Why do we do this anyway: klezmer as Jewish youth subculture

Judaism, Wntr, 1998 by Alicia Svigals

Of course, '90s revivalists also hear what we want to in that "Rorschach blot," like the power chords I heard in Brandwein's "Terkish Bulgarish" which led to the Klezmatics' arrangement of that tune on "Rhythm and Jews." And the Klezmatics also sometimes speed up tempos, but in an emulation of a punk, rather than a cartoon, aesthetic.

* For Our Own Language

My grandmother's sister, who was a native Yiddish speaker, used to deny Yiddish was really a language, calling it a "dzargon." Similarly, journalists and music critics repeatedly emphasize the supposedly hodge-podge nature of klezmer, calling it a mix of everything from polkas to calypso. In fact, neither is true - Yiddish is a language-Yiddish linguist Max Weinreich used to say "a dialect is a language without an army" - and klezmer is an idiom with its own stylistic unity and integrity. Like any musical language, klezmer needs to be studied and absorbed so it can be spoken with a native accent.

Perhaps this tendency of American Jews to deny the legitimacy of our language and music is a reflection of low Jewish self-esteem or of a desire to assimilate. Or maybe, like comic "Uncle Tom-ing," it's the strategy a minority culture comes up with to avoid antagonizing the often-hostile majority - in this case, a self-representation that says, "Don't worry, we're just like you; we don't really have our own language and we're not really a group apart."

* Against Folk-Fetishism and a False Definition of "Authenticity"

A corollary to the idea that this is our music is the notion that having inherited it, we can now do with it whatever we wish. I want to play authentic Jewish folk music - but not in the sense of reifying a particular slice of Jewish musical history, such as, say, the 1920s. There are defining elements of klezmer style (melodic types, ornamentation) which have remained constant over time, but as a musician, I know that every musical idiom constantly changes and interacts with other musics, and the 1920s were no more "authentic" a period than any other. Rather, I believe in playing "authentically" in the sense of being true to oneself. My hope is that now that we're becoming fluent in our language, we can go beyond simply reciting a received text to speak spontaneously in our own voices.

One of the most interesting new developments in the Yiddishist movement and the klezmer revival is a move towards a kind of twenty-something, in-your-face radicalism, which carries the banner of Yiddish culture as a symbol of unapologetic Jewish pride a la "Queer Nation." Among klezmer bands, this approach is represented by the Klezmatics, with our "out" presentation and our tendency to mine the rich socialist Jewish past for songs we can relate to (like "Dzhankhoye," whose lyrics include an admonition to "spit in the anti-Semites' faces"). The wider Yiddishist scene owes this new trend in large part to the growing "Queer Yiddishist" movement, made up of Queer Nation types who also identify as Yiddishist, and who bring a queer radical sensibility to Yiddishism. In fact, among progressives of all stripes, gays in particular have found a home in the new secular Yiddishist environment from the start, surprising each other and everyone else with our unexpectedly large numbers at Klezkamp, the YIVO summer program, and on the staffs of YIVO and the National Yiddish Book Center. As younger gays started showing up, they brought Queer sensibility, and then Queer Yiddishism, with them.