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Monday, January 22, 2007
An Open Letter to the People of Moistworks:
The moistworkers convened recently for a grueling criticism/self-criticism session. Once we'd gotten the group sex out of the way, we began our thought correction.
"Moistworks sucks," said Alex. "Fix it."
In accordance with the wishes of the Supreme Commander, we're changing our format a little. Fewer, better posts. Mon, Wed, Fri. Regular installments of Joanna. Brian on Mondays. The return of former City Paper graphic designer James Morris, shown backstage at Vanilla Ice on Ice, here.
And Alex will start writing again, instead of complaining about his deadlines.
Now, onto the music.
DER GLATER BULGAR
A-Muzik
Available on: Hallelujah, Anyway
Tzadik : 1999
[buy it]
HIMATSURI
Bliki Circus
Bliki Charine
Mulatta : 2004
[buy it]
CIGANY HIMNUSZ
Komatcha Klezmer
Tail of Moonlight Stone
GOK : 2003
[buy it]
BESSARABIAN HORA
Cicala Mvta
Deko-Boko
Respect : 2001
[buy it]
THE INTERNATIONALE
Soul Flower Mononoke Summit
Levelers Ching Dong
Respect : 1997
[buy it]
Klezmer again? New year, new moistworks, but mama's got the same old bag. People, one wearies of the fetish for novelty that rules the capitalist universe. Which was exactly my reaction upon discovering Japanese klezmer. Must we do EVERYTHING? Does the world really need Tuvan bossa nova or Inuit-Cossack rap? All this relentless hybridity: fresh! new! polymorphous! So much buzzing of postmodern mosquitos for so much feverish monotony.
Only in this case, the story proved to be more interesting.
Klezmer travels to Japan via the whole downtown NYC, avant-jazz scene. "Der Glater Bulgar" and "Himatsuri" are both fine examples of this Knitting Factory genre of klezmer. The first is actually a cover of a Dave Tarras number. The second has this slinky tango beat that reminds me of the Lounge Lizards, or at least the Marc Ribot portion thereof. The klezmer-jazz transference is perfectly logical. It's musician's music, filled with wild improvs and odd time signatures. American klezmer flirted with jazz, leading to the birth of Yiddish swing. (Incidentally, Dave Tarras was marketed, without irony, as the "Jewish Benny Goodman.") And so, Japanese jazz musicians looking for a challenge adopted the klezmer idiom, much like the young Don Byron, only without so much soul-searching and ethnic upheaval.
Komatcha Klezmer is a small ensemble that grew out of Betsuni Nanmo Klezmer, an 18-piece orchestra whose recordings (Omedeto, Waruzu, and Ahiru) are now out of print. Clarinetist Kazutoki Umezu is the anchor of both groups, whose members include assorted luminaries of Japanese free jazz: what Michael Parker calls "an abridged who's who of Tokyo's bohemian prankster avant-garde" in this review. I tried and tried to track down BNK stuff and in the end shelled out many yen for the Komatcha Klezmer. It's ok. Parker's review raves about BNK's amazing bizarro Yiddish vocals, which are not in evidence on this KK release. "Cigany Himnusz" is actually a traditional gypsy song, here given a rowdy klezmer treatment. See what you think.
And then there's Cicala Mvta (shikala moota), from the Osaka noise underground that produced Shonen Knife, John Zorn faves the Boredoms, the Ichi-Bang Boshi Crew, and the Soul Flower Union. The band name is Italian for "mute cicada" and comes from the epitaph of Japanese street singer and songwriter Soeda Azembo: CICALA-MVTA CHE CANTAVA E LA SVA MOGLIE CHE L' AMAVA (The mute cicada that sang and his wife who loved him). Azembo wrote catchy comic satires and protest songs that spread across Japan without the benefit of radio play; in the 20s, his songs were banned and he was repeatedly imprisoned (hence, the muting). This genre of street music, called chin(g)don, features drums, saxophones and clarinets, and face-painting. With the drum in the lead, musicians would march around the streets playing popular music, advertisements, and folk songs. Mass media killed off the tradition, which was revived in the late 80s by Japanese punk rockers tired of Western-derivative rock.
Chindon revivalists were attracted to klezmer because of its affinities with chindon: both non-military band music (as opposed to the military brass bands) made by anarchic, itinerant musicians, both hybrid forms that plundered any and all available sounds. Cicala Mvta draws not only from klezmer, but also from Nepalese wedding music, Turkish folk songs, and Albert Ayler. Results are mixed; pardon the pun. I think I liked Deko-Boko (Inside-Out) better than the earlier album, Ching-don: The Return of Japanese Street Music, but both have some hits and misses. Fans of noise jazz will be happier than I. "Bessarabian Hora" isn't the best track, but it's the most recognizably klezmer, and those of you who read my earlier klezmer epic will have some basis for comparison. (Those of you who didn't, just follow our incredible new(TM) labels feature to find it.)
