Klezmer

Klezmer
Georg Brinkmann

"Every kind of folk music is beautiful, but Jewish folk music has made a most powerful impression on me. I never tire of delighting in it. It is multifaceted, it can appear to be happy while it is tragic … Jewish music is almost always laughter through tears."

Dimitrji Schostakowitsch

Previous History
Sometimes God was very pleased with his creation. For example, he liked Eve so much that he danced and sang with her before he led her to Adam. This is recorded in the Talmud. And that is why Jews were allowed to play instrumental music, which they had forbidden in the synagogue after the destruction of the temple, at joyful celebrations.

In the synagogue, the khasn sang. His chants presented the unity of prayer, speech and music. He read the Hebrew script with its omissions and accents like sheet music, and the sound scales he used were named after the beginning of the liturgical passages. The khasn's art khasn was shown in his creative and expressive embellishments of the chant. The chant was meant to enter into the soul and open it up to the holy teachings.

This was also true of Eastern Europe, where in the 14th century many of the so-called "Ashkenazim" living in Germany and France fled from the pogroms and persecutions of the "knights" of the crusades, who accused them of being responsible for epidemics and other ills. Polish rulers, particularly, granted them religious freedom and protection against discrimination that was unusual for the time. But the Ashkenazim also lived in areas of Ukraine, Romania, and Russia. When they settled in the countryside, they mostly lived in so-called "shtetl“.
From the middle of the 17th century, Jew enjoyed a relatively generous, if insecure, autonomy in these rural Jewish communities. At the end of the 18th century, the Russian czar created the so-called "Pale of Settlement" for the Jews, accompanied by new restrictions such as the draft for 25 years of military service. This region comprising areas of Poland, Russia and Bessarabia thus inevitably became the major area of settlement for Eastern Jews that represented about 70 percent of the total Jewish population at the end of the 19th century. The geographical situation, the cultural environment, and the close Jewish communal living had a strong influence on the music.

In the shtetl
In the shtetl, the Jewish population lived largely without outside influence. The lives of these mostly very poor people were focused on crafts, the marketplace and Torah school, depending on the attitude of the regional ruler and the surrounding population, whose distrust could quickly turn into hostility and violence.
It is here that the specific Eastern Jewish culture developed, also through the Yiddish language, with whose help it created a rich body of literature, theater and songs, to its ultimate form.

From the musicians and musical traditions of the medieval Ashkenazim, klezmer music developed here as music played at festivities or rituals in the shtetl community. The word klezmer, derived from the Hebrew terms "kley" and "zemer" ("instrument of song"), initially referred to the musical instrument. Later the term was used for the musicians (plural "klezmorim"), until 1937, when the music ethnologist and field researcher Moshe Beregovski used the word "klezmer" as a term for the musical form, which Giora Feidman popularized at the end of the 20th century.

Klezmorim played at worldly celebrations. The most important of these was the Yiddish wedding, which must have been a powerful event that can hardly be imagined today. Instrumental music at these marriages was not only permitted, but a duty owed to happiness of the bride and groom. It was so important that if town authorities prohibited klezmer music, the wedding ceremony was moved to another city. The klezmorim not only provided the dance music, but were also involved in the ritual.

At midday on the day of the wedding, the guests were greeted with "Dobriden" and "Mazltov". Later, the bride was seated on the bridal chair at the tune of "kale bazetsn". The badkhn (a kind of master of ceremonies or wedding jester) led with moralistic songs, reminded the audience of death and the transience of life, and all present fell to loud weeping and lamenting, the bride was strongly urged to show remorse, the dead were called upon, and there was begging for forgiveness of sins.
During the "kale badekens", the groom put the veil on his future wife. The "freylekhs tsu der khupe" accompanied the couple to the wedding canopy, where the wedding ceremony took place without music.
After the groom broke a glass underfoot, the band guided the couple to the festival hall playing "freylekhs fun der khupe"; the guests, shouting "Hoch!" and "Mazltov!", danced in front of the bridal procession. Broken glass and shrill music was meant to drive away the evil spirits.

