Review of 'A Weekend with the Klezmatics'
Klezmatics Party, Jam, Workshop and Concert May 2004
posted 18 June 2004
There used to be a TV show called Fantasy Football League, in which two couch potatoes fantasised about playing football with an ideal team of favourites.
This weekend has been little short of a Fantasy Klezmer league for Kleznerds. Who would you most love to jam with? Who is your dream backing band for your version of "Vu bistu geven"? To whose process would you most love to be privy? And, lastly, with whom would you most love to chat Klezmer - style, material and interpretation - over sandwiches and coffee? For today's Klezmorim the answer would be every time The Klezmatics, New York's best loved Klezmer band.
By sheer fluke The Klezmatics found themselves in London with 24 hours to spare. "Aha!" thought Geraldine Auerbach of the Jewish Music Institute, and, wasting no time, advertised a party and jam followed by a full day's workshop with the band, to which anyone with an instrument was invited. Hoardes of bedraggled kleznerds arrived at the Yiddish Hoyz in Grays Inn Road on Sunday night clutching instruments and hopping with excitement. Within ten minutes of the band setting up, a large circle had gathered around them with people pushing songs, melodies, chords, rhythms, which the crowd took up and transformed into a seamless three hour medley of fully-fledged numbers. When it got too much, people grabbed each other and danced around the musicians, returning to their instruments when their next favourite tune came around.
Something about the energy of a good Klezmer jam stays with you and keeps you pulsing for hours afterwards. This evening was no exception and I wonder if many of us managed more than a few restless hours' sleep before returning to the Hoyz the next day for some intensive study with the band. Exhaustion didn't much matter as Klezmer does what Klezmer needs and we were soon singing and playing our hearts out to a new tune which Lorin Sklamberg taught us. A wordless Yiddish song in traditional three-part form, we learnt it in a few minutes and went straight into a detailed look at the rhythms and counter-rhythms which the bass parts could play with. From there we explored the tissue of harmonic and melodic layers, constantly going around the same tune and enjoying its evolution each time into something greater and more complex. Matt Darriau, the band's clarinettist, took a radical stand: you only need to know one Klezmer tune really well, as the rhythmic permutations, harmonic modulations and possible stylistic interpretations are so infinite that it's like having a whole repertoire of different pieces. Maybe, but there's no doubt that part of the pleasure of Klezmer is the accessibility of the melodies; through regular listening you can furnish yourself with an extensive repertoire of songs and tunes from the Klezmer canon, which trumpeter and composer Frank London defines as everything recorded between 1905 and 1975, when the new wave began.
After lunch Frank took us deeper into theory and process, sharing some of the Klezmatics' current work-in-progress with us. An Aramaic song with a Klezmer chorus, here the "Matics" were working within an Arabic style genre, using the flattened second note of the Arabic scale to "arabise" the Klezmer chorus. Two Woody Guthrie poems, one about Hanukah and one about the war, were set to music by individual band members. While Lorin had set the Hanukah poem to a universal folk song, Matt had set the military poem to an overtly Jewish song.
The discourse of tradition in the Klezmatics' repertoire has evolved over
their twenty-year history. When they started, back in the eighties, they
set out to be a traditional Klezmer band and faithfully adapted Yiddish
songs and melodies. A few years on they realized that "there was
room for us" in their interpretations, and they began to explore
what has become their trademark - highly individualistic, musically adventurous
creations using traditional material as the starting point. World rhythms,
from jazz and celtic, to Jamaica ska and Brazilian frevo, transform the
old Ashkenazic melodies into contemporary dance music with a mass appeal.
The band draws on a broad collective knowledge when it comes to musical
traditions and disciplines, not to mention philosophy (while preparing
his forthcoming Carnival project, Frank London has not only toured Brazil
but is studying Mikahil Bakhtin's Theory of Carnival). Their starting
point of traditional Klezmer music has now become the prism through which
they interpret and compose, both inside and out of the stylistic genre.
Through their strict observance of the Klezmer form they have found the
freedom to experiment and cross-reference, achieving a provocative and
highly charged new aesthetic.
As well as their stylistic interpretation, the Klezmatics are known for
their thematic interpretations. Old bundist songs such as "un mir
zaynen ale brider" are given a trademark homoerotic twist, as is
the Yiddish version of the ancient Song of Songs.
They also like songs about love, drinking, politics and social change.
Their love of the weed prompted them to commission Canadian Yiddishist,
Michael Wex, to write them a song about the joys of smoking marijuana.
The complex and poetic word play, in Yiddish, may have escaped some, but
those who get it will have connected the sweet smell of dope with that
of burnt offerings in the temple, as well as the reference to Louis Armstrong's
dealer, Mezz Mezzrow, as the Magid of Mezz Mezritch.
Our workshop finished by the late afternoon, although the Klezmatics
experience was only really enjoying a short pause before the next and
final phase: the gig. The moment of truth, where the finished product
of all that involved thinking and experimentation is at last realized
and presented to a live audience.
Old hits and tracks from the new album "Shteyt Oyf" transformed
the packed Spitz venue in Spitalfields market into an all singing all
dancing slice of Jewish New York. Inspirational teachers they all are,
but as a band they are consummate performers: open, generous, virtuosic
and joyous. The word "klezmer" means vessel of joy, and this
they truly were. It is rare to find a band of this excellence and experience
that communicates such joy in its own material and musicianship. Lorin
has been singing Shnirele Perele for twenty years now, and still emanates
a deep spiritual pleasure in performance, confirming the old Chassidic
premise that song is the surest way to reach G-d.
