- artist:The Klezmatics
- release year:2002
- style(s):Jewish, Klezmer
- country:USA
- formats:CD (Compact Disc)
- record posted by:Tractor-Beam
- label:Rounder
he Possessed Jews with Horns are Back:
The Klezmatics Rise Up!
There is a saying: “If Yiddish is dying, well, it should
die for another hundred years.” Its accompanying
music, Klezmer, also suffered a long mournful
near-death until it was reincarnated by possessed
Jews with horns who defined and defied the genre
since they formed.
The group is The Klezmatics and their latest outing
—Rise up! Shteyt Oyf! (May 13, 2003 by Rounder
Records)—continues the unlikely combination of
ancient shtetl party music with an innovative
consciousness that could only arise from the
experimental and intellectual East Village. As the
liner notes say, “The world of Jewish spirit is a
world of eternal tradition, and ever-shifting
reinvention.” Is there anything more Jewish than
historically minded adaptation?
Samples from a 1948 Jewish archive combine with
avant horn riffs. A homoerotic love song sits beside
traditional Hasidic songs. And the CD title comes
from a powerful gospel-tinged revision of Holly
Near’s “I Ain’t Afraid” in both Yiddish and English.
Not the repertoire of your grandmother, and yet it
may be the very bridge connecting us to the past.
The Klezmatics began performing “I Ain’t Afraid”
for their post 9/11 concerts. “We see it as part of
our purpose to be a link in the chain of all the
activists who work for a better world,” explains
trumpeter Frank London. “This song is one way of
expressing this.”
The Klezmatics are known for blurring the lines of
tradition with a modern sonic aesthetic, but the
only sound sample on Rise Up! is the voice of
Shmerke Kaczerginsky on “Barikadn,” a song
written for Bund youth workers in the ’20s which
resonates with the band’s anti-globalization and
worker’s rights tendencies. Kaczerginsky, a Vilna
poet and Jewish partisan who saved 8,000 archives
from Nazi confiscation from the YIVO library where
he worked, used his library job to obtain and
smuggle arms to the Vilna ghetto’s resistance. In an
odd twist of historical wizardry, lead vocalist Lorin
Sklamberg serves as the Sound Archivist at the
YIVO Institute for Jewish Research where the saved
archives now reside.
“We always try to go back to the source of these
things as much as possible,” explains Sklamberg. “If
you start from a place before the words or music
have layers of interpretation, there is more room to
make the thing your own. We can interpret it for
ourselves.” This is what they did with well-known
song “Loshn-koydesh” starting with the full original
poem and shifting the gender of the song’s subject.
“Tepel” comes from a live recording of a wedding in
the early ’60s in the YIVO archives, from the
wedding repertoire of notorious Klezmer clarinetist
Rudy Tepel, who was known for his raw-edged
playing and his predilection for carrying a pistol to
gigs in his clarinet case. “That song came from a
working tape of a producer for a now-defunct
Jewish record label from the ’60s,” Sklamberg says.
“We haven’t heard a recording of it anywhere else. It
was a lucky find.”
The band also expands the Jewish repertoire into
sister genres from neighboring cultures. “Yo riboyn
olam,” sung in Aramaic, features pianist Myra
Melford just back from India, accompanying
Qawwali-style on the harmonium. This and two
other songs demonstrate the band’s fascination
with the ecstatic spiritual/mystical side of Jewish
music, particularly that of the Hasidim, the religious
Jews who believe that you can realize a direct
communion with God through singing and dancing.
“Kats un moyz” draws on Frank London’s work with
NYC’s Salsa and Latin jazz bands and features
Latin-Jewish pianist Steve Sandberg in an Eddie
Palmieri-ish Meringue/Klezmer solo turn. This is
one of four songs on the CD that London composed
for Pilobolus Dance Theater’s exploration into
Jewish dance.
The title song to the Pilobolus piece, “Davenen,”
demonstrates the group’ effort to compose to their
players’ strengths as they have done for new band
violinist Lisa Gutkin. Similarly, Matt Darriau’s
composition “Di gayster,” an Eric Satie meets
Klezmer tune composed for Tony Kushner’s “A
Dybbuk,” showcases his unique style. The band is
rounded out by David Licht, who quickly became
part of the second wave of the Klezmer revival in
the mid-80s, listening and learning from vintage 78
rpm recordings, which continue to be his biggest
influence; and Paul Morrissett on bass, a collector
and accomplished player of traditional folk
instruments of the Balkans and Scandinavia.
From ecstatic songs of praise to Yiddish carnival
songs, from a kick-ass workers’ march to slamming
Klezmer tunes old, new, frantic and mysterious,
The Klezmatics rise up once again on what may be
the musical feast of their 17-year career.