Dance till Morning
The klezmorim then played dance music until morning. They also provided moralistic "nigunim", reminding the listeners of transience and the higher powers. Their particular skill was to play music that made the guests get up and dance, but also to make the music speak through its specific embellishments. The "mitsve-tants", a dance late at night during which the bride danced with all the male guests connected by a cloth, was a religious duty (a "mitsve"). At dawn, farewell songs such as "a gute nakht", "es toygt shoyn" and especially the farewell greeting "zay gezunt" were played. Important guests were accompanied to the street or to their homes with "gasn nign".

The festivities could last a week or longer!

Did God anticipate all this when he first asked Eve for a dance?
And did he realize that the klezmorim, despite their eminent position and function as indispensable attendants at the rites of passage, as the exorcists of evil spirits, and as magic arousers of emotions – that despite all this, their status was often barely above that of "schnorrer" (beggar, sponger), they often had other professions and had to travel around a lot?

Musical Characteristics
A klezmer family had a long tradition, with the father teaching the son both the instrument as well as the repertoire and the best tricks and embellishments, because for a good klezmer, the artistic skills of embellishment and improvisation were essential.
The cantoral lament, the change of mood, and the miocrovariations of the synagogal chant entered the klezmer music as creative means of expression. Trills against the meter, triplets, the never quite "exact" rhythmic rendition, chromatic transitions, unusual rhythmic patterns, rubatos, strong vibratos, slurring and melisma, trills/quavers or the wailing ("krekhtsn") – all these elements easily recognized today as characteristics of klezmer cannot be separated from this cantoral origin. They constitute the essence of klezmer music, which has blended with other types of Eastern European music in terms of form and style.
The scales that are used also go back to synagogal music, emphasizing the unity of text and music. They also retained the names of the corresponding liturgical passages.

Since all players embellished according to their own taste, a traditionally heterophonic music having the aesthetics of appropriate dissonances came into being. There was no consistent meter as we know it. "Playing with the meter" was the art, and there were no fixed melodies or pieces, but only phrases composed of a set of modules to choose from. One of the leading klezmer musicians and researchers, Joshua Horowitz, points out: "Klezmer music is like a Jewish conversation – everybody talks at the same time. The difference is that we listen to each other and are essentially saying the same thing. That is heterophony."
There was an enormous variety of rhythmic and phraseological refinement that did not survive the modern development. The cimbalom ("tsimbl"), the violin and the contrabass were traditionally the main instruments; the violin was believed to have magical powers when it was capable of stirring the heart. The clarinet and brass instruments were only added at the beginning of the 20th century, after the players had done service in military bands.

At weddings, the form of a particular piece was improvised. A musical piece might therefore last 30 minutes or more if the dancers were in the right mood. It was the sign of a good klezmer that he could adjust the tempo, enrich the piece with improvisations and thus heat up the mood, and use embellishments with self-confidence and style.

The klezmorim learned all this through the family tradition of example and repetition, often without sheet music. The pieces and forms they played connected them over large geographical and national distances.

Their repertoire was from various sources. The main body consisted of Eastern Jewish pieces played at dances and weddings; then there was a mixed repertoire of klezmerized pieces from other sources, dances from surrounding regions that were taken over and became part of the co-territorial repertoire, and pieces for dancing couples from Western and Central Europe that constituted the cosmopolitan repertoire.

Klezmer music was not only subject to the changing demands and taxes of the authorities, but also organized in guilds that provided internal insurance and regulated regional performance rights

The New World
In addition to changes in the shtetl culture as a result of increasing urbanization, the territorial changes at the end of the 19th century and the new anti-Semitism caused large waves of immigration to the United States.

The music was also transformed by the completely different circumstances in the United States, primarily in New York City, which was the main goal of the immigrants (small apartments that were unsuitable for loud, week-long celebrations), and the efforts of the immigrant to assimilate. There were fewer and fewer traditional wedding celebrations. The musical pieces were shortened for recording on the shellac records of the newly emerging industry (which gave rise to the idea of individual pieces). The composition of the groups was changed in order to provide better conditions for recording (giving brass players an advantage over violinists), embellishments and improvisation were reduced, the pieces were played outside the ballroom, and, influenced by swing, played in a consistent tempo.

