Klezmer Revival?

In my last article about the history of klezmer music I dealt with its early development in the United States of America and looked briefly at the lives of Dave Tarras and Naftule Brandwein. In this posting I want to look briefly at the development of klezmer in the later 20th. century and examine a bit more closely some of the artists involved in more recent developments.

Shirim Klezmer

For the sake of convenience we can look at the revival of klezmer as taking place in two distinct stages. The first took place in the United States of America and Europe and it was led mainly by Giora Feidman, Zev Feldman, Andy Statman, The Klezmorim and the Klezmer Conservatory Band. These artists developed their repertoire from earlier recordings and surviving klezmer musicians in the United States. I want to look a bit closer at these artists and groups to place them in their proper context.

Giora Feidman

Giora Feidman was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina on 26th. March, 1936. He is renowned as an Argentinian klezmer music folklorist and clarinetist and he also plays the bass clarinet. His parents immigrated from Argentina to escape persecution as they were Bessarabians. Feidman was born into a family of klezmer musicians, his father, grandfather and great-grandfather were all involved in performing klezmer music for weddings, bar mitzvahs and holiday celebrations in the Jewish ghettos of Eastern Europe.

Giora Fiedman began his musical career as the youngest ever clarinetist to play with the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra. He left this orchestra in the early 1970s to embark on a solo career. He has subsequently performed as a soloist with the Berlin Symphony Orchestra and the Kronos Quartet. He also notably played the clarinet solos for the score to the film Schindler's List, which won an Academy Award. The themes from this film are often featured on radio stations such as Classic FM. He has collaborated and recorded with many musicians including Ariel Ramirez and the Moroccan Ali Hafid. Ariel Ramirez is an Argentinian classical composer, pianist and music director who was very influenced by Argentinian folk music.

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Zev Feldman

Walter Zev Feldman is a leading researcher in both Ottoman Turkish and Jewish music. He is also a versatile performer on the klezmer, dulcimer and cymbal (tsimbi). He has written a book entitled 'Music of the Ottoman Court: Makam, Composition and the Early Ottoman Instrumental Repertoire'. This was first published in Berlin in 1996 and is cuurently being translated into Turkish. He wrote the 'Ottoman Music' and 'Klezmer Music' articles for the New Groves Dictionary of Music and Musicians in 2001 as well as the Turkish, Chaghatay and Turkmen Literature articles for the Encyclopedia Brittanica.

Feldman is a part-time associate professor at Bar-Ilan University in Tel-Aviv and a fellow of the Centre for Jewish Musical Research at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. He worked as co-editor of the Medimuses Project for Modal Music of the Mediterranean for the EnChordais School in Thessalonika, Greece, which was sponsored by the European Union (2002-05). In 2004 Feldman co-direceted the UNESCO application of the Mevlevi Dervishes as a Masterpiece of the Oral and intangible Heritage of Humanity. He more recently co-produced the CD Tanburi Isak with the Bezmara Ensemble of Istanbul for EnChordais. In 2003 he curated the concert series 'The Revival of Klezmer and Yiddish Music' in New York at the CUNY Graduate Centre. He was artistic director of Music and Dance of the Jewish Wedding at the 92nd. Street Y. The following season he served in the same capacity for the Y's titled Shared Sacred Space: Music of the Mystics.

Zev Feldman and Andy Statman

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Andy Statman

Andy Statman on clarinet and guitar

Andy Statman is a notable Klezmer clarinetist and a bluegrass and newgrass mandolinist. He first gained acclaim as a mandolinist in pioneering the blugerass bands Country Cookin' and Breakfast Special. Statman, as a Jew, soon became aware that bluegrass was not really his natural music and so he turned to Klezmer and traditional Jewish music. As he was by now a clarinetist as well as a mandolinist, he became involved in recording various Klezmer albums which became very influential in the Klezmer revival that began in the late 1970s.

