Re: Shlomo Carlebach/Giora Feidman

[Dawid & Moericke <khupe...>]

Sam wrote:

> My point was that there is something very wrong with bypassing the teaching
> of a lot of repertoire specific to a style and expecting a student to be
> "instantly" creative in that style.  In another age and time such a teacher
> might have been called a charlatan. Nowadays this is not a valid
> indictment, because it is only an example of the fact that in many fields
> of endeavor our society values "empowerment" at least as much as it does
> "achievement."


In the case of Feidman, he has stated repeatedly that klezmer is not even
Jewish music, but an over-all language of the soul that speaks to everybody
and can be spoken by everybody, instantly, solely by empowerment. No
stylistical or technical skills desired.

He also states he was 'fighting the prejudice that klezmer is a music
style'.

So all music that comes from the soul is klezmer. He has also called
Schubert songs and the German national anthem 'klezmer'. (Again, when coming
from the soul, that is. Once your playing gets boring, and you think of the
pay, it instantly stops being klezmer.)

In Germany there is a movement of Feidman followers calling their
klezmer-tinged soul-music 'kli-zemer', referring to the 'vessel of song'
translation. They believe that every music they create, instantly or not, is
klezmer/kli-zemer, if only they feel like a soulful vessel.

Christian Dawid

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