Posted on 08/29/2004 4:44:46 AM PDT by Pharmboy
For example, one of the best klezmer musicians in the US is an African American named Don Byron (he plays more than just klezmer).
If you want to hear an example of klezmer click here, then when at the site click on the following three examples: frailach.mid, sherele.mid and yid.mid. I have searched the web and these are the best midis around.
I thought this was pretty interesting. And, AFAIC, one cannot have enough klezmer in their life..
It's interesting (as the article notes) that klezmer was never a German-Jewish phenomenon, but much more Eastern European. The German Jews were always more interested in Beethoven and Bach.
Mickey Hart's father was a famous Klezmer musician. Benny Goodman played it when he was young. I bet he played plenty of weddings, bar mitzvah's.
I love "Heavy Shtetl" music
I suspect if Israel disappeared in a puff of smoke, they'd find a need to rid the world of each and every Jew. They are smart and work hard. Hmmm, who else does that remind you of? Americans!
I enjoy Klezmer, myself. I recommend the group Boiled in Lead.
Hasidic New Wave / Jews and the Abstract Truth
http://www.klezmershack.com/bands/hnw/jews/hnw.jews.html
I don't know jazz well, so from the first I must advise jazz afficionados to beware. I do know that I enjoy the explorations of Jewish-influenced ensembles such as John Zorn's Masada, Anthony Coleman, or even the more cerebral New Klezmer Trio. And like other Knitting Factory compatriots such as some of the above or David Krakauer, part of what sax player Greg Wall and trumpeter Frank London (better known to the public at large for his work in the Klezmatics) are doing here is defined by both pushing the limits of jazz and pushing the limits of jazz as defined by something vaguer that I might call, in this specific context, "hasidic." By "Hasidic" I mean not just that collection of melodies that comprise part of the milieu of this particular fundamentalist part of the Jewish community, but I am also calling to mind in particular the way of ecstasy induced by that combination of drink (or other path to a different state of being) and wordless melody and dance. I speak of that Jewish trance music that has been evolving since the seventeenth century, and of the approach to life that informs it.
When fundamentalist ecstasy overlaps a freer and differently ecstatic jazz, watch out!
What we have here is not a clean, safe, Ben Sidron version of Jewish jazz (which, I might add, is quite pleasant in its place, even if its place tends not to be my house). Listening to Frank London and Greg Wall intertwine as they conclude their exploration of the limits of the traditional "Tzur Mishelo," for instance, or to simply hear the driving opening chords of the "Satmer Hakafos #6," one realizes that this is not random exploration, but exploration rooted in a specific cultural experience. There is the occasional shallower effort--I found "V'smachta" to sound less like exploration than what the song would sound like if played by people who didn't play together often enough, as figured out on drugs. This pales, however, next to the songs worth hearing and then worth hearing again--not just the aforementioned delights, but the thoughtful and more exploratory "Welcome to the McDonald's in Dachau," for instance, or the explosive "Debka" where traditional form is transformed six ways to Shabbos.
Even better, this is one of the special explorations of specific time and experience that works. The last two numbers define the parameters of the experience, to some degree: the quiet meditation of the "Bobover Wedding March" is followed by the experimental, yet not experimental the way John Zorn would have explored the same themes, "Finale." Even if I didn't love the name of the album (which I do), I'd have to finger this as Jewish jazz fusion worth listening.
Reviewed by Ari Davidow, 6/21/97
Heavy Shtetl music--LOL'ing here on a Sunday morning! Never heard that one...
Gee, I like Negro spirituals and some Irish folks songs. But I am neither black nor Irish. Does that put me in the same group of bad people that these Germans listening to klezmer are in?
I like anything by Byron and I also favor the Klezmatics.
There's Prokofiev's "Overture on Hebrew Themes" too.
And, as far as the Germans and the Jews go, as an American Jew I have traveled a fair amount in Germany and in the 80s had a German high school student live with us for a week. From what I have seen and heard, the post-WWII generation of Germans have acted quite admirably in educating their citizens about the Holocaust. Berlin is one of my favorite cities in the world--no question. So there was no German-bashing going on from my part.
"Oy to the World" indeed! Too funny (you can always count on Cyborg to add a bit of humor to any thread).
Thanks. I'll have to look that up. I listen to klezmer. I listen to polka music too hehe.
...and since we're on the subject, one of the flats that Beethoven rented in Vienna in the 1790s was near a synagogue. Beethoven heard some of the themes (he was not yet stone deaf) wrote them in notebooks, and some emerged in the first movement (an unusually slow one for a first movement) of his Opus 131 String Quartet in C sharp minor. It is haunting.
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