Oldtime.ca: The Acoustic Pages

Growing up in Toronto, and going to schools where Jewish holidays meant a day off for everyone, I was surrounded by Jewish diasporic culture in all of its forms. I don't remember whose bar mitzvah it was, but I have a distinct memory of hearing a klezmer band at one of the many I attended, and being struck by the richness and exoticism of the music. Although I'm sure my friend was embarrassed by his parents' choice of entertainment, I was hooked. My thirteen year-old brain could grasp that it was kind of like the music I had heard in Fiddler On the Roof, but was so much better.

Because of the cheesiness factor sometimes associated with this kind of music, and the range of recordings available, klezmer can be a hard nut to crack. Although I have been a fan of this kind of music for a long time, it took an almost equally long time before I found recordings that I was completely happy with. Interestingly, it was through my interest in bluegrass music that I was finally brought to these recordings.

Klezmer is basically a form of Jewish oldtime music that developed in the villages and towns that once spread across Eastern Europe and Russia, and which were destroyed during the Holocaust and the countless pogroms leading up to that unprecedented genocide. The klezmorim were professional musicians that played at traditional Jewish celebrations and at the courts of Hasidic rebbes, drawing upon a repertoire of celebratory music that developed in post-medieval Eastern Europe, and that influenced and was influenced by the folk traditions of Romania, Russia, Turkey, and Greece, among others.

Klezmer, a Yiddish term for musical instruments derived from a Rabbinical Hebrew word meaning 'vessel of song', was originally dominated by violin, hammered dulcimer, and flute, but beginning in the mid-1800s, the clarinet became a popular lead instrument, and was soon joined by various brass instruments as ensembles became larger. Many klezmorim came to the United States during the mass immigrations between 1882 and 1924, and New York was to become the centre of klezmer music in the new country. Among these immigrants were clarinetists Naftule Brandwein (1889-1963) and Dave Tarras (1897-1989), whose early recordings would heavily influence the klezmer revival of the 1970s. An excellent collection of Brandwein's recordings from the 20s and 30s has been released under the title The King of the Klezmer Clarinet (Rounder Records).

When I was first learning mandolin, I came across a book on beginner bluegrass mandolin by Andy Statman that is the source of the version of "Old Joe Clark" that I play to this day. A couple of years later I came across his name again on a recording with David Grisman called Songs of Our Fathers (Acoustic Disc), an excellent collection of traditional Jewish melodies featuring Statman on both mandolin and clarinet.

As it turned out, Statman's main claim to fame is as a pioneer of the New York klezmer revival, and his 1979 recording with Zev Feldman, Jewish Klezmer Music, is now considered to be a contemporary classic of the genre, along with his 1983 recording released under the title The Andy Statman Klezmer Orchestra (both are available on Shanachie Records). The two recordings are quite different in flavour: Feldman's tsimbl, an Eastern European variety of hammered dulcimer, lends a mysterious, and sometimes even dark, feeling that brings out a different side of Statman's clarinet and mandolin, which have a more celebratory feel in the context of his orchestra. Because of this difference in emphasis, both recordings are worth seeking out, and I would recommend these over his more recent recordings.

A balance of mystery and celebration pervade a final recording that I recommend strongly, and which is perhaps my favourite of this genre. On this first solo release by Alicia Svigals the violin dominates, and it is appropriately named 'Fidl' (Traditional Crossroads). Svigals, who was a founding member of The Klezmatics and is credited with being the first American-born violinist to develop a contemporary klezmer fiddle style, has a distinctly older point of reference on this recording, one that reaches way back to the shtetls of the old country when violin was the lead instrument. In Svigals' hands this music takes on an unmatched power and depth, and here she is supported by a fine group of musicians playing traditional instruments.

Pick up any of these recordings and you can't lose.