AMERICA’S CUP
Nobody thinks Yiddishe Cup plays American music.
We do.
We should change our name to America’s Cup because we play James Brown, Beatles, Louis Armstrong, Motown, swing and Latin. If we didn’t play that stuff, we wouldn’t work. [Watch video clip.]
The working musician’s world is very schizo. In one set we might play “Sweet Home Chicago,” “Cecilia,” “In the Mood,”, a neo-Hasidic pop medley, an Israeli medley and klezmer.
Klezmer, historically, is Eastern European Jewish instrumental wedding music. But “klezmer” now means “Jewish music.” So “klezmer band” means “Jewish band.” “Klezmer” means you have a clarinet and/or violin as a lead instrument. It means somebody in your group sings some Yiddish too.
Klezmer — the actual word — means musician in Yiddish.
Stop. This is not an Elderhostel lecture. For more on klezmer, check out Henry Sapoznik’s Klezmer! and Yale Strom’s The Book of Klezmer.
There are five or six books on klezmer, total. We’re not talking about Shakespeare. You can become a faux klezmer authority in about 40 hours.
Yiddishe Cup sometimes does a whole gig without playing one klez tune. We did a rocker’s fortieth birthday and didn’t play any Jewish music. The drummer from The James Gang was there, so we played “Funk 49” for the drummer and the birthday boy. Nothing but rock, except the birthday boy wanted a couple Armenian songs for his mother. That’s why he had hired us.
What does Yiddishe Cup have to do with Armenian? Maybe the clarinet sound.
At weddings we’ve also played Norwegian fiddle tunes, the Japanese ditty “Red Dragonfly,” and Guarani Indian music from Paraguay.
Country too. A bartender once gave me a request — in writing — for “My Dixie Wrecked.”
Yiddishe Cup’s keyboard player, Alan Douglass, will frequently complain: “Why don’t we play something we know!”
Because that wouldn’t be fun. Nobody notices if we screw up at a party, so why not mix it up? Now at a concert — where people are seated, staring at you, and paying — we try to play tunes we know.
At one concert I screwed up the beginning of “Second Avenue Square Dance” because a newspaper critic was there. I was nervous. My fingers went all over the place. Afterwards I joked to Steve Ostrow, our violinist: “‘Second Avenue’ was the highlight of the gig, huh?”
Steve said, “It was the highlight for me because you got out of it.”
That was the ultimate musician’s compliment.
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2 of 2 posts for 7/15/09.
8 comments
It’s Funk 49. No biggie though.
Thanks for the correction, Irwin. Just changed “Funk 47” to “Funk 49.”
I’m not crazy about the books you mentioned about klezmer music. I know you were just mentioning them to list the ones out there, but the best stuff written about klezmer music is a few articles written by Walter Zev Feldman, including:
1) “Bulgareasca/Bulgarish/Bulgar: the Transformation of a Klezmer Dance -Genre”
2) “Klezmer Music (Eastern Europe) in The Groves Dictionary of Music and Musicians
3) “Music of the European Klezmer” – CD notes for “Khevrisa: European Klezmer Music”. Smithsonian-Folkways
He’s written more, and I have all of these. They’re quite technical though, but they are the real stuff. If you’re interested I have them. Less technical would be:
“Klezmer Revived: Dave Tarras Plays Again,” which contains some beautiful writing and is fun to read.
Steven, thanks for the reading tips.
I like Klezmer! mostly because of Henry Sapoznik’s personal anecdotes.
I own Book of Klezmer by Yale Strom primarily for the lengthy transcriptions of Mickey Katz interviews.
Neither of the above books is the definitive work on klezmer — which hasn’t come out yet.
I interviewed Yale Strom when his book came out. We went round and round on Dave Brubeck — the world’s most famous “Christian Who People Think is Jewish.” Strom wrote Brubeck is Jewish. He isn’t. (The all-time most famous “Christian Who People Think is Jewish”: Charlie Chaplin.)
I’ve read Walter Zev Feldman — the first article you listed, which is in the book American Klezmer, edited by Mark Slobin. And I’ve read Feldman’s liner notes to the Stempenyu’s Dream CD. Feldman has a very dense academic writing style. Not a plus. But he’s certainly worth reading for the underlying content.
I haven’t checked out Feldman’s Grove Dictionary entry, nor the “Tarras Plays Again” article, which I just found out — via the ‘Net — is in the book Jews of Brooklyn, edited by Ilana Abramovitch.
I’ll look into those.
. . . Just checked out the beginning of “Tarras Plays Again” on the ‘Net. A blank-load of passive voice and not enough paragraph breaks. Hard slog.
Seeing the Sugarhill Gang two nights ago reminded me just how old (like punk) hip-hop music is. The group members seemed old, a lot of the audience seemed old. (Most of the music I see is with 20-something hipsters, so it stands out to me.)
So I wonder: at bar mitzvahs, are the parents now nostalgic for punk from the 1970s and old-school hip-hop? Do people ask for it? Do you play it?
Richard, Yiddishe Cup doesn’t play much American music past 1970. Luckily for us, a lot of post-baby-boomers like that stuff. No parent, as yet, has asked for hip-hop.
Another thought, the hip-hop parents wouldn’t hire my band, to begin with. That generation — 30- and 40 year olds – is not into klezmer very much, seems to me. Maybe they are rebelling against their folkie/ “authentic” music loving predecessors.
The klezmer revival, I’m guessing, was a baby-boom-driven phenomenon. I think klez love is going to skip a generation. So it’ll be: 1. Bubbes Gen. 2. Baby Boom. Then (3.) Kids who are now teens and in their 20s.
Note: we sometimes play burned CDs of hip-hop for the 13 year olds. They don’t know what to do to it.
schizo
You are cheating; making comments longer than your blog posts!
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