Klezmer music history
At the instrumental workshop at Yiddish Summer Weimar in 2007, participants were invited to ask musicologist Zev Feldman questions about everything they wanted to know. Here are the transcriptions of some of the questions that I find interesting [words in square brackets are my own remarks to make it clearer to the reader]:
Questions and topics:
Are there any traditional jewish tunes which are in asymmetrical meters?
The history of different percussion instruments in the 19th century
Were jews allowed to play loud instruments? Instruments in early klezmer music
What is the difference between a Gas Nign and a Hora in dancing and playing?
Is there an innovative klezmer scene in Israel?
About the relationship of the Joc, Joc Mare and the Hora
The difference of klezmer music and hasidic nigunim
Zev Feldman: It's not something fundamental of the ashkenazic music, but in the cases where the jews and the moldavians where in contact - I seem to remember a yiddish article by a fellow who lives in Israel now, which gives some examples of songs from Bessarabia in seven [7/8] that were modelled on moldavian songs which go back to tartar dances. The whole region of the black sea had a very quick seven [sings a 7/8 rhythm] and it is no doubt that some jews were living in Moldova actually had yiddish songs and probably had danced these [songs] in that seven. But most of the evidence we have shows that the jewish musicians altered that seven into something more like six. So you have like an qaytamar [couple dance of the Crimean Tatars] dance which is original [sings melody of Der Heisser in 7/8]. Now Naftule Brandwein recorded that as [sings melody of Der Heisser in 6/8]. By the way, the jews weren't unique in that because the azerbaijanis also took the same tune and changed it in a similar way because the azerbaijanis don't have seven. I studied once with a jewish musician from the mountains, from Dagestan, and they had a qaytamar dance of Baku and it was very similar to Naftule's version in fact.
Alan Bern: This commonly happens all over the place where two music cultures are next to each other and they have different fundamental rhythmic structures. Some of you who are in the folk dance movement might remember this [tune]. I got a recording that is called a waltz that went this way [plays a waltz]. The original tune is [plays same melody in 7/8] and originally a macedonian tune, but in this version of it it was from a neighboring culture that doesn't have this seven. They turned it into [plays melody as waltz again]. This is a very natural process, it is the same process by which french became french and italian became italian. There are certain fundamental things that converge and something becomes a style and rhythm is one of the most fundamental.
Zev Feldman: In our music a good example of this is the dance that we call zhok or hora. It's an interesting phenomenon that this dance which was an aristocratic dance - we know the history quite precisely - from the 1830s. The aristocracy in Moldova commissioned their jewish and gypsy musicians to create a new dance. According to the descriptions from Romenia the Romenians heared it as being quite foreign. They heared something of the waltz in it and something of the Mazurka. It probably was meant to be something like three [sings a hora in straight three]. But after a couple of generations the Romenians had a tendency to hear it slightly assymetric. So the way the dance develops ... we had last year the musician Volodija Goykhman from Kishinev - those who were here will recall how he played this tunes ... he would count it like this [claps a rhythm ]. A tune like Kallarash would be [sings] . When I teach dancing I always insist on something like that, or like the Belf tune [sings Bolgarski Zhok]. Then you have the opposite phenomenon that a Balkan people takes a western kind of dance and balkanizes it and gives it an asymmetrical structure to something that was originally symmetrical. In jewish music we have this [...] art of playing different tunes that are called zhok, gas nign, mazeltov. There are some tunes that are meant for dancing I am sure have this asymmetrical feeling. Other tunes were meant for listening and don't necessarily have this assymetrical feeling.
Audience: But they might have?
Zev Feldman: It's a question of taste and also [if] you listen to recordings of good musicians from Europe you can hear that some of them in [a] certain kind of tune try to avoid that asymmetrical [feeling]. I composed a tune like this and in fact I found myself avoiding some of the more pronounced asymmetry because I had a more jewish idea in my mind.
Alan Bern: Zev, can you hear someone trying to avoid something? I am not sure you can hear someone trying...