The leader of Cicala Mvta is freaked-out clarinetist Wataru Okuma. He started off playing in the punk rock Soul Flower Union (see Osaka, above). They in turn spawned the Soul Flower Mononoke Summit, whose klezmerish version of the socialist anthem The Internationale was one of the happiest finds of 2006. You can hear the chindon drum and if those wild yips don't move you, you're a stone. I do see the klezmer analogy, but I have to wonder if that's a serious description of the music or a handy label for overseas listeners. ("If you like klezmer, you'll love Cicala Mvta!") Well, it worked on me. And now I know some things I didn't know before. Win-wins all around.Labels: klezmer, megan, world
posted by Megan
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Tuesday, December 19, 2006
HORA F# MINOR
KLEZMER TUNES
Kalman Balogh and the Gypsy Cimbalom Band
Gypsy Jazz
Rounder : 1999
[buy it]
LAMENTING SONG
Muzsikas
Maramaros: The Lost Jewish Music of Transylvania
Hannibal : 1993
[buy it]
MAMALIGA
Delphine Mantoulet
Transylvania (soundtrack)
Naive : 2006
[buy it]
MAGIC MAMALIGA
OMFO
Trans Balkan Express
Essay : 2004
[buy it]
[This is part 3 of a series. Read parts one and two.]
This weekend I was at a holiday concert, listening to a children's choir sing songs like "Hanukkah Nagilah": light the menorah
dance the hora The hora is one of those dances that everybody has and calls by a different name, the way you can buy Greek Delight or Israeli falafel. The harpsichordean tones you hear come from the cimbalom, a kind of hammered dulcimer common to both Roma and Jewish music. (It's related to the Persian santour and the Greek santouri.) The Roma play with the standup version, which is sort of like a piano stuffed in a rectangle. Klezmorim often used an economy-sized cimbalom called the tsimbl, which hung from the shoulders.
We'll let the gypsies take it away, while I tell you a story.
Imagine your dilemma: you're a Polish aristocrat in the 1800s. You're throwing a party and you want some lively gypsy music to entertain your guests. But gypsies are scary. They drink too much and rape Polish women. What should you do? You ask a Jew instead. They play the same music, but they are less drunk and they don't like goy women.
Minstrelsy begins at home. And what the Jews did for the gypsies, later they'd do for the blacks.
The gypsies were used to these sorts of slights. They were slaves in Romania until 1864. (Blacks in the U.S. were allegedly freed in 1863.) But Jews and gypsies both did their share of shucking and jiving to get by. For extra entertainment value, tsimbl players performed with a chained bear. When bears were hard to come by, audiences opted for a Jew in a bear costume. The point, really, was to humiliate the Jew. But a musician doesn't turn down work. Every so often a Jewish song would catch on among the goyish public, who imagined it expressed the very essence of this strange people. The sabbath song "Ma Yofis" was one of these early Jewish hits. Its melody was taken from a popular Polish song; maybe that explains its crossover appeal. This song was so widely requested during these minstrel-show performances of Jewishness, that it dropped out of the Jewish repertoire entirely. "Mayofisnik" became an insult, roughly translated as "goy-pandering sell-out." Like calling a black man an Uncle Tom. In today's world, mayofisnik might translate as "Jewface."
Of course one man's sell-out is another man's Borat. Or vice versa.
Things were different after the Holocaust. In Hungary, Jews were slaughtered so effectively that only a handful of gypsies who'd played with klezmer bands were left to remember the music. (I don't know if Jews returned the favor elsewhere in Europe.) With the help of Roma consultants, the Hungarian band Muzsikas recreated some of these Hungarian Jewish songs on their album Maramaros. It was largely this sense of a lost tradition that fuelled the klezmer revival to begin with. So many local forces drove this phenomenon: interest in folk music, Holocaust tourism, discomfort over Zionism and religious orthodoxy among secular Jews, Holocaust guilt among Europeans. Mark Slobin calls this movement a "nostalgic diasporism," which substitutes a carefully preserved, static past for a living culture grounded in social practice. And through the proliferation of graduate programs, arts festivals, historic tours, and audio recordings, some version of these once-vibrant traditions is kept alive.
Based on the comments to the first installment of this series, many of us agree that culture is not static and, as one reader put it, miscegenation is inevitable (even desirable, I might add). But when does culture become kitsch instead? Is it when Oprah gets involved? Is it when folk goes electric? Is it when things get too hip for their own good? Or is it just when we lose too much of what made it all meaningful to begin with?