People at festivities were asking for American dance music, Charleston and fox trot, ragtime, swing and jazz, and the (klezmer) musicians also played in orchestras, other bands, and in the popular Yiddish theaters. The sounds of the "Old World" were increasingly confined to meetings of Yiddish organizations. The variety of the music, too, strongly decreased: while initially concentrated on different dances, the later focus was almost exclusively on the bulgar. Klezmer stars of the time were the clarinetists Dave Tarras, Naftule Brandwein, Leon Schwartz and others, as well as the leaders of big bands. Curbed immigration in 1924 further isolated the immigrated klezmers from their roots. In very short time, music played on the radio and in theaters, as well as the style of big band swing, greatly changed the tradition.

Meanwhile, the Shoah raged in Europe. Germany destroyed the Eastern European Jews and their life and culture and did everything to also erase the traces left on the landscape and in the collective memory. Whatever forms of Jewish life in the shtetl still endured in the large cities and whatever cultural variety might have remained (not only) in Eastern Europe – these ceased to exist after the end of the war.

With the foundation of the State of Israel, klezmer was considered just as antiquated as the humility, superstition and weakness associated with Eastern European Jews. Despite increased immigration to the United States (also of Chassidic Eastern Jews), klezmer music remained culturally marginal there and was even an insult for the musicians. The last remaining survivors from the time of Eastern European klezmer died, and the music experienced a decline lasting until the 1950s. The next generation of musicians turned to jazz, and Yiddish music slipped further and further into the nostalgic corners of a sunken world.

The Revival
In the 1970s, young Jewish-American musicians such as Michael Alpert, Alan Bern, Zev Feldman, Joel Rubin, Henry Sapoznik, Pete Sokolow, Andy Statman and others discovered their interest in the music of their fathers and forefathers. Triggered by a general search for roots and identity among Americans, the legendary klezmer revival started simultaneously in different parts of the U.S. and helped the music to achieve a new blossoming. The musicians studied the music directly with the last living "historical" representatives in New York, such as Dave Tarras or Shloimke Beckerman, as well as by listening to historical recordings.
With great enthusiasm they founded bands, associations, archives and institutes, organized festivals and workshops like the legendary Klezcamp. Much to the musicians' own surprise, these activities met with great public response.
The biggest klezmer scene today is in the United States. During the annual New York Klezcamp, the revivalists teach the younger musicians from all over the world.

This scene consists of two groups:
The traditionalists play in the traditional klezmer style, do research on old instruments and playing styles, and express, in their most extreme form, the view that klezmer music is a style of the past.
The innovators believe that klezmer music should be further developed and that the elements of the traditional style should be used as a basis for a new kind of music. Therefore, they borrow from jazz, rock, classical music and non-Jewish styles of Eastern European music and compose new pieces.
Other, often Jewish musicians are trying to develop in their experimental music the Jewish essence of the music in contemporary forms, using klezmer and other musical sources as a starting point.

When the former East Bloc opened up in the 1990s, old recordings from musical field researchers, believed lost, resurfaced on wax carriers in archives. They are currently being examined in New York, Saint Petersburg and Potsdam, and it is hoped that, in addition to the old shellac recordings of American klezmorim, they may reveal earlier sources even closer to the roots.

Klezmer as World Music
Interest in klezmer and the growing Klezmer scene of recent years are not free from internal contradictions. The music, originally in the ritualized form of dance, celebration, and reflection, is presented today mostly in concert with paying, seated audiences. The embellishments, the particular rhythms and improvisations are no longer taught and learned, so one may doubt whether this can be considered a continuation of the genuine/original klezmer music. Critics comment negatively on the false form of presentation, its emphasis on cuteness and wit, as well as its often artificial emotionalism. Whereas in earlier times listeners could enjoy expertly rendered, minute embellishments, they nowadays become "lovers of a simplicity that never existed" (Ottens).

