Re: Old/New World klezmer

[Sandra Layman <sandralayman...>]

Hi, George,

You did give "Little Blackbird" a spiffy review, and Ari gave me a
whopper -- thanks. :-)

You wrote:
> The question I'm curious about is what has made for the turn to pre-New
> World klezmer, and you certainly seem to have gotten there before anyone
> else I was thinking of.

Well, for me the Old World stuff was (and, really, still is) the starting
point, rather than the other way around.

It helps to remember that I'm a fiddler. The brassy, jazzier "New World"
stuff didn't have the pull for the likes of me that it might have had for a
brass player or even a clarinetist. Not only that, but I had also already
been interested in, and had started playing, Romanian gypsy and Greek fiddle
music, Near Eastern music, etc., and so I was also interested in klezmer in
the context of the music of those parts of the world.

(Right around the general time I got interested in klezmer music, I had the
chance to hang out for a while with lautari from Romania, and with a couple
of great Greek musicians, and soon thereafter also a Lebanese musician, and
later a couple of masters of Turkish classical music...)

But, actually, a number of people were already there playing traditional
klezmer somewhat ahead of me, in the mid-1970s or so. I'm talking about some
of the members of The Klezmorim (yes, you read that right) on the west
coast, as well as Zev Feldman, Andy Statman, Michael Alpert, and others --
including people like fiddler Jamie Morris, who really was the person who
"discovered" violinist Leon Schwartz in Brooklyn. (I keep hoping to persuade
Jamie, who's now in Ann Arbor, to write down that story sometime)... And
around 1980 or 1981 people like Joel Rubin (clarinet) and Lisa Rose (tsimbl
and piano), both then in Portland, Oregon, were also starting to play
klezmer.

There was a lot going on back then (mid- to late 1970s to early 1980s on) in
California and the Pacific Northwest.

It did help some of us tremendously that Prof. Martin Schwartz and his
collection of 78s were in Berkeley. A few of us were lucky enough to hang
out with Marty early on and soak up some of his musical treasures.
Encountering his 78s, especially the klezmer and Greek (Asia
Minor/Smyrneika/rebetika) ones, in the summer of 1978, when I was living in
San Francisco for a few months, was a revelation for me.

Sandra


----- Original Message -----
From: "George Robinson" <grcomm (at) concentric(dot)net>
To: "World music from a Jewish slant" <jewish-music (at) shamash(dot)org>
Sent: Wednesday, September 10, 2003 11:52 PM
Subject: Re: On and off topic: The next computer virus and Old/New World
klezmer


> Point well taken, Sandra. And I gave the CD a very good review, too, if
> memory serves.
>
> The question I'm curious about is what has made for the turn to pre-New
> World klezmer, and you certainly seem to have gotten there before anyone
> else I was thinking of.
>
> So, sports fans, anyone else want to weigh in on this question?
> Or am I going to have to invent stuff if I write this piece?
>
> g
>

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