Zev Feldman: Well, I am analyzing myself and I realized that I had a certain concept with this tune and so it didn't demand that kind of very pronounced asymmetry. But in other tunes I very much miss it when it's not there. If you listen carefully to the recordings of Naftule Brandwein or Dave Tarras or the Belf Orchestra you hear where they want to put it in and where they didn't. I even know one case where Dave was playing not with his usual pianist I belief and the pianist didn't understand the rhythm at all, so the pianist was playing some kind of polish [sings rhythm in 3/4] and Dave was trying to play [sings the tune In a rumeynisher shenk] and his pianist was going [sings straight waltz rhythm] and they actually recorded it and they actually sold this tape whereas the must [have] thrown this out, it obviously doesn't work, but we have a document of these two musicians that didn't understand. Otherwise Tarras would never have played it so squarred, so much as three. It is a very tricky part of klezmer music and whenever I teach it, it takes a long time to get it across.
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Aaron Alexander: Since we are talking about rhythm and stuff: we know that the drum set wasn't invented until early 20th century.
Zev Feldman: It seems that in the earlier ensembles they didn't use percussion. It seems that the ensembles were relying on the cimbalom and the base and the sekund, playing the violin. Remember that in jewish music it was polyrhythmic, as far as we understand, in jewish dances it was always polyrhythmic. You had three different rhythmic functions: one with the sekund, one with the bass, one with the tsimbl. They certainly weren't all doing the same thing. Of course we have no recordings of this, we have no recordings going back so far. We also have records that in Moldova the ensemble included a frame drum, already in the early 19th century, because we have lists of musicians. So we have violin, clarinet, bass and a drummer, who was probably seem to be playing a turkish frame drum. Also I see a russian reference to jewish tsimbl players playing with a turkish frame drum, again from the beginning of the 19th century. There are no recordings of that kind of ensemble.
Because I am a frame drummer myself - I play turkish music - I thought of ways of which to use the frame drum for the drumming. What we know about is from the later 19th century when jews in larger towns were using a 12 to 15 piece ensemble with brass instruments and there they have poyk. They have this kind of military drum with the cymbal on top. We have some idea how that was played. We have some people who know it pretty well and understand how to play and there are recordings with that. In general the drumming can't be separated from the evolution of the concept of rhythm and changes in the concept of rhythm.
There are enough recordings from the beginning of the 20th century through the middle of the 20th century, both from Europe and from the U.S., to show certain changes and evolutions in the concept of rhythm in which the drummer - although I don't think he is the leader - fits in to those concepts. I've come to hear very small differences - but important differences - between how the drummer was playing in 1940 and how he was recorded in 1950 or 1960. Some are the same musicians even and you see a certain evolution change. In general - to my mind - it changed not for the better. You have certain rhythms [that] are generalized and posed on many different kinds of music where they originally only were used for certain types or even certain expressions within a certain dance and a certain tempo.
I know that my teacher, Tarras, was very fussy about that. You can hear that he only wanted certain variations of drumming for certain kind of dance, for example when he played Bulgar - and he is the great master of Bulgar and composed many Bulgars, listen to his recordings - he usually has the accordionist playing something like [sings a 2/4 rhythm that stresses the offbeat] and he doesn't allow the drummer to play this rhythm that goes [sings Bulgar rhythm]. He allows it at certain tunes and at certain phrases and sometimes he varies it with [sings variation of the Bulgar rhythm]. If you listen carefully to his classic recordings from the 1940ies there is a lot of difference in how he has the drummer relate to the accordion, which rhythms he uses, where the drummer was actually there or not.
These Tarras recordings are very important because he was usually in charge of what was happening in the rhythm section whereas in some of the earlier recordings we are not quite sure who was in charge. In Naftule Brandwein's recordings you hear sometimes a more generalized conception of rhythm and percussion in these recordings, not as specific as Tarras.
Aaron Alexander: He played mostly with Irving Graetz. So you were saying he was very specific...
Zev Feldman: Oh, with Dave Tarras. Yes, Graetz Irving was one of his main drummers, we used him in the 70ies, when he was still playing. A very delicate drummer, very careful.