Later on, in the 1990's, he started experimenting with Hassidic melodies, fusing bluegrass, klezmer and jazz music very effectively.

Andy Statman was taught to play clarinet by the legendary Klezmer clarinetist Dave Tarras who we considered in my earlier article. Dave Tarras bequeathed his clarinets to Andy Statman and so they obviously had a great rapport as musicians.

The Andy Statman Trio, which includes bassist Jim Whitney and drummer Larry Eagle, plays regularly at Derech Amuno Synagogue in Greenwich Village in New York City.

Although Andy Statman has had a huge influence on the development of both Bluegrass and Klezmer, he has remained a musician of great integrity and tends to remain out of the limelight. Every year he performs in a Klezmer concert series in which he teams up with Itzhak Perlman (of classical violin fame) and other big names in the Klezmer world. He was featured as a guest artist on Bela Fleck and the Flecktones holiday album 'Jingle all the way', released in 2008. Here he played both clarinet and mandolin; the album won the prize for Best Instrumental Album at the 51st. Grammy Awards. He also joined this group in concert on 10th. December, 2008 at the University of Buffalo Centre for the Arts and again on 16th. December, 2008 at Philadelphia's Kimmel Cenre.

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You can find some further interesting details about the Andy Statman Trio at the link provided below.

http://www.indypendent.org/2006/11/02/klezmer-bluegrass-andy-statman/

The Andy Statman Trio

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The Klezmorim

L. to R.: Brian Wishnefsky, Kevin Linscott, John Raskin, David Julian Gray, Lev Liberman.

In 1975 a motley crew of street musicians from Berkeley, California was instrumental in giving a kick start to a worldwide klezmer revival. Their story, as told by their co-founder and saxophone player Lev Liberman, can be found via the following link.

http://klezmo.com/index2.html

David Skuse was the other person who helped found the new group. There are also details of the current band line up and their biographies on this website.

Founded in Berkeley, California in 1975, the Klezmorim origianlly featured strings, notably the virtuoso violin of David Skuse. Skuse left the band in 1977 and it then changed into a brass band led by Lev Liberman's saxophone and David Julian Gray's clarinet (Gray was also a founder member).

They then concentrated on trying to recreate the sounds of the early 20th. century klezmer bands, for which they achieved worldwide acclaim, receiving a Grammy nomination in 1983 and selling out concerts in North America and Europe throughout the 1980s. By 1986 all the original players had left and it was tuba player Donald Thornton, (he joined in 1979), who ensured that the Klezmorim continued to tour under their original name, featuring leading players of the klezmer revival. Lev Liberman took the new line-up on a successful tour of Europe in 2004 and there are continued rumours that they are due to release new recordings.

In my next article I hope to look at the work of the Klezmer Conservatory Band and some of the artists who featured in the second wave of the klezmer music revival. Meanwhile, you might like to listen to some of the artists I have mentioned in this article. You could try Last FM or Spotify who have quite good catalogues of klezmer music.

The Historical Roots of Klezmer

In my last posting I made the admission that I like Klezmer music and gave a brief introduction to what is a vast subject. In the course of my ramblings I mentioned that it was formerly known as Yiddish or Freilach music. Yiddish is the term referring to anything concerned with the culture of Ashkenazic Jewry, as in the Yiddish language and Yiddish literature. The Yiddish language, written in the Hebrew alphabet, became one of the world's most widespread languages, appearing in most countries with a Jewish population by the 19th. century. The earliest known Yiddish literature dates back to 1096, consisting of a list of proper names. A Yiddish rhymed blessing dates back to 1272, and the extensive Camridge Yiddish Codex of 1382 was discovered in Egypt and contains Jewish tales about Abraham, Joseph and Moses.

Freilach is a Yiddish word meaning 'happy' or 'cheerful' and is most commonly used in reference to music. The music to which it usually refers is that which we are investigating, currently known as klezmer.