At a time when music has become a cultural commodity enjoyed worldwide and geographically and periodically limited spaces have become replaced with symbolic ones, klezmer, too, has become part of the international world music scene. On the one hand, we are dealing with attempts to counter the cultural globalization by preserving the feelings of an authentic and clear identity, and on the other hand, the world has long become the musicians' source for all sorts of musical set pieces, enabling them to experiment with and develop their music in a way that would never have been possible in a culturally more rigid environment. Thus there are groups that combine klezmer with free jazz and experimental elements, klezmer as hip hop and house music, combined with Balkan music, tango, flamenco, salsa, reggae and many other genres and styles.

In Eastern Germany, klezmer was part of a folk music movement in opposition to the dominant cultural system. On the one hand, the state obstructed this movement based on its official anti-Semitism and opposition to Israel; on the other hand, it also supported it, since klezmer and Yiddish songs could be construed as antifascist expression.

In Western Germany, the group "Zupfgeigenhansel" popularized Yiddish songs in the 1970s, as did, at about the same time, a tour by the American revivalist group "Kapelye" debuting the clarinettist Giora Feidman. Feidman and the American revivalists met with enthusiastic response in Germany in the 1980s and 1990s. They conducted workshops for musicians of different levels of skill, which triggered a German "klezmer boom", producing strong public interest and leading to the foundation of many groups.

German Klezmer Music Today
There are German klezmer groups on professional, semi-professional, and amateur levels.
The majority of the musicians are non-Jewish. Here, too, we find the disputes between traditionalists and innovators. For a time there was strong conflict between two approaches personified by the respective models and workshop leaders: there was the music-historical direction represented by the American models, and there was the spiritual approach propagated by Giora Feidman.
The former group teaches the study of sources and the development of the music on the basis of historical knowledge, and the latter sees klezmer as an attitude, an emotional openness of the musician, which he can bring to bear on any musical style and thus turn any music into klezmer.

The audience, of all ages, is usually mixed, consisting of people interested in Jewish culture, in jazz, classical music, folk and world music. However, the majority is over 40, mostly from academic or social professions. The strong interest in klezmer music is also part of the wider reawakening of interest in the culture, literature, language and folklore of pre-war Ashkenazi Jews. Because of its great popularity, klezmer music occupies a special position.

The Significance of German Klezmer Music for Society
This special interest in klezemer is the subject of heated debate. Within a short period of time, it has become a signifier for everything Jewish. Themes and representatives of Jewish culture are automatically introduced by the audio media to the accompaniment of klezmer sounds. Klezmer is heard at almost all Shoah memorial events and is often identified as the "music of Israel" or "Jewish music".

Eastern European Jews, whose music is historically characterized by klezmer, cannot represent all Jews. Furthermore, at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century the German, assimilated Jews considered the Eastern European Jews to be archetypal and superstitious and did not hold them very high in their esteem. In Germany, klezmer music, if known at all, was liked and played only in small Jewish circles.
Still, klezmer groups are featured at commemorations for the Jewish victims of the Shoah belonging to social and professional groups of people that one can assume would not have appreciated that this kind of music would be played at their commemorations. Israel itself does not identify with klezmer music.
In Germany today, klezmer music, formerly a part of Jewish culture, but now played by non-Jewish musicians, represents Jewish life and culture, while the German public knows hardly anything about real Jewish life and culture in Germany. It is understandable that the Jewish community and representatives of German Jews take a very critical view of this trend.

Klezmer music does not have any special significance in connection with German-Jewish history. It is no coincidence that the German klezemer boom occurred at the same time as the showing of the "Holocaust" series on television, which started a broad discussion of the Shoah in Germany.
When Germans play klezmer music, this means that a foreign folk music is being played by musicians of and in a country whose people brutally destroyed the cultural environment and the people from that culture. Many a musician and listener tries to avoid this conflict or to use "German klezmer music" as a sign of German-Jewish reconciliation and exoneration of national guilt.

Before this backdrop, klezmer music occupies a special position in the German folklore scene and cannot be played without acknowledging the historical facts. For the musicians playing this music, it means that they have to show a special respect for it. It requires being conscious of their own social role and perspective, reflecting upon their views of German-Jewish history.