Aaron Alexander: So he [Tarras] was very specific on Irving Zev Feldman: Yeah, but when you compare, I remember Irving from the 70ies and if you compare how he played in the 70ies to how he was recorded in the 40ies, it was much more precise in the 40ies. Much more careful because people were still dancing to these things back in the 40ies. By the 70ies Tarras didn't have that much experience in playing for dancing for at least 20 years and Irving also didn't have that experience. It was much more general and crude whereas back in the 40ies it is amazing how precisely it was, where they wanted a certain variation, where they wanted to hear the drums, where the drums where not there at all or very very quiet. As a drummer I would advise you to listen carefully to the things in the 40ies, they are very interesting. And the interaction with Beckerman, the accordion player, it's very specific. I knew Beckerman, I studied with Sam Beckerman. Dave and the two of them had a very hierarchical relationship where Tarras was always the bandleader. Believe me, neither Irving nor Sam had much chance for original thinking because Tarras was giving his eagle eye almost all the time. By the 70ies this was much looser, I hate to imagine what was it like in the 40ies. He must have been looking at them every other measure to make sure they give him the exact rhythmic accompaniment that he wanted.
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The original question was about earlier drumming, in the 19th century.
Zev Feldman: I don't subscribe to that theory. Beregovski wrote that, I think it's not true. In general Beregovski was not a good historical musicologist, [that's] the sad truth. He was a great field worker, he was a very good analysist of contemporary practice, but he was not a good historical musicologist. He didn't use historical sources as well, so I don't believe him. I don't believe in loud instruments, I don't think that's the motivation whatsoever. The jews probably originated an ensemble which was fixed for a period of almost 300 years, led by a first violin, second violin, cimbalom and some kind of base or chello. We see that mentioning, it appears in the guild records, it appears in a few pictures starting with the early 18th century. Sometimes there was a wooden flute included in that ensemble.
Audience: So you don't believe in all the loud ...?
Zev Feldman: No, I don't believe him. I don't see any evidence for it.
Audience: Do you know a decree of a town ...?
Zev Feldman: No. The system began in different countries which Russia was not one of it. It begins in Bohemia and Poland. It's important to understand that the klezmer profession did not exist in Germany in the middle ages, there was no such thing. It began in the late 16th century in Bohemia and Poland where jews were allowed to form guilds. Jews were not permitted to form guilds here [in Germany] and they could not join Christian guilds. So there was no such thing as a klezmer ensemble. There were other kinds of jewish entertainers and musicians. When the ensemble is formed in Bohemia and Poland it has a very fixed charakter.
It is a guild which for the jews was very important. The name klezmer was no doubt connected with ... a klezmer was an honorific name and elevated the status of the jewish musicians. They apparently had very fixed slots in the guild for particular musicians, for particular instruments. I think the jewish community decided that, I don't think it was something coming from outside. There is not evidence for any kind of outside intervention. If someone wants to proof there was outside intervention from the christian authorities he has to cite some documents. Whatever Beregovski may have discovered from Russia is completely irrevalent because this system began 200 years before Russia was any way near these territories politically. There weren't any jews living in Russia, they weren't allowed living in Russia.
We can just forget that. This ensemble maintained itself in some regions pretty long. When I studied with Mr. Hesheles - he was from eastern Galicia - he led an ensemble like that in the 1930ies. There were places where that still existed. There is a picture from West-Galicia before the first world war - you know that because it appears in several articles and records - where you see an old hasidic group. There is a tsimbl player in the middle and he has four violinists beyond him and a kind of chello or bass - and that's it, that's the ensemble. This was in the 20th century. There was such ensembles. But then you also see from Galicia mixed ensembles that already have a clarinet and a trumpet.
There is a very nice picture from the Ukraine from the late 19th century you may know which has a clarinet, a violin, a trumpet and flute. It is a five man ensemble, maybe it has two violins. So there was a variety of ensembles. The moldavians had this ensemble with violin, clarinet, cimbalom and drum. And we know that in some places the tsimbl played with a turkish drum alone. It also had to do with where the old guild structure survived and where they broke down. In the russian empire the jewish guilds in general fell appart because the russians were trying to destroy the political autonomy of the jews.