Does this mean that klezmer is always happy and cheerful? I think it is this characteristic of the music which first caught my attention, however to me it also seems to have a sense of desire, yearning and reaching out for something greater and beyond myself. I believe this gives it a spiritual dimension which becomes more evident with further listening. Owing to the minor and modal variations and often slow tempi which I intend to investigate in a future article, I think it is also sad at times and seems to explore the whole range of emotions we experience, rather like a symphony. It may be more apt to compare each musical entity to a symphonic movement which expresses a particular aspect of life. If you have already listened to some klezmer music as suggested in my earlier posting you will have already experienced your own individual response to what you have heard so far. I assume that, like me, you have been drawn in to the world of klezmer, otherwise you would have probably by now abandoned my blog and looked for other kinds of music!

In essence the roots of klezmer can be seen to go back to Biblical times and follow the development of the Jewish nation. The Old Testament section of the Bible makes a great deal of reference to instrumental, orchestral and group music making, particularly in a liturgical setting as can be seen in Numbers 10:1-2 and Psalm 150. The shofar (ram's horn) and the silver trumpets mentioned in Numbers 10 were used for calling the community together, usually for prayer and worshipping God. In New Testament times, after the destruction of the Second temple in 70AD many rabbis discouraged the use of instruments for musical performance. The need for music did not diminish, however, as some kind of musical performance was required for weddings, bar-mitzvahs and other festive occasions. New musicians emerged to fulfil this need, who were known as the klezmorim. The first klezmer known by name was Yakobius ben Yakobius, a player of the aulos, a wind instrument devised by the Greeks, in Samaria. The earliest written record of the klezorim dates from the 15th. century. The music they played is unlikely to have been recognizable as the klezmer we hear performed today. Contemporary klezmer and its style is more likely to have come from 19th. century Bessarabia and this is where the larger part of today's traditional repertoire was written.

The secular instrumental music performed and used by the klezmorim for weddings and other feasts was based on the devotional vocal music of the synagogue, especially cantorial music, where a solo voice sings, alternating with a full choir. To begin with the klezmorim, like other entertainers, were frowned on by Rabbis because of their secular travelling lifestyle. Klezmorim often teamed up with Roma musicians ('lautan') for performance and they tended to also travel together. They got on well together because they occupied similar positions in society. They therefore also had a great influence on each other musically and linguistically, the extensive klezmer argot in Yiddish borrows parts from the Roma.

Klezmorim were renowned for their musical expertise and wide repertoire but they were not restricted to playing only klezmer. Sometimes they would be requested to play for services at Christian churches and they even gave instructions to Italian classical violin virtuosos. They also performed for local aristocracy who requested their services for special occasions.

As was the case with other professional musicians the klemorim were sometimes stopped from playing by local authorities. Ukranian restrictions lasting until the 19th. century banned them from playing loud instruments. This is partly why they adopted the use of the violin, tsimbl (or cymbalon), and other string instruments which were much quieter.

The first musician to introduce klezmer to European concert audiences was Josef Gusikov, who played a type of xylophone of his own invention, which he called a 'wood and straw instrument'. It was arranged like a cymbalon and received favourable comments from Felix Mendelssohn but was frowned upon by Franz Liszt. Around 1855 the Ukraine at last permitted the performance of louder instruments and subsequently the clarinet started to replace the violin as the instrument of choice. There was also a move towards incorporating brass and percussion instruments into klezmer bands as a result of klezmorim being conscripted into military band

I hope to look at the modern development of klezmer music in my next article. Meanwhile, take a further listen to some klezmer music on Last FM, Spotify or CBS klezmer station. See if you can identify some of the instruments we have already mentioned and then see if there are any others you can add to the list. Also, see if you can identify traces of the influences of cantorial synagogue music and Eastern European gypsy music. There may be other influences and styles you can identify and which you may have heard in other genres.

Enjoy your further listening and please contact me if you have any questions or comments on this article, at my email address below.

erikretallick@yahoo.co.uk