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A Great Way to Keep Smiling in a Difficult Time by: Mark LeVine on January 22nd, 2010
Beyond the Pale
[Editor's Note: We are delighted to welcome Mark LeVine, Tikkun's longest serving contributing editor, to Tikkun Daily. Mark wears at least two hats and another one apart from musician is political prof and Middle East expert. His latest post at tikkun.org is "No Hope for Haiti" Without Justice."] If the end of 2009 is any indication, 2010 is going to be a difficult year. Whether it’s the economy, foreign policy or just political and cultural pulse of America more broadly, a host of problems confronts our society from the political leadership to the average citizen that hardly anyone knows how or even wants to deal with honestly. We need inspiration, and few things inspire people to action better than music. For my money, one of the best albums to get your year going in a positive way has to be Postcards, the latest release of the internationally acclaimed Klezmer/world music ensemble, Beyond the Pale. Based in Toronto, Beyond the Pale’s sound is a paradox — acoustic yet explosive, grounded in Klezmer yet swimming in Balkan and bluegrass elements, with forays into everything from reggae to funk. With its blend of innovative original compositions with classics of the world music repertoire that group is surely one of the most accomplished ensembles on the world music scene today. It’s not surprising that Beyond the Pale hails from Toronto. The city has a strong Jewish presence, which has been joined in recent decades by a major influx of immigrants from around the world, making Toronto one of the most cosmopolitan and culturally diverse in the world. Eric Stein, the multi-instrumentalist (mandolin, bass, cimbalom, guitar) founder of Beyond the Pale and a leading figure in Toronto’s Jewish music scene, explains that the city and the Jewish music scene there lend themselves to opening up to other cultures, which is reflected in the group’s name. “‘Beyond the Pale’ obviously refers to the Pale of Settlement, but that’s the start, not the end of the musical journey we’re on.” Indeed, while Klezmer is the foundation for the music, the majority of the band is not Jewish, but instead hails from a diverse background, particularly the former Yugoslavia. “Toronto has been an amazing place to develop our music. It’s one of the only places where a band of such eclectic makeup could come together and do what it does because of all the different musical traditions and the freedom and openness that our cultural environment in Toronto facilitates.” Postcards, released on the prestigious Borealis label, is the group’s first CD since its award winning live album, Consensus. The first thing that strikes you upon hearing the album is how Klezmer music, like Yiddish as a language and culture, lies at the nexus of other music/cultural idioms. It’s hard to decide how to classify songs like the opening track, “Magura,” as well as “Katarina” and “Anthem” and “Turkish Delight.” There are clear Klezmer elements, but calling the music Klezmer would in fact be quite limiting, as the music constantly branches out into other idioms, only to return before you can get settled. One of my favorite tracks is “Split Decision,” which feels as if the band couldn’t decide on whether it was a funk, Roma or Klezmer inspired groove and in a Solomonic decision decided to let each member play it his way, resulting in a blend that is at once funky, Jewish and Gypsy in a modern sense. There is also no shortage of the kind of easy virtuosity that has from the start been associated with the band, as in songs like “Postscript” and Extra Spicy, and accordion-clarinet conversations (“Dutchmandu”) that will warm the heart of the most jaded Klezmerhead. As someone who has spent most of my life playing the music of “others,” particularly black Americans and the peoples of the Muslim world, the role of Klezmer in a band most of whose members don’t come from a Jewish cultural milieu was particularly interesting, especially when traditionally Klezmer has not had the kind of non-Jewish musical following that other genres of world music have had. But this situation has changed in recent years. As Stein explains, “I know lots of non-Jewish musicians playing Klezmer. You don’t have to be Jewish to appreciate Klezmer and develop skill in playing it. You just have to listen and be respectful of the tradition. I think it’s only Jews themselves that make hay about non-Jews playing ‘their’ music. But, really, there’s only two kinds of music: good and bad! “But what is most important is that while we play a lot of Klezmer music and borrow extensively from it, we also try to transcend it. In fact, we can flip the question: We have 3 Serbians in the band and their musical traditions are a strong influence in the band. While the non-Serbs in the group are not nearly as well-versed in Serbian