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Zev Feldman: I mentioned the hora when we talked about the genesis of a genre that's called in romenian hora aristocratie [spelling ?], i.e. aristocrat's hora. The aristocracy danced this and the used the form of hora which was apparently a rumanian folklore dance. In Romenia they call it Hora Moldoveneasca and that is in duple time. German Goldenshteyn referred to it as Moldoveniaska, the moldavian dance. Unfortunately Dave Tarras referred to that kind of tune as "Sirba", I don't know why exactly klezmorim and jews and ukrainians misunderstood the terms of hora and sirba, at least some of them did. The dance is very similiar to the dance hora or zhok - in Bessarabia they call it the zhok, that is in three or something like three.
The jews took this rhythmic type that is something like three [Feldman sings typical hora rhythm] - my teacher Mr. Hesheles called it the heartbeat of the world. The jews used that for several points of wedding melodies, which were not used for dancing. There were tunes sometimes played for the in-laws, which could be called Mazeltov. Then there were tunes for "firn di mekhutonim aheym" at the end of the wedding. There were a lot of tunes that were played sometime during the day to invite people to the wedding which were jointly called Gas Nign. What I see in the sources is [that] there is a bit of confusion among tunes that were labelled Dobridens, which is another kind of - that was my theme song yesterday when Alan played on the piano [Feldman sings beginning of Kostakowsky's tune No. 1 "Good Morning"].
These tunes always emphazise the second beat - one, TWO, three, one, TWO, three - and they had more to do with polish. But some of the Gas Nigun actually are something more like the hora. I think some of the Gas Nigunim are totally different - there are some in duple time [Feldman sings beginning of Beregovski's tune No. 71 "Gas-Nign"]. Sometimes - especially in the terminology of [a] jewish wedding - the terms have to do with the function and not with the musical form. That would create a bit of confusion. Something called Gas Nigun may have one or severall different musical forms in the same function. The few examples of "Firn di mekhutonim aheym" we have tend to be in the rhythm of the zhok or hora and a couple of the Mazeltovs are also in that rhythm.
To make it a little bit complex for you: the more jewish sounding tunes usually were less assymetrical, because the assymetry was more a purporse for dancing, whereas for tunes for listening they did not necessarily want that. Sometimes they did and sometimes they didn't. It's a subtle difference in phrasing which I'm afraid to say was totally lost [with] the last generation, almost nobody plays this with the various differences. One point that's important musically: the tunes for listening usually are less continously, they don't flow from section to section or even from musical sentence to musical sentence. There is more of a sense of cutting them, whereas the dance tunes were usually like more of a flow between section and section or even within musical sentences. This is an important concept. There is a tune some of you have played last night [Feldman sings tune "Boibriker Chasseneh Pt. 1" played by Boibriker Kapelye].
The jewish way of playing it is to cut it [F. sings tune again with notable pauses between phrases]. The whole tune is cut that way, normally, whereas unfortunately last night it was [F. sings tune again without pauses between phrases] - which is not very good phrasing. That's an important difference in the jewish tune. Of course the structure was jewish. A tune like this Mazeltov has very little to do with romenian music. Each melody was a jewish melody and the modulations between the three sections are typical of jewish music and not typical of romenian music.
A Romenian would never consider that to be a Hora. It's sure we've some kind of jewish tune that happens to have a rhythm something like the Hora, but it's certainly not a romenian tune, whereas the Jews also played romenian tunes for dancing a Hora. When we go through Kostakowsky's book there are millions of Horas. Actually I never met a thirst studying all the Hora tunes. I don't know which ones are romenian, which ones are more jewish, but it's a big field for studying.
Audience: You said that dance music is flowing more, but assymetrically?
Zev Feldman: Yes, the rhythm itself has an assymetric break up or irregularity but melodically the notes flow together more. But that's something that have to demonstrated in specific examples.
Alan Bern: If you think of fives and sevens, a very strong quality of them is that you're constantly falling into the next downbeat. I'm thinking of a bulgarian tune [Bern sings]: exactly the assymetry makes it constantly roll. It's not really a contradiction, although it might sound like it is, but in our bodies we don't feel as a contradiction. When you internalize the beat structure so that you don't having to count it, i.e. once the beat becomes natural it becomes a very flowing beat.