In addition to the degree of professionalization, my experience shows that there are also different approaches to the music in the German klezmer scene. There is the folkloristic, clichéd approach, the approach to use the music as an instrument to ease the burden of guilt relating to the Shoah, the spiritual approach, and the musical-historical approach (which includes traditionalists and innovators). These approaches cannot always be clearly separated, and there are many musicians and bands that in their development pass through these different approaches as a process of dealing with the music and culture to come to a final understanding.

Meanwhile, the German klezmer scene is astonishingly large and varied. Many musicians continue to learn through workshops, travel, and work with the original sources and thus work on the authentic care for and continuation of klezmer music. Musicians like Christian Dawid and Sanne Möricke, Heiko Lehmann and Andreas Schmitges earn great respect worldwide, play with international bands of the revivalists, and are invited as teachers to international workshops.

Sources:

Wiltrud Apfeld (ed): „Klezmer – hejmisch und hip“
Exhibition catalog, Klartext-Verlag, Essen 2004

Max Peter Baumann: „Klezmermusik im Zeichen der Globalisierung“
in: „Klezmer – hejmisch und hip“
Exhibition catalog, Klartext-Verlag, Essen 2004

Moshe Beregovski: “Jewish Instrumental Folk Music”
translated and edited by Mark Slobin, Robert A. Rothstein and Michael Alpert
Syracuse University Press, Syracuse, New York 2001

Michel Borzykowsky: "Klezmer Music”
in: http://borzykowski.users.ch

Susan Bauer: „Von der Khupe zum Klezcamp - Klezmermusik in New York“ piranha, Berlin 1999

Budowitz: Interview in der CD: “Budowitz – Mother Tongue. Music of the 19th century klezmorim”
Koch International 1997

Aaron Eckstaedt: „Musikalische Formen und rhythmische Strukturen in den Liedern und Instrumentalstücken der Sammlungen Sofia Magid und Moshe Beregovski”
Papers presented at the conference „Klesmer, Klassik, jiddisches Lied – Jüdische Musikkultur in Osteuropa”, Potsdam 2002

Zev Feldman: „Bulgareasca/Bulgarish/Bulgar: The transformation of a klezmer dance genre”
Ethnomusicology Vol. 38, No. 1, Illinois 1994

Joshua Horowitz: „The Klezmer Freygish Shtayger”
unpublished manuscript, Graz 1993

Wolf Kampmann: „Klezmerfeeling“
in: „Klezmer – hejmisch und hip“
Exhibition catalog, Klartext-Verlag, Essen 2004

Judith Kessler: „Klezmerfreie Zone oder Jewish Disneyland?“
in: „Klezmer – hejmisch und hip“
Exhibition catalog, Klartext-Verlag, Essen 2004

Heiko Lehmann: „Klezmer in Germany”
unpublished (lecture) manuscript, Berlin 2000

Albert Lichtblau: „Unter Philosemitismusverdacht: der Klezmerboom“
Berlin, 2007

Isaac Loberan: „Klezmermusic of Moldavia and Ukraine“
varwe musica publications, 2003

Rita Ottens: „Der Klezmer als ideologischer Arbeiter“
in: Neue Zeitschrift für Musik, 3/98
Schott, Mainz, 1998

Rita Ottens: „Fassade des Stimmigen: Jüdische Musik in Deutschland“
In: „Jüdische Musiktraditionen“, 2001

Rita Ottens/Joel Rubin:„Klezmermusik“
dtv publishing company Munich 1999

Joel Rubin: „Mazltov! Jewish-American wedding music for clarinet“
Schott-Verlag 1998

Henry Sapoznik: „The compleat klezmer“
Tara-publications, New York 1987

Günther Schöller: „Musikethnologische Fragen und Anmerkungen zur Klezmermusik“
Transcript of a panel discussion in Weimar 2007 with Zev Feldman, Aaron Alexander, Alan Bern and Kurt Bjorling
at www.klezmerlog.de, Wien 2007