It's been a long journey these past two weeks. I'll stop here and rest for a while. Thanks for your company.Labels: klezmer, megan, world
posted by Megan
LINK |
Monday, December 18, 2006
OLD MOLDAVIAN KLEZMER SUITE IN E: OLD BULGAR
Khevrisa
European Klezmer Music
Smithsonian Folkways : 2000
[buy it]
SZOL A KAKAS MAR
Metropolitan Klezmer
Mosaic Persuasion
Rhythm Media : 2000
[buy it]
NAFTULE SHPILT FAR DEM REBN
HEYSER BULGAR
Naftule Brandwein
Recorded in 1923
Available on: Yikhes
Trikont : 1995
[buy it]
YOSLS TERKISHER
Veretski Pass
Veretski Pass
Golden Horn : 2004
[buy it]
DER TERKISHE YALE VE VOLE
Amsterdam Klezmer Band and Galata Gypsy Band
Katakofti
Kalan : 2002
[buy it]
A BULGAR
Dave Tarras and The Musiker Brothers
Tanz!
Columbia : 1955
[buy it]
To read the prequel to this post, click here. You won't be sorry.
The first klezmer album I bought was The Klezmorim: First Recordings. (I included a track from this album in the prequel.) I was dating an angsty Israeli guy who was concerned about my (lack of) Jewish credentials. "According to religious law, you are not really a Jew. Maybe if you convert?" One day he asked me, "Do you even know about klezmer music?" I didn't convert, but I did buy the CD. I don't remember why I picked that one; maybe it was the Robert Crumb cover.
The Klezmorim play kooky, slapstick kind of klezmer: Greek, Turkish, and classic klezmer tunes, with a heavy early jazz influence (they sound a lot like Naftule Brandwein's 1920s recordings). Apparently, when the klezmer revival was starting up in the 1970s, they were criticized for their eclecticism, for not identifying themselves specifically with Jewish music. The more I learn about the history of klezmer, the more ridiculous this seems. Here's an excerpt from the liner notes for Brandwein's "Natfule Shpilt far dem Rebn":[This piece] is in the so-called "terkish" rhythm, which may have entered the klezmer repertoire from Asia Minor via Moldo-Wallachia. Like other New York klezmorim, Brandwein probably performed such pieces when he played for the Greek communities of New York. And no further comment. Oh, of course, this Jewish guy is playing Turkish music for Greeks. (Does he not play them for Jews? Do the Greeks know?)
Around the same time the Klezmorim were getting started, Zev Feldman of Khevrisa and Dave Tarras protege Andy Statman were playing in a rebetika band. One night, they followed their set of Greek and Armenian songs with some old klezmer numbers they'd pulled off of 78s. According to Feldman, "the Greek audience went wild, with a standing ovation. So the Greeks we worked with asked us if we knew more Jewish tunes."
America, the melting pot? No, the melting pot was Eastern Europe. The three main sources for the klezmer sound were European folk dances, Hasidic prayer songs, and Greco-Turkish dance music. These were mixed in various combinations. As one example, "Szol a Kakas Mar" was a Hungarian folk tune that was repurposed as the melody for a Hasidic prayer song. Romania was a main site in developing this syncretic music: the regions of Moldavia, Wallachia, and Bessarabia, which eventually formed present-day Romania and Moldova, were former Ottoman territories. Wandering Jews traveled with Rom musicians from Odessa to Istanbul, picking up Turkish and Greek melodies. According to Yale Strom,The new music they composed -- with its Turkish modalities, its different tuning and playing styles -- influenced the klezmer style and repertoire to such a degree that it is now some of the most popular klezmer performed. (The Book of Klezmer, 25-26). Even back in the old country, the Greeks were a main market for this Near Eastern-influenced Jewish music. Naftule Brandwein, one of the biggest names in klezmer, was especially partial to the "Oriental" sound. He was a character: a skirt-chasing drunk, a favorite of Jewish mobsters. His dad had 14 children and 4 wives, so I feel a bond with him. Naftule liked Turkish-style syncopated tunes; I've included a few examples of these terkishers, which were part of the Romanian repertoire. These songs were often played on a violin using a special "ciftetelli" tuning, common in Greek and Turkish music, which allowed the violinist to play double-stringed octaves. (Ciftetelli is also a dance rhythm; I'm not sure how it's related to the terkisher form rhythmically.)
Dave Tarras is the other biggest name in klezmer. He was smoother, more reliable, and less drunk than Brandwein. He was more successful, too, and adopted more of a swing sound. Yet he also favored the Bessarabian repertoire, and helped make that sound definitive of New World klezmer. His favorite form was the bulgar, a sprightly dance common in Bessarabia and the Ukraine.
So much, and so much more. Tomorrow, I'll talk about the importance of dancing bears in klezmer culture, what makes a klezmer an Uncle Tom, and why the Rom, not the Jews, are the blacks of Europe.
---
I'm heavily indebted to Yale Strom's The Book of Klezmer. Any unattributed quotes are from his book. And you should [buy it]Labels: klezmer, megan, world
posted by Megan
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