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Zev Feldman: Their are not at a point where they can be innovative. There is a young generation of musicians now in their twenties or early thirties that are just beginning to learn in the last couple of years who are secular or modern orthodox, not hasidim, and they are interested. Some of them are my students. They are trying to learn the tradition and not trying to innovate it much. The best of them are fresh in their approaches in the sense that they are not slavish but creative in their thinking. But they know that they are not yet in a stage where they can innovate because they don't know what the material is yet.
There are some hasidim who are playing the music for a while, but that's not a question of innovation. They inherited repertoire. The amateur hasidic musicians - some of them are living in Tel Aviv, some in Galyin [spelling ?] - there was a repertoire there which is small but which is interesting. I had the impression some of it is Belorussian. It came from hasidim from Belorus and Ukraine in the early 19th and mid 19th centuary. It's different than the klezmer music we know, partly because we only know the southern tradition. We only know the ukrainian, bessarabian and galician klezmer tradition, whereas the Israeli hasidim inherited some of the lithuanian tradition, since a lot of the orthodox jews and hasidim came from the north to Palestine as early as the end of the 18th centuary.
We can go back to our Belorussians because some of them came to escape the Russians. They knew the Russians were going to destroy the jewish culture so the more fanatic and the more commited people went to Palestine at that point of the russian annexion of Poland. There is not a very innovative group of people.
Alan Bern: Can I broaden the question? I had a conversation with Daniel Hoffman [spelling?], who is an american klezmer musician that has moved to Israel now. He was telling me that he had noticed in the last year that a lot of new jewish music groups that do incorporate elements of klezmer music in their playing but that are also doing electric musik and hip hop and all kind of thinks like that. There are not necessarily - as Zev was saying - starting with a deep knowledge of Klezmer music and innovating from there like maybe some of the groups in the United States try to do. They are more comming at what is happening right now with some of the groups in Russia and some of the groups in Berlin. In fact Dan Kahn is in Israel right now having been invited there to do programs by that whole section of society. What's interesting is according to Daniel Hoffman [that] this is very new development. For years and years, basically forever, Israel has been closed. Israeli pop culture and youth culture has not been interested in yiddish culture and all of a sudden is suddenly very in there. So something is happening, whatever we can call that.
Zev Feldman: I think Daniel is more aware of these things than I. I remember we played together, our groups played separately at the same venue in the same club that has just invited Daniel Kahn. There I didn't here much innovation [while] a ? band played. They were really trying to do a fresh version of klezmer music and yiddish song.
Alan Bern: But the good news is definitely a new openess to yiddish music there in youth culture, not just in an older culture looking back nostalgically at it. I think that's very interesting.
Zev Feldman: Yes, that's important but that's very recent.
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The Hora features a form which exists in 2/4 or 4/4...
Zev Feldman: Musically they are rather different. There are severall names for it: Hora Mare, Joc Moldoveneasca, Volekhl. Gypsy musicians learned to play their tunes in severall different rhythms. They changed the rhythmic structure. They could do that as a professional, they can try to change tunes to fit at the mood. In general - structually - those musicians who composed Hora and those who composed Hora Mare were using different compositional techniques. Not just rhythmic relationships, but melodic relationships that characterized the two forms. Even Dave Tarras, who composed in both forms. I know severall of these Jocs and severall of these Hora tunes and I don't see that much melodic relationship between them. When we had Nicolai teaching here last year, who is a very good dancer from Kishenev, he layed it out quite clear that in moldavian culture the Hora is the first dance, the most prestigous dance.
They have three forms of Hora and at a wedding the usually dance it in an order: first the Hora Mare, then the Hora Moldoveneasca and then the Hora Batuta. The jews certainly knew both kinds of Hora, but the triple Hora appears much more often in the jewish sources.
Audience: But I was surprised when I bought the Goldenshteyn repertoire a couple of days ago. There is a Hora No. 2 in it was in four.
Zev Feldman: Yeah, German had a lot of Moldoveneasca tunes in his repertoire.
Kurt Bjorling: I wonder if there is confusion about the fact that the word Hora is used kind of generically, it doesn't always mean anyones specific dance. It's a very generic word for dance.
Zev Feldman: Romenians have two words that they use for dance: Hora and Joc. These are the common words and depending where you are in greater Romenia, including Bucovina and Bessarabia, Joc means in the opposite of what it means in the other region and Hora means in the opposite of what it means in the other region.
