother's side) 
husband.

I don't know if I react to klezmer the way I do because I am a jew, or because 
the spirit of the music itself moves me.  I certainly feel that every time I 
perform I am lighting a candle for those who were taken, against the dark that 
took them.  That being said, I feel it is equally possible for any human being 
to relate to suffering and oppression, and to empathize with our history enough 
to understand what klezmer is about.

To believe otherwise is to say that Stevie Ray Vaughan couldn't play blues 
because he was white.  Them would be fighting words.  

If klezmer existed in isolation, and only for religious purposes, an argument 
could be made that playing it for gentiles was blasphemous.  Fortunately, 
klezmer is for any occasion, and is only one of the many children of asiatic 
and european music, with siblings throughout the Balkans, Asia Minor and 
Iberia.  I submit, therefore, that klezmer in at least partially secular, and 
that any jew may play it at any time they deem appropriate.

It is not proselytizing, it is an affirmation that we are still alive, that our 
culture was not murdered.  Frankly, I would not only play it for messianic 
jews, but (and this is not intended to equate the two) even in front of 
antisemites.  I would dearly love to spend the afterlife forcing Der Heyser 
Bulgar and Der Triska Reb's Nign down dead nazi ear canals.  Bad klezmer, with 
a banjo maybe.

And if that makes me a nasty, mean, spiteful old jew with no yiddischkeit, 
tough tsimmies.

The above should not indicate that I personally would take a gig playing to 
messianic jews.  Probably, I would, and give them Fanny Crosby lyrics in a 
minor key.  The poor deluded schmucks may think they are not jews any more, but 
the proof that they are is that they still think of klezmer as their music.  
Hitler considered Mendelsson a jew despite all of the poor boy's protestations, 
and ordered the gentiles not to listen to it!

Which brings me back to my original point:  we do not alone define ourselves; 
we are defined by others as well.  Many of the millions who were lost did not 
consider themselves to be jews, but that did not make them any less jewish.  
If, indeed, the blood of the jew calls to klezmer, then how can klezmorim not 
respond?

But I agree with the original complaint, that we should not allow ourselves to 
be used against our wishes, and play for propaganda.  Like I said, Fanny Crosby 
wrote lots of neat stuff the christians can use.  Isn't it enough that they 
steal our deity, they have to have our music, too?

Does this mean we can't listen to Mozart's Requiem?