Re: Old/New World klezmer

[r l reid <ro...>]

I'm just a baby with this stuff, and have no deep insights.

But I know I started in with "Jewish music" because I like music and
a Jewish home should be filled with Jewish music and art etc.

I wanted to play with others so took a toaster-piano to one of Jeff
Warshauer's workshops.  I enjoyed the music, but when he started pulling
out older stuff with tsimbls and fiddles or flutes I went kind of nuts - 
I had not heard it and was wild about it.

So now I play tsimbl and like to duet with flutes, fiddles, hurdy-gurdys,
and (sensitive) clarinet players.

Oddly, in a previous life I had persued Scottish music as 
played on Cape Breton.  I did not have much use for Scottish music in general
till I heard the preserved old sound (before the church ladies niced it up)
in that isolated (until recently) Scottish diaspora.  Flipped me out,
tho I'm afraid it's all passed by now.  

I also did a fair amount of composition in extended just intonation on 
plucked and struck string instruments.  I guess I just love that sound
of a noise impulse that decays unevenly accross the spectrum until what
started out random becomes almost pure sine wave just before becoming
quiet.

Abuse of strings under extreme tension seems to be the common thread - 
and staying away from instruments that may throw us too deeply into
modenr intonation and therefore the need for extended harmonies.

It's just what gets my juices flowing, it's what makes me WANT to practice.
Still, it's not all about reproduction.  Late at night I like to just improvise
on the tsimbl in ways that sound very old and very new.  But I definatly 
think of myself as one who loves the old style and doesn't have much 
interest in the jazz influence. 

-- 
r l reid        ro (at) rreid(dot)net


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