Audience: And the jewish musicians adapted these expressions like Hora and used it mostly for the rhythm in three?
Kurt Bjorling: They used Zhok and Hora rather equally and they also call this Volekhl, the uneven slower. Terminology is very unspecific.
Zev Feldman: As a rule of thumb: one thing I've noticed is that musicians, who would come from the east of the Prut river [spelling ?] usually would use Joc for the triple Hora and musicians who come from the west of the Prut river would use Hora.
Kurt Bjorling: And there is also Londre and Olondre with the same..
Zev Feldman: Olondra. That's actually something lost.
Kurt Bjorling: But among jewish musicians?
Zev Feldman: It was confused. Those things were originally separate.
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Alex Jacobowitz: A lot of the forms that you are discussing don't really have much of a follow through today per se. It's interesting, it's academic because when people play and work as a klezmer in Israel, the music that the play is very different from what we play here. If you want to play a jewish wedding, this is not the music that you would play nowadays in Israel. The music that they play in Israel however would be something that is very closely related to Carlebach, if not Carlebach himself. A lot of the modern klezmer musicians would play there tunes based on Nigunim, which actually has survived. So although the dance forms might not be occuring in the 21st century (or 57th century), a lot of the tunes are. A lot of klezmer descends from hasidic nigunim...
Zev Feldman: No! Don't confuse two social categories. There were hasidim and there were klezmorim. And the klezmorim were around in the world a lot longer than the hasidim. In Israel there were a lot of hasidim, but there were no klezmorim. Period. Klezmer fans did not go to Israel. For very good reasons: the ashkenazic rabinah[spelling ?] banned klezmer music in the mission of Jerusalem. So you could only have klezmer music at your wedding if you lived in Galil or you had your wedding somewhere else outside of the Jerusalem area. That was a pretty discouraging blow for klezmorim.
Alex Kontorovich: What about the migration in the nineties, where Arkady Goldenshtein [moved to Israel]?
Zev Feldman: There were soviet musicians, he is not a klezmer.
Alex Kontorovich: Well, he played klezmer...
Zev Feldman: I know, but I'm using the term in a more strict sense. This is music that was carried in families and learned from very early age. That's how jewish society was structured for hundrets of years. Most of the klezmer families either stayed in Europe or came to America.
Alex Jacobowitz: Let me broaden the question. Not that particular form of klezmer, but rather another form of jewish intrumental music in the eastern european community.
Zev Feldman: No, there is no such thing. There was klezmer music and there was non-jewish music and there was hasidic music. But there was no other kind of instrumental jewish music. It was only klezmer that was there. But since the klezmorim did not come to Eretz Israel, the hasidim who came, came with a lot of music. Some of them remembered instrumental tunes. They had a tune which we know from the Kisselhoff collection, from Belorus and from Sofia Magis [spelling ?] collection. Sure enough Kaliner hasidim, who come from southern Belorus had preserved this tune. They sing it and they also play it instrumentally. So they have some tunes that probably are of klezmer origin.
Alex Jacobowitz: So would you say that basically the klezmer repertoire is so uniquely different than the nigunim repertoire that you would no go to the next level and actually incorporate Carlebach-nigunim or Lubovich-nigunim into the klezmer repertoire?
Zev Feldman: Certainly I would and somebody might, but the klezmer music has a different origin from the nigunim.
Aaron Alexander: It might clear things up to mention that there was sort of a more secular klezmer tradition before the war [WW II] and most of them hasidim and also orthodox didn't move to the States. But after the war they did. Many of the Yeshivas started after the war. So there became a market and a lot of the people who were playing klezmer in the United States had to learn these hasidic nigunim and they started to blend in the sixties.
Zev Feldman: You are talking about America.
Aaron Alexander: I'm talking about America.
Zev Feldman: I was talking about Israel.
Aaron Alexander: The same is true in New York that Carlebach and the hasidic nigunim have become part of the wedding repertoire. For better or worse there is some mix. I know that you have a very strict definition of klezmer. I just think it is instructing to clarify the confusion, because in the sixties all these bands started to play the same thing, Epsteins, Joe King. These guys were klezmer musicians and they started to play hasidic tunes and that's why sometimes you might - and people do - confuse them.
