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Two Faces of Klezmer Music
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Jewish Herald Voice, Two Faces of Klezmer Music >>
-by Aaron Howard
The klezmer revival in the late 1970s brought back a genre that was, in essence, Old World Yiddish folk music. Yes, there was an American klezmer that included a significant number of recordings in the 1920s. But as Jewish migration from Europe came to an end because of restrictive U.S. legislation, “no longer was there a fresh supply of greenhorns waxing nostalgic for the sounds of the Old Country,” says Seth Rogovoy, author of “The Essential Klezmer.” As a popular music, klezmer began a long decline from the 1920s on. In the post-World War II period, there still were a few old-timers who could “play Jewish” at weddings and Bar Mitzvahs in the big cities and the Catskills. But by the 1960s, fervently Orthodox communities were the only enclaves where live klezmer music could be heard.
The klezmer revivalists learned their repertoire from old 78-rpm recordings, much the same way that blues revivalists did in the 1950s. It’s fair to say that all of the pioneer klezmer revival recordings (and performances) were examples of learning the genre and defining the basic styles of the music.
The basic problem with reviving any musical genre is: How do you take something from the past and, instead of merely recreating it, make an authentic, creative statement in your own voice? Two clarinetists, Andy Statman and David Krakauer, represent two creative responses to the issue of authenticity.
Statman became an observant Jew. He reconnects klezmer to what he describes as the music’s deepest roots in Hasidic niggunim. Statman’s approach, similar to that of a traditional hazzan, is to work within a standard text and time-honored figures and scales. Individuality is expressed by using these figures and scales to improvise spontaneously ornamental melodies – all of this in the service of prayer to God.
Krakauer fuses the rhythms and tempos of funk with the melodies and inflections of klezmer. His approach is to imagine klezmer figures and scales put to service as dance music. While klezmer does have roots in religious music, the other face of klezmer was as music that accompanied weddings and other celebrations – music to which people danced.
Two recent klezmer CDs prove that both approaches can be correct. Andy Statman’s “Awakening From Above” (Shefa) is Statman’s most realized Hassidic klezmer work. To use “Yedid Nefesh/My Beloved,” the opening song on the CD, as an example: played without accompaniment, Statman’s clarinet attempts to reach “an intelligent silence,” a level in which the melody expresses the holy spark of the music. This is a refined approach to music. The object is to purify a song, to remove its “animal properties.” It is, in effect, a recreation of the melody to conform to Hasidic principles. It is an approach toward which Statman consciously has worked for at least the past decade. Judging from his “Awakening From Above” CD, Statman has reached that level.
In contrast, Krakauer’s “Bubbe–meises” (Label Bleu) is full of animal properties. To use one track on the CD, “Moskovitz And Loops of It” as an example: The clarinet is set against a snaking percussive bottom. Krakauer uses the clarinet’s high notes to create an ecstatic explosion. Krakauer once described his music as a counterpoint to “beating on the table while singing Hasidic niggunim. When you really get going with a lot of people around the table, it can seem like everyone is trying to hold the table down while it tries to levitate into the air,” he said. It’s that hypnotic state of ecstasy that Krakauer tries to produce.
As on most of Krakauer’s CD releases, there are experimental tracks here like “Bus Number 9999” that do not work on any level. But that’s the price one pays when listening to someone who pushes as hard as Krakauer does. Seth Rogovoy once described Krakauer as “the embodiment of that old Yehuda Amichai poem about a life force that can no longer be contained, gushing out beyond the sheaves that mark the edge of his kibbutz’s fields” – a fitting and accurate description!
12/14/06 >> go there
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