music as those guys, we can still capture as a group the feeling of Serbian and Balkan music. Each musician brings something unique and in doing so informs the others as to how to incorporate musical elements that some members may be more well-versed in than others outside of this band. Ultimately, everybody brings something unique.” Listening to the album it seems clear that Klezmer is fragmenting into a host of sub-genres; so many that in Stein’s view the term has “lost its meaning in some ways.” While there are many traditionalists that uphold the “pure” version of the genre, the continued vitality clearly owes to all the younger generations of artists taking it up and translating into new idioms. “The two sides balance each other,” Stein explains, highlighting the necessity of both paths continuing. And in fact, the very process is leading to a fascinating but potentially troubling phenomenon, whereby the constant fusion of so many styles is creating a kind of “meta world music” in which many varying traditions are converging. Stein sees this in the music of artists such as David Grisman and Bela Fleck. “Their point of departure differs from ours but the end result is not dissimilar: new and challenging acoustic music that is based in folk traditions but hard to categorize because it borrows from so many global influences.” It’s as if all these artists, in traveling so far from their roots, are meeting at the same crossroads. But where to turn from here? The new CD is in many ways a logical next step of evolution for the band-not radically different in approach from their previous work, but more honed and rooted while also exploring new territory. It feels more eclectic but in a mature way that moves beyond stretching musically just for the sake of experimentation and more towards a deeper level of integration. Perhaps that’s the common future of world music as the current generation of artists reaches artistic and chronological “middle age” and can combine their comfort with working in a variety of genres with the deep reservoir of experience that only comes with years on the road and in the studio. For Beyond the Pale that maturity is also reflected in the addition of virtuoso violinist Aleksandar Gajic to the line-up and the use of multi-track rather than live (all-at-once) recording, which has allowed the arrangements to thicken, with multiple violin and other instrumental parts creating a fuller soundscape for the music. Growing up in New York, Klezmer seemed to be of two kinds: there was the traditional Klezmer which was concentrated among the city’s Hassidic communities in Brooklyn, and there was the “downtown”/”Upper West Side” Klezmer which was much less traditional, more eclectic and bringing together artists from a variety of other genres, including jazz and various forms of “world music.” Groups such as the Klezmatics emblemized not merely the public rebirth of the genre but a very specific type of progressive Jewish politics-one historically tied to the once vibrant socialist trends within New York Yiddish cultural politics-as band members were visible members of the peace camp and other Left-wing Jewish causes. This commitment spilled over into the music, as evidenced by the incorporation of Arabic/Islamic musical themes into the music and even collaboration with leading Arab artists such as Simon Shaheen. Perhaps because they come from a very different cultural milieu than New York Beyond the Pale does not wear the band members’ politics on their sleeves. “One of the nice things about this band is how immune we seem to be from political and cultural shifts,” Stein responded when I asked him about the role of politics in the band’s music. “What we do seems to have a universal appeal that isn’t affected by upheaval around us. Maybe that’s a beautiful thing — music serving as a constant when so much of the world is in flux around us.” At first such an apolitical attitude-music for music’s sake, hold the political overtones, particularly surrounding Israel/Palestine-hit me as almost sacrilegious coming from a Klezmer world-music artist. But then I recalled that the Yiddish culture that Klezmer represents was never focused on Israel and in fact in many ways represented its antithesis: an open, plural and joyful identity rooted in Diasporic cosmopolitanism rather than exclusivist Jewish nationalism. And besides, with American politics-domestic as well as international-increasingly poisoned and vitriol-filled, producing joyful music that brings people together, uplifts their spirits is, and maybe gives them the space to recharge their spiritual and political batteries might turn out to be one of the best musical gifts of 2010. Whatever your political or musical inclinations, Beyond the Pale should be on your must-listen-to list for the new year.A Great Way to Keep Smiling in a Difficult Time 01/22/10 >> go there
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