Zev Feldman: What you said is true, but it's important to understand what hasidim came to America and what hasidim came to Israel, cause they weren't necessarily the same hasidim and they came with different musics. The people who came to America for the most part came after the Shoah and they came from regions that the Nazis hadn't quite gotten to get. So the hasidim that came after the war were a lot Transcarpathians, Translovenians and Hungarians. It just so happens that this were regions that didn't have much klezmer music in the 20th century. So the hasidim that came to America didn't have much instrumental repertoire to begin with.
The hasidim who came to Israel came earlier and they often came from regions that had klezmer traditions still living when the came to Israel. Actually some of the Nigunim that Israeli hasidim sing are really klezmer. And some of them now that non-klezmer musicians would play for them at their simchas, celebrations and weddings are actually klezmer music going back severall generations. We don't know them in America because that's not the music that came to America whereas the hasidim that came to America didn't have much klezmer repertoire. They came from areas where jews were no longer professional musicians, they may have had gypsies played for them.
Aaron Alexander: But they had nigunim and the klezmer musicians in America picked it up.
Zev Feldman: Look, hasidim have the custom of dancing to vocal music. The vocal music they use is different according to different hasidic groups in Europe. Some of it goes back to earlier kinds of instrument music that klezmorim no longer played. So sometimes it is really instrumental, but it is not klezmer. Some of it is non-jewish in origin, but old, quite old. A kind of music that wasn't in fashion among non-hasidic jews. But some of their dance tunes are vocal. They never were played with instruments. Misnagdic jews - let's say the non-hasidic jews - didn't like to dance to those kind of tunes. That was something only for hasidim, it didn't represent their culture.
There were some tunes we had in common that might be used for certain parts of the wedding. Ritual tunes that are sometimes of vocal character. In general the hasidim danced a lot to singing. Not a weddings, there were other occasions, even friday night. That's not a misnagdic custom. They have a whole repertoire of rhythmic tunes which they use for religious dancing, not for the dancing that misnagdic jews used. Two different cultures. In general the culture in Israel is richer if we talk about dance tunes. The hasidim brought more of a dance-like culture with them. Whereas our american hasidim didn't have that instrumental side to their music.
Some of them have very rich vocal music still, but they didn't have so much of that. And if they had, the klezmorim didn't come with them. Even they were killed or they went some place else. I never heard of a hasidic dynasty that came to America with it's klezmorim. Sometimes the klezmorim came earlier. Dave Tarras for example, his family were klezmer musicians from the hasidic dynasty of Monastrisht. But Dave came before there was a lot of Monastrishter hasidim. Or Naftule Brandwein, his people were hasidic klezmorim, some of them stayed in Europe. Leopold Kozlowsky is still in Poland. Naftule came long before, the hasidim of his group did not come to America when he came to New York. Some of them are now in Israel.
Aaron Alexander: But then, how do we classify this music that klezmorim that were living in America in the fifties then incorporated as part of their repertoire? Now it's only sixty years old but even for us - who are contemporaries and playing it - it doesn't have this 400 year direct line but it still become part of our repertoire.
Zev Feldman: Yes, it's part of the american jewish culture. But Dave Tarras did not play this repertoire.
Kurt Bjorling: I think that the klezmorim you are referring to - of the fifties and the sixties - would not qualify for Zev's stated definition of what a klezmer is.
Zev Feldman: A jewish musician. I advise you to really read Hankus Netsky's dissertation. Hankus Netsky comes from a klezmer family from Philadelphia and he describes in detail - both in the dissertation and in his article, that Mark Slobin published in American klezmer - roots and offshoots - the conflict between klezmer musicians and american born jewish musicians. They were both competing for the same work at weddings and bar mitzvahs. He tells you from his family experience what the criteria were which the jewish family would hire either a klezmer musician and his band or a non-klezmer jewish musician and his band. Fifties years ago or forty years ago the jewish community was very aware of the difference. This was a klezmer band and the other was a non-klezmer band. They played a different repertoire and depending for whom they were playing - what kind of simcha and how old they were - there would perform one or the other. There was competition, not one big family of